If you've been listening to our podcast this season, you might
be hearing this music and think, hey, that's not the Path
Breakers theme music. First of all, thank you for
listening. And also, you'd be right, this
music is by the band Ketzal. And one of the members of Ketzal
is its namesake, Ketzal Flores. Hello everybody.
This is Quetzal Flores, Director of Cultural Power with the
Community Power Collective here in the East Side of Los Angeles.
In addition to his role at the Community Power Collective, he
is also a Grammy winning musician.
And today, we're going to chat with Quetzal Flores about the
connections between music making and community organizing,
between cultural traditions and cultural power.
And when we were recording kids, all was sitting in front of
several paintings on the wall. There was a portrait of a woman.
A Raul Baltazar painting of my partner Martha.
Another painting, primarily in red and black, of a trumpet
player at a protest. Particularly about the the
teachers strike that happened a couple years ago here in LA.
And a third one. Well, this is Carmen Lomas
Garza. This is actually.
It's a lithograph. This one's a dreamy night time
scene. That depicts a family as two
sisters on the rooftop, you know, reflecting on the moon and
the clouds and pointing up and just kind of like, you know, the
wonder of of nature and the universe.
And you have a mom down here doing what we could call
invisible labor, but creating the safe, the conditions that
are safe enough for these young people to be up up there to
imagine and to be connected and, you know, and to have to be in
relationship and conversation. Creating space for imagination
is a critical aspect of KET Sal's work with the Community
Power Collective. From imagination comes
innovation. I I would say the best way to
talk about imagination and organizing is through a Robin DJ
Kelly quote. Freedom Dreams is the name of
the book. Robin DJ Kelly says without new
visions, we don't know what to build, only what to tear down.
We become cynical and rudderless, and we forget that
making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and
tactics, but a process that will and must transform us.
Welcome to Path Breakers, a show about what it takes to cut
through the noise and red tape and all of the other obstacles
to progress. I'm Tracy Pearson and I work on
the communications team at the Kresge Foundation.
And I'm Jamie Bennett. I work at the intersections of
arts, culture, and equitable community development.
On each episode, we talk with a different path breaker who's
forging a new way forward in their community.
Today, we welcome Ketzel Flores. So let's start with where are
you, where are you joining us from and can tell us a little
bit about that that place. Yes.
So I work and live in East Los Angeles.
It's known as East Los Angeles, but, you know, historically
unseated Tonga land and East LA is one of the also historically
redlined areas in Los Angeles and a place in particular that
many immigrant communities could come to and find sanctuary and
find connection and find belonging.
You talk about sanctuary and connection and belonging.
I've I've never been there, but can you describe what's like the
flavor there? How would you describe it for
people that have never been today?
Yeah, I would. I would.
I would describe it as lots of family, lots of language,
particularly now it's Spanish. But like, you know, historically
there were large Japanese American communities, Eastern
European communities, and so there was a lot of languages
happening. It is a site of many rebellions
throughout history. This is where the zoot suitors
came from, or at least you know, in in Los Angeles.
This is where they came from because they were all over the
Southwest and Mexico City as well.
This is where the high school blowouts started in in the 60s.
This is where the Chicano Moratorium happens and Ruben
Salazar gets murdered by the LA sheriff's.
This is where the anti fascist protests led by the Jewish
Baker's Union happened. There's a lot of, there's so
much history and, and credible present.
This is where people are currently responding and
resisting and, and being proactive about refusing
displacement, refusing the process of gentrification and
doing it in ways that have been effective and exemplary in terms
of not only what are the, the, the technical things you do,
what are the legal things you do, but what are the extra legal
things you do? How do you step out-of-the-box
and and build things that become then become a sort of layer of
protection and of space to breathe and reflect and think
and and plan? Yeah, I love that you bring
those different errors and and moments in time up because it's
it's, it's a really a testament of how that community is really
about that action when it comes to maintaining and, and
maintaining culture specifically and the people that are there
and honoring those people and the movements that they've been
able to to build there. I love that.
Yeah. And then and then thinking about
culture, it is because of of what it is.
