In 1975, KCET aired a half-hour concert featuring a hot new local band. As an opening shot of the downtown skyline segued into a slice-of-life montage of East Los Angeles, a twinkling harp played over a lilting voice as the group performed a song in the son jarocho tradition of the Mexican state of Veracruz.
“We feel it’s our obligation to spread our culture to the other people who don’t know about it,” said the musician, 22-year-old Francisco González, in a voiceover. The camera rested on him and his pals jamming on a hill that overlooked the Eastside. “We want to make a true Chicano music that draws from our past, that is in line with the past, the present and hopefully the future.”
That band was Los Lobos.
