Suavecito Blend: The Chicano National Anthem
Our Story
This playlist comes from my upbringing as a young Mexican-American still figuring out where the edges of identity actually land.
When you don’t have the language yet, when you don’t have all the syllables to explain who you are or where you belong, you hang on to what’s around you. You hang on to people. And the people around me, I was born in this country only to move to Mexico at the age of 4.
8 short years later, we were back in the States. I didn’t really have a formed identity yet, and when I got here, surrounded by the other kids that were like me, who struggled with that same sense of identity, I quickly noticed that this is what they listened to, some call them “Chicano Oldies”, this was their music.
So it became mine too. Naturally. Easily. No permission needed.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but years later it all traced back to a song: Suavecito by Malo. A band out of San Francisco in the 1970s, formed by kids from the Mission District, including Carlos Santana’s younger brother Jorge Santana, during a time when music didn’t fit neatly into categories. Soul, Latin, funk, romance, longing. It didn’t need definition. It just existed.
The band itself didn’t last the way history usually measures success. But the music did something bigger. It became a kind of anthem. Something we recognized ourselves in. Something we passed between generations without explaining why.
This playlist lives in that space.
The songs people had on when I was still learning who I was.
And before that, the songs that held us together before we knew how to name ourselves.
Enjoy!
-Angel
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