It's it's incredible and important site of of culture,
production and influence throughout Los Angeles.
One of the reasons we wanted to talk with you today was your
work with the Community Power Collective, and you specifically
are the director of cultural power.
And I think to folks who come out of organizing, to folks who
do this work in the street, that connection is really obvious.
But I think to some of the folks who might be listening, they
might not quite understand what culture has to do with building
community power. So can you help us walk through
the lithograph behind you, the music you've been mentioning,
all of these things that are part of the culture, And why is
that such an essential ingredient about building
community power? Yeah, I grew up in movement.
I grew up parents who were a part of the Chicano movement
were part of even a, a clandestine national Marxist
Leninist organization, cadre organization.
You know, I, I grew up in, in understanding that as normal.
I grew up before being an organizer was a paid job.
It was something you did because you had to do it and you got
involved in the movement because change needed to happen and you
wanted to be a part of that social transformation.
And so you, you did your part. I also, when I was coming of
age, I, I fell in love with music, deeply in love with
music, with playing music with, with composing music, with, you
know, performing music live. And, and so then as, as I
developed that craft and decided that that's what I wanted to do
for, let's say, as my labor practice, it became very
complicated because of the value system of socialism, of Marxism,
you know, and became very confusing because how was I
going to make money off of something that was not
necessarily mine, but belongs to an entire community?
And then as I went along, building that thing and then
going out and touring and doing all those things.
And then you have a lot of time to reflect out there.
And so the question was, are we having the impact we really want
to have with this? And so you're moving from town
to town, you play, you get on stage, you play, you sell merch,
you shake hands, you say hello, you hug people, you say goodbye,
go to the next town. And it's just a business.
And the, it's, it becomes a transactional relationship.
You're, you're building a fan base.
And I wasn't interested in building a fan base.
And I had to ask myself the hard questions 1st to get to that
answer. And so once I could answer that,
then it was like, well, what am I trying to build?
You know what, how am I effectively going to build
movement with culture? And at the same time, there was
this movement of indigenous people in, in Chiapas, Mexico,
that in the early 90s that came out and declared war on the
government of Mexico. And they're called the Sapatista
movement, right? Or the the acronym is EZLN
Mejiasito Sapatista de Liva de. And so the subatista movement
was so inspiring because it was these Mayan Indians were deeply
rooted in their traditions, in their culture, spawning this
postmodern revolution. And it wasn't the the guns and
you know, the warfare wasn't the point.
They quickly retreated from that and then pulled civil society
into a conversation, an important, necessary
conversation around transformation, around
indigenous rides, around questions that up to that point
movements weren't really trying to deal with, and particularly
around gender and, and, and sexuality and so on and so
forth. And so one of the quotes that
really impacted me was when the Mexican media was trying to
discredit one of their spokesperson, they called him
Soup Comanate Marcos. They said, oh, because they wear
they wear ski masks. And so they're like, why do you
hide your identity? You know, And then he would say,
well, if before 1994, you didn't care what we look like, why are
you so concerned now? You know, we hide our identities
just to to make the point that you're asking, right?
And then he says, well, we heard Marcos was a gay from San
Francisco. And then he's pauses and says,
yes, Marcos is a gay from San Francisco and he's a black from
South Africa and he is a a Palestinian in Gaza.
And he is a woman on the night in any major city on the metro.
And he's he just goes on and on. He says he's all the oppressed
people in the world saying enough.
And and that that type of response, that type of
creativity, it was it was poetry.
You know, clearly it was poetry. And so then we started to dig
into like what they were doing and, and then we had an
opportunity to plan in Encuentro, which is like a
retreat, very pointed and, and intentional retreat to get at
some things. And so it was a cultural
Encuentro. And this is the first time that
they were actually engaged around culture because they had
been having these, what they call the international
Encuentro, the intergalactic Encuentro.
But it was largely dominated by like, by dogma and philosophical
conversation around, like, you know, or theoretical
conversation around, like what, what is the meaning of this
movement? And you had all these
intellectuals from all over Mexico and around Latin America
and the world descending upon these indigenous communities.
