美国国家公共电台 NPR La Santa Cecilia: 'We Are As American As Apple Pie And Tacos'（在线收听）

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Marisol Hernandez, Jose "Pepe" Carlos, Miguel "Oso" Ramirez and Alex Bendana grew up in Los Angeles, where they were surrounded by a swirl of musical influences. They heard Mexican accordions and horns in mariachis and fused those sounds with bossa nova, jazz, pop, even The Beatles.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER")

LA SANTA CECILIA: (Singing) Let me take you down 'cause I'm going to strawberry fields.

SIMON: The group calls themselves La Santa Cecilia, named after the Catholic saint of musicians. The Grammy-winners have a new self-titled album.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALWAYS TOGETHER")

LA SANTA CECILIA: (Singing) Let's stay in love forever, always forever.

SIMON: Marisol Hernandez, the vocalist, and percussionist Oso Ramirez join us now from NPR West. Thank you both very much for being with us.

MIGUEL OSO RAMIREZ: Thank you so much...

MARISOL HERNANDEZ: Hola. Hi. Thank you for having us.

RAMIREZ: ...For having us.

SIMON: How did you find each other in that big urban swath of Los Angeles?

HERNANDEZ: (Laughter) Some of us knew each other since we were, like, teenagers. I met Pepe Carlos on Olvera Street. I was busking with the older musicians that my teachers, who I learned all that beautiful traditional Mexican, Latin American music. And Pepe was busking with his little brother on the other side of the street. And years later, we decided to form a trio, where we would play traditional Latin American music. And then one day, here with my buddy Oso, we decided to create a band called La Santa Cecilia, where we could make our own music, write about our own experiences, experiment with our influences.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NOBODY KNOWS YOU WHEN YOU'RE DOWN AND OUT")

LA SANTA CECILIA: (Singing) Nobody knows you when you're down and out.

SIMON: You were brought together by common interest in music, and you decided, it sounds like, to grow together and try new things together.

HERNANDEZ: Yes, we had already been working as musicians all over the city, each one of us either playing at weddings or doing serenatas or, you know...

RAMIREZ: Salsa gigs, funk, jazz gigs.

HERNANDEZ: (Laughter) Yeah.

RAMIREZ: We were basically freelancing. And music means so much to us. And we wanted something that felt like it was important to us and to our city and that represented us, you know?

SIMON: I want to ask you about a song that's at the center of this album - let's hear a little bit of it first - "I've Been Thinking."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'VE BEEN THINKING")

LA SANTA CECILIA: (Singing) I've been thinking about you. I've been thinking about you and me.

SIMON: You all had a common experience that led to this song, I gather, didn't you?

HERNANDEZ: Yes. In a matter of, like, 12 months, Oso, Alex and I lost our fathers at different times. It was a very big, big, big blow to the band and to us personally. We were all very close to our fathers, and I don't know if I could go through this, you know, without my bandmates. I feel like this united us even more. And we needed to write something and let out these feelings, you know, of when someone loses someone and you're going through the process of accepting, of understanding, of learning how to love that person even though they're not there with you anymore, you know?

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'VE BEEN THINKING")

LA SANTA CECILIA: (Singing) Life without you is a terrible sadness. I can't say goodbye.

RAMIREZ: You know, we were family before. Like Marisol says, we always hang out together. We always party. And, you know, we love hanging out together when we're on tour. But this is definitely something that, you know, it's kind of like - you know, kind of like adult stuff, man, that you have to deal with. And thankfully, we have music, and we have this thing to be able to pour our love and our thoughts and our desperation and our pain and all that into music.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'VE BEEN THINKING")

LA SANTA CECILIA: (Singing) I don't want to be free.

SIMON: Talking about your families, talking about your community has always been important to La Santa Cecilia. I gather several of your loved ones are immigrants from Mexico. Hard not to be affected by the current political climate, isn't it?

RAMIREZ: Oh, man, so very difficult, you know? From the beginning of the band, we started off not with political intention, but with just a strong faith in what we could accomplish with music. And as time went by, you know, our band member Pepe Carlos was undocumented for pretty much 27 years of his life. And so much of our family history and lineage has to do with immigration and coming to this country and what our experience is as being bicultural people. And we chose to write a song called "Ice El Hielo" in 2013. It's a song that changed our life because we chose to write about our story from our perspective - what we live, what we feel.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ICE EL HIELO")

LA SANTA CECILIA: (Singing in Spanish).

RAMIREZ: We chose to humanize the experience of the immigrant and what happens through the process of deportations and separation of families and stuff like that. And for us, it's really important to always reflect that and use the platform that we have to speak out on issues.

HERNANDEZ: And, of course, right now, you know, seeing all this hate, all this ignorance, it bums me out, you know? And it makes me feel, at times, very angry. And it makes me feel fearful and sometimes impotent. But I refuse - I refuse to let hate and ignorance control my life, you know?

So I feel like in La Santa Cecilia, we will always continue to raise with pride our flag of love of where we come from, of being Mexican American, of being from Latin America and being born here in the United States and how beautiful that is, you know, how beautiful diversity is. And whether people like it or not, we are as American as apple pie (laughter) and tacos, you know?

(LAUGHTER)

SIMON: That sounds like a wonderful combination, doesn't it?

HERNANDEZ: Right.

RAMIREZ: It is.

(SOUNDBITE OF LA SANTA CECILIA SONG, "DREAM")

SIMON: Marisol Hernandez is the vocalist - her percussionist Oso Ramirez of the band La Santa Cecilia. Their new self-titled album is released this coming Friday. Thank you both very much for being with us.

HERNANDEZ: Thank you.

RAMIREZ: Thanks so much for having us. It's an honor.

(SOUNDBITE OF LA SANTA CECILIA SONG, "DREAM")