Asserting Identity Through Music

In his article Latin Holidays: Mexican Americans, Latin Music, and Cultural Identity in Postwar Los Angeles, Anthony Macias cites music as one of the major tools through which Mexican Americans assert their identity. One major concern of Mexican Americans in this time period was to ensure that were “not [to be] treated merely as cheap labor or, worse yet, as ‘Negroes’”(65). They found that there were many places across the city were “Latin” nights were becoming more frequent, along with events that young people who were looking for the same environment could gather together. In a sense, their “place” was just beginning to come together as a social structure, and they simultaneously worked to create it. This article draws upon sources which identify various night clubs and concert venues where this novel type of music and dance were being explored at the time. Many locations were not catered specifically to Mexican Americans, and they ended up being more of a blend of people from a range of races and ethnic backgrounds from “Spanish” to “Latin” to “Mexican”. While this new sense of “place” perhaps is not a direct copy of what this group experienced in Mexico, they were able to “add[ed] their own distinct spin to [existing] styles”(73) of music and dance, which empowered them as a group, and ultimately helped them to achieve their goal of avoiding the “Anglo-imposed ‘commodity identity’ in which Mexicans were seen merely as cheap labor”(78). They made the most of their situation by blurring lines between different identity groups and creating a place where their new identity could flourish.