And, and what we heard was that the indigenous people felt
displaced in these conversations.
And so when we went and we had the Cincuentro about culture,
this is the first time they were centered and their practices
were centered. And we got to get into the
minutiae of these conversations and we were still able to
challenge patriarchal values and and practices in both
communities. We were able to dig into what
Wellness and health means. We got to dig into it to a lot
of these questions. And so each day had a theme and
then there was these sub themes and then there was dialogue
sessions and then there was art making or culture production,
right? And so you had dance and you had
theater and you had mural making, you had graffiti, you
had music. And so then at the end of the
day, we'd all come together and share what we came up with.
And I tell this story because this is where we learned
something that was that has been so important in my practice and
then many people's practice from my generation.
And that is, how do you land your skill set as an artist into
a community space in a way that reignites participation?
That, yeah, genders participation.
Right. And so we learned something
called collective songwriting from a woman named Rosa Martha
Sarathe, who was a former nun who sued the archdiocese for
their gender practices, left the archdiocese and then became this
like, radical organizer here. And, but like, had traveled all
over Latin America and hung out with Ferrari and hung out with
all these revolutionaries in, in across Latin America and then
came back and, and had all these ways of, of doing these things.
And she's a singer also and a, and a, and a guitar player.
And so she taught us how to do this in Chiapas in 1997.
And since that moment it was like, oh, oh, there it is.
And then we knew how to look for the thing after that.
Yeah. And Ketzel, you took some of
those lessons and you landed for a little bit of time with her
friends at the Alliance for California Traditional Arts.
And you were doing some work in Boyle Heights and you were doing
some work in prisons. And yeah, I mean, you were doing
some really amazing work about taking those cultural practices,
those traditions and integrating them.
Yeah. Will you talk to us a little
bit? I mean, Boyle Heights, the, his,
the, the recent history in Boyle Heights around culture and
gentrification. I think it's a really important
case study. Will you just talk a little bit
about that? Sure.
So there was a, an initiative through the California Endowment
called Building Healthy Communities where they were
trying to move the marker on, on the three different areas of, of
health, health in neighborhoods, meaning like, you know, public
space health with prevention, which is largely A clinical
health, and then schools, the third one with schools.
And so they really dug in and said, well, there's something
missing here in this, this framework that you've all built
building holy communities. And, and we think it's culture,
particularly traditional cultures, because these
community specific communities you're working in have
tremendous amounts of culture already active.
So how do we leverage that to be able to build stronger campaigns
and what not, right. And so that was a lot of the
work was getting people used to the idea that culture can be
centered and by centering culture that you can arrive at
very different and deeper impacts than just going for the
linear campaign win, right? That we needed to delineate to
be able to take care of some things I've heard them called,
like the preconditions to be able to be in struggle and be in
movement spaces. And so we placed what we called
artist fellows into these spaces, two of them in each
space. And the artist fellows then
worked with each work group and help them design what we call
cultural interventions, right ways in which we're going to
actually practice the thing that then is going to help us yield
something very different. One of the stories I always tell
that so fascinating was in the clinical health space, you had a
bunch of doctors and attorneys and they weren't, they weren't
trying to do this. And who we placed in that and
that space was Ofelia Sparsa and Rosanna Sparsa.
And Ofelia is at the time was in her 80s and so commands a
certain amount of respect, you know, and, and she is a
recognized culture bearer, altar maker in our community and has
since 1:00 gotten the National Heritage Fellowship, the US
Artist Fellowship and so many other things.
Ophelia is just one of our most important culture bearers in the
East Side. And so Ophelia goes in and
they're like, OK, well, you can do the icebreaker in our
meetings. And Ophelia Anderson were like,
we don't do Ice Breakers. Like, if you want us to hold you
in a process, we can do that, but you have to surrender.
So from that point and that sort of like difficult, intense
moment to, you know, a year later, the biggest opposition to
Ophelia being in that space was a woman attorney named Yvonne.
And so she was the one a year later looking for a failure in
the meeting, saying where is she?
Like, I need to talk to her. I need I need that thing, you
know, And so I came here looking for that because I know that I
can let go here that I can, you know, I don't have to have my
hands up and that I can be held. I'm holding all day.
I need to be held. And so it was a reminder that in
order for us to sustain movement, we all have to engage
in the practice. What's good for community is
good for us as well. And this is what collective
Wellness means. This is what it looks like We
cannot continually put out as organizers, as cultural workers,
as whatever it is and, and not have that reciprocal spiral come
back and touch us and move us and, and keep us connected,
right. And so that was a lot of the
work in in Boyle Heights was cracking open those moments in
those spaces where people can see themselves collectively in
in the mirror and, and say, Oh my gosh, like, you know, let me
say what I need because no one has ever asked me before what I
needed. My pen is like going crazy, you
dropping gems and I'm just trying to catch them.
I want to talk to you about the Community Power Collective.
How what was the founding story there?
How did how did that sort of come to be?
You want me to tell you the truth, or you want me to give
you the? I want it real.
What's the truth? Tell the Tell the truth.
Make the producers nervous. Yeah.
So I was hired by my close friend, Isela Gracian to work
from the, the building Healthy Communities work, but we had an
art and culture work group. And so this is how I got to
really connect with Isela and, and built before like we
actually share birthdays. We just had a birthday, June
4th, happy birthday. And so thank you.
And so she, she's like, I need you to come to work for the East
LA Community Corporation. It's a nonprofit housing
developer, CDC, right? I need you to help us change the
DNA of the organization using practices that you have right
doing the same thing you you've done in the building healthy
community space. I need you to come and do that
inside ELAC you still a community corporation.
We've become stuck is the word she used.
And so they hired me as the director of of cultural
vitality. And my job was to transform the
internal workings of the organization to, you know,
again, crack open these things. First week I borrow a key.
To a cultural space that was empty for years that they were
holding onto. It was just a property.
And then I, I go in there and I look, it's all dusty and kind of
like, OK, what can we do here? You know, kind of just spinning
my wheels. I was the only staff member for,
for a culture vitality at the time.
And so then I keep the key because I'm like, I'm going to
keep coming back. And, you know, spending some
time here and just thinking. And then all of a sudden I'm, I
see the, the person who gave me the key, they were called the
property manager, right? And they say, Hey, where's the
key? And I said, Oh, I have it
because I'm, I'm going to keep going over there.
They're like, well, we have a policy of like, you don't return
the key within three days. I suspend your privileges for,
for 30 days. And I, I thought he was kidding,
but he wasn't kidding. And I was like, oh, he's not
kidding. Oh, so this, this is the vibe.
Oh, this is what's going on here.
OK here, sure. Here's the key, you know, and so
I was like, OK, I got to get to work and, you know, I can go to
the community space and, and imagine later, but I can, I got
to get to work internally here. And, and so we started to, to
just create process. And the thing we did that really
helped us turn the corner was a mural project we brought.
I brought in one of my contemporaries who was in
Chiapas with us, who understood the trajectory, understood the
mission and who had the skill set.
His name is Omar Ramirez. And Omar Ramirez has since come
up with this really beautiful framework called Restorative
Cultural Arts. And he's going to publish
something soon. And so he's he's brilliant.
And Omar, he says, OK, well, let's, let's do a mural project
on panels. And so for a year we went and we
just would meet with different groups of people.
So we met with what were effectively the departments.
And then we started to mix them up, you know, and break apart
the departments and mix, meet with like this person from this
department, that person and put them together because they
didn't like each other, right? And then have them work together
on an, on an actual panel. And so, but what came out of
those discussions was actually a theory of change.
And that theory of change identified that we have been
fixed in a mode of resistance for some time now.
That is, we're responding to injustice.
The powers that be don't care about this response.
There's an uprising, and then there is some sort of paradigm
shift. And then from that paradigm
shift, there is potential for innovation.
But instead of innovating, we go right back to responding to the
next thing. And then we just fixed and.
That sounds so funny and. We're just fixed in the cycle of
resistance, right? This is, this is the world we're
talking about. This is how it's been.
And so at what point do we actually sit in innovation long
enough so that we can spin off into regenerative spirals?
And in those regenerative spirals, we are simultaneously
responding, not reacting, but responding to injustice.
We're responding to all the things.
And we're building the thing that we actually need and want
instead of waiting for it to happen in some system that will
never, ever, ever give us the thing we want, will give us
concessions, but will never give us the thing that we want and
need as a society, as a community.
Socialized healthcare, socialized housing, food, access
to food, education, you know, those basic things that every
human being should have. And so as we got to a beautiful
moment in that organization where I felt like we were going
to take off, there was a financial crisis.
And so this board stepped in and said, we're going to
restructure. And so we know what that means,
right? And so I went to the director of
organizing and I said, OK, Carla, the writing's on the
wall. What are we going to do?
And she's like, I think we need to start our own org.
And I was like, that's what I was thinking.
And so then we started lining up the funders and having really
difficult conversations and saying this is what's happening
and this is what we're going to do.
And they said, we're going with you.
And that's how the Community Power Collective was born.
Interestingly enough, simultaneously through the East
LA Community Corporation, we were able to build a Land Trust.
And at that same moment, the Land Trust was emerging from
that organization and into its own.
And so as we were landing the Community Power Collective, the
Land Trust was landing as well. And so we built a really strong
symbiotic relationship. And that's that's our sister
organization. We share everything.
And you am I right that the center sort of organizes its
work around tenants, around transit riders and around St.
vendors? Is that some of the organizing
framework? Yes.
So the three pillars are exactly what you mentioned.
The three pillars are transit justice, economic justice that
happens through our justice for St.
Vendors work and then it is housing justice.
How do these all sort of coalesce together?
Like how do they, how do they work together in, in, in through
the framework of of that well. When you think about working
people and you think about access and you think about like
basic needs, you know those those things go together.
In Spanish, there's a word olgar, which does not mean like
house, it means home, you know, like the, the right to be able
to have a space where if you, you know, if you have family, if
you don't, whatever it is like that you that you feel safe,
that you feel warm, that you feel protected, that you feel
that you can, you can launch from the nest that you can
launch from. And so then the other part is
like moving about like you, we have to move about the city.
We have to be able to go to work.
We have to be able to do these things.
And so it shouldn't cost people money or fear or terror to be
able to do this, right? People should be able to think
we we already paid for it. Why are we paying for it again?
And so that's the concept. And so learning how to hold
space collectively so that there is safety, right, community
safety plans and what instead of instead of guns and, and, and
violence. And then the last piece is when
they get to work that, that, that that place is a dignified
place, that that work is dignified, that the pay is
dignified, that the benefits are dignified, right?
That they don't have to worry about ice coming in and sweeping
them away, that they don't worry, have to worry about the
cops coming and stealing take taking their merchandise for the
county coming and taking their merchandise and throwing it
away. And all of a sudden they have to
start all over again. And now they're you, they're in
debt. And they're, you know, and we're
not talking about people who are making millions of dollars.
These are people that make, you know, see, OK, this is another
thing is when we talk about like, economy, when we talk
about like, you know, like these different strategies, like, I
don't want to hear the goddamn economist on CNN because that
sucker has gotten us into a lot of trouble.
I want to hear from the street vendor who has raised a family
on $20,000 a year. How the hell did you do that?
Tell me, Tell all of us, because we need to understand.
And I'm not saying it's good or that people should have to do
that, but I'm saying these people are geniuses.
They're brilliant. Requires ingenuity to do that.
And then like, what is the network that you've built to be
able to do this? That's where we need to lean and
that's where the the juicy information is.
And that's how Community Power Collective works is that we sent
her their lived experience, we sent her their stories.
We don't. We don't have all the answers,
but we sure as hell know that without them, like we, we have
no business trying to have these conversations.
You, you said something about breaking that cycle in the loop,
and it made me think about something I once heard Titus
Kafar, he's an artist from Kalamazoo, but he's out in
California doing some amazing, amazing things.
And he was talking about the importance of culture production
and how society's needed because it is the only way that the next
generation will be able to imagine something different.
And without that, that sort of cultural production, without the
ability to imagine, to dream, to create you, you keep getting the
same things because there's no space for the invention of
something new. And So what is or I want to hear
your thoughts on the importance of getting to something new,
something better for people and, and, and absolutely through your
work. But it's that mission to build
power through through all of these different things and
something just that the the next generation can also build upon
but benefit from. One of the traditions that I I
have studied for a long time and and been a participant in is the
Fandango tradition and from Veracruz, Mexico.
Now the Fandango tradition is participatory music, dance and
and singing tradition around a wooden platform.
It is an Afro Mexican tradition. It is this music itself.
The song Carocho is known as the Blues of Mexico because of the
way it has emerged and the way it tells, the way it narrates
story, history, history, on and on.
And so in the Fandango, there are no performers, there are
only participants. Even the last, the in its
concentric circles, even that last circle, which is community
sort of hanging out, eating, having conversation, let's call
it the cell wall. Without that sort of outer wall,
we cannot wield this thing into into friction, right?
And so in that tradition, so you all know La Bamba, correct?
Of course. OK, so La Bamba is from that
tradition. However, they would never say
let's play La Bamba. They would say, let's play a
Bamba because they're very aware that there's not one definitive
version of Bamba, that it is up to the community in those
moments in the present to be able to articulate it however
they need to. And then the verses that are
sung, maybe verses that have never been sung before, the
verses that are sung, the order that they're sung, are
different. And so this is the beauty of
traditional music. This is the beauty of tradition
in general, OK, is that it is dynamic.
It is ever evolving and we have to look at it as such in order
to benefit from it. So I, there's, there's so much
in what you just said and one of the threads that I want to pull
a little bit. And these are some things that
have come up I think consistently across the
conversations we've been having. I don't know if I want to call
them tensions as much as I want to call them twins.
But this sort of the need for traditional knowledge paired
with the need for innovation, right?
We do need some experts, some expertise, the economist, but we
also need to elevate experience, what the micro entrepreneur
who's who's getting by with the family is doing.
There's, you know, and, and sort of traditionally, philanthropy
has a hard time with more than one thing being true at the same
time. And, you know, a project like
yours is often hard for a lot of foundations to get their head
around because there's too much music and painting for someone
who's working on transit justice.
There's too much sort of organizing the street and micro
entrepreneurs for someone who's funding art and culture.
You know, if you were going to sort of talk to philanthropy and
sort of say, here's what I really want you to understand
about this work as it happens on the ground and working in East
LA, what, what's your sort of open mic to philanthropy?
Yeah. I would say, OK, I was doing a
presentation on Son Cairo, Ocho and the Fandango in in a
organization in Seattle. I used to live in Seattle and we
were doing a presentation to be able to gain support from this
organization, to give us space to hold the workshops.
And then the executive director says, asks, can this solve gang
violence? And I was like, no, in, in
isolation, it cannot. Can it be a contributing factor
to giving young people a culturally sustainable space to
participate and to grow and to connect and to feel the warmth
and embrace of community? 100%?
Can that lead to making a difference in their lives?
Can we bring their families into this space to actually confront
dynamics that may be happening? Sure.
Are there resources in this space with people who work in
different sectors that could provide resources to therapy, to
anger management classes, to jobs or job training, or
absolutely 100%? All of that can be found here,
right? But this is how philanthropy
works is like, oh, this thing is going to do this right.
It's going to solve gang violence and that's just not how
it is. What I will say though to them
is that the cultural component and particularly in within how
the community power collective is working, it is an essential
function in the larger scope of organizing.
We cannot ignore the lived cultural experience of community
people. As a matter of fact, we are
doing ourselves a disservice by if we ignore it because the
information that they are bringing, the wisdom that they
are bringing, the cultural wisdom is the foundation for
which we have to build this thing up.
To look at St. vendors and to say oh, micro entrepreneurs,
yes, that is true. And 80% percent of them are
indigenous from Central America and Mexico.
OK, what does that mean? Well, it means a whole lot.
And when you think about what indigenous communities have that
we are missing is exactly that they know each other, they know
their neighbors, they know how to build community.
Communities are are often times moving intact over here and the
networks are intact and the social dynamic is intact.
And so how do, how can we leverage that and build stronger
movement, right? How can we learn from them?
And so without any sort of cultural process practice
conversations around centering culture, we, we can't understand
that we had a, we have a leadership development class or
series called Liverarte and one of our curriculum is corned
beans and squash, a system in equilibrium.
And everybody in the room can relate to that because
everybody's sort of dietary foundation is that that's where
that's where we all come from, right.
And so every meal that is prepared for these sessions is
using those ingredients. So first thing they do is they
eat it and then we talked about it and then they start telling
stories about their grandmothers and their mothers and their
great grandmothers and them as children walking through these
corn fields. Like understanding that
connection to earth, understanding the connection to
culture and land and, and all these amazing things that then
turn into the foundation for a critical analysis of capitalism,
of patriarchy, of white supremacy.
Some systems that are out of balance versus a symbiotic
system that is in perfect balance from the earth roots to
your plate maintain an equilibrium.
And so to them it is fascinating because they understand it in
the deepest way. They embody it literally in our
DNA. We embody that.
And so that's one of the things I would describe.
OK, so I wish this conversation keep going.
I want to keep learning with you and talking with you.
I know we're almost out of time and I can't think of a much
better place to leave it than with the Senoras and with the
three sisters, the corn, beans and squash.
Tracy, what should we do to close up today?
I think we'll do a quick lightning round.
Let's do it. Yes, that sound OK?
Yeah. All right, that sounds great.
These are the real gotcha questions.
What sound reminds you of home? Wow, sorry, it's not that's not
lightning my my child's voice. That's beautiful.
Do you have a favorite tradition within your family?
Oh. For sure, son Harocho, this is
how we gather in the living room.
Amazing favorite street food. Tamales.
Would you take me to go look at a sunrise or a sunset?
Oh, sunset in East LA Boyle Heights is something to marvel.
Beautiful. First song you remember learning
how to play? Oh Harbor Coat by R.E.M.
Awesome. We're recording rather early for
you. Do you have coffee with you, tea
or something else? I get up at about 6:00 AM
everyday. I already had my coffee, I
already had my workout. I'm I'm all juiced up.
Awesome. What keeps you grounded when the
work gets heavy? My music, my instruments, I pick
them up and I play whenever I start to feel tension and my
music has never let me down. After Los Angeles, what's your
favorite city to perform? It's it's a toss up between
Chicago and New York. We'll give you, we'll give you.
I'm a thoroughbred Detroiter, but I love Chicago like I love
that city. What does liberation sound like
for you? Oh, it sounds like the voices of
many, many women singing together, in tune, out of tune,
out of time in time, and still, somehow together.
I love that you've name checked some really amazing folks, some
amazing teachers. Who's one more person who helped
make the path that you're walking today?
My lifelong teacher Lorenzo Martinez, also known as Lencho.
Awesome. Excellent.
Well, kids all, I think this is where we'll leave it for today.
I can't wait to come visit with you in person, walk the streets
together and until then, have a great rest of your day.
Thank you both so much for a beautiful interview.
Ketzel Flores is the director of cultural Power with the
Community Power Collective in Los Angeles, CA.
We've put links to the Community Power Collective and to Ketzel's
music and some of the band's beautiful music videos in our
show. Notes Path Breakers is produced
by the Kresge Foundation, which was founded in 1924 with a
mission to promote human progress.
Today, Kresge works to expand equity and opportunity in
America's cities. Read the stories of all of this
season's Path Breakers and learn about our grant making and
social investing work in Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans,
Fresno, and cities across the US at kresge.org.
To hear more stories from the Path Breakers, be sure to
subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
Our producers are Juliet Hindley and Zach Rosen.
Managing editor is Krista Yankee.
Our show art is by Rochelle Baker and Creative direction by
Alejandro Herrera. And a special thank you to my
colleagues on the Arts and Culture program for lifting up
kids out and speaking his name as a phenomenal path breaker.
We'll talk to you next week.