Los Many Mundos of raúlrsalinas: un poetic jazz viaje con friends, the first spoken word CD by Xicanindio poet provocateur Raul Salinas is available due to a joint effort by Chicano publishers Calaca Press and Red Salmon Press. Salinas is a 70 year young activist, ex-prisoner and native of Texas whose tough and stunningly vivid poetry chronicles the grass roots struggles of whom Frantz Fanon termed "wretched of the earth."
Los
Many Mundos features the rhythm section of Mikey Figgins
(bass and trumpet) and Kevin Green (drums and piano) -
with a special appearance by Austin's Jazzmanian Devil, saxophonist
Tomás Ramírez - who weave a seamless aural
tapestry for Salinas. The CD contains stunning cover art by Austin
artist Joyce DiBona as well as liner notes by Abel Salas.
Salinas jabs sharp words and punches political syllables with his inimitable precision. His locutions alternately affirm, puncture, caress, regret, profess and prophesy. Salinas, the oracle, has soaked the sweat and history from the porticos of prisons to the alleys of the barrios. His spoken word stirrings expose the collective wounds of the oppressed as a way of salving them. He personalizes the pain and embraces a collaborative salvation.
Salinas' critically acclaimed book of poetry and incendiary letters, East of the Freeway was published in 1995 and reinforced his reputation as a writer with an uncompromising commitment to human rights and social justice. Salinas' legendary poetry collection, Un Trip through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions is considered a Chicano literary classic.
Liner Notes to Los Many
Mundos of raúlrsalinas
by Abel Markos Salas
It is the voice of poetry and politics,
of struggle and song. In the new millenium, in the era of interactive
CD-ROM, raúlrsalinas humbly offers his latest salvo. Leading
a crew of digital warriors, a new crop of literalocos and literatontos
who surf cyberspace with a resilient Chicanismo and an ear to
the ground, he launches yet another free-form enterprise, this
"joint onda" you now hold in your hands.
Born in San Antonio and raised on the streets of East Austin, Salinas has blazed through dungeons while captive, carried banners as a cultural worker alongside students and demonstrators, toured the world as an emissary of the native community and-all the while-heaved stunningly poetic words to the wind. Schooled among the highest echelons of streetspeak and the ultra-hip lexicons of jazz and blues, his earliest mentors were Bird & Diz, Monk, and the Prez. Ultimately, Salinas became one of several acknowledged pioneers, the vanguard of an explosive literary tradition, a granduncle, so to speak, of Chicano literature.
In his first CD, a blistering collection of poetic power backed by the musical prowess of his guests-two of whom tour as the San Diego-based Taco Shop Poets' rhythm section-the internationally renowned poet and activist has merely extended his life's work across a more ample spectrum. Although he now makes his "many mundos" accessible over the broadband, the new limitless terrain of multi-media convergence, raúlrsalinas is still the bad-ass bard who irreverently demeans his epic life in letters by referring to himself as the "cockroach poet."
Long after checking out of the West/Left Coast (La Misión y North Beach) literary scene and making his way homeward to open his own shop, our mentor and friend finds his phoenix blast of post sex(sax)tegenerian vigor. A heroic writer's writer, raúlrsalinas has never professed to be more than a simple bookminder, a compa' from the old school. Yet he has unselfishly imparted an encyclopedic familiarity with jazz and literature and revolutionary ideology in every sweep of the feather duster he uses to keep the shelves at his Resistencia Bookstore clean.
The
floodgates have opened again, and we are the richer for it. First
came his critically-acclaimed East of the Freeway, a 1995 Red
Salmon Press release that marked a return to publishing after
more than a decade-long lull. Even so, we know the gestation period
was far from idle. Dubbed "Maestro" by students and
admirers, Salinas originated the "canto libre" series,
long before "open mic" and "spoken word" became
commonplace references among the literary cognoscenti. He counseled
gang youth, published debut writers and encouraged a new generation
of Chicano scholars. He opened his heart, his mind, his tiendita-libreria
to any and all who came calling. He asked for nothing in return.
As a writer with an uncompromising commitment to the cause of human rights and social justice, "el poeta" leads by example. He was recently featured on the cover of The Austin Chronicle-as much for his role as a grass-roots political statesman as for being the author of incendiary letters. His legendary poetry collection Un Trip Through the Mind Jail y Otras Excursions (Editorial Pocho Che, 1980) has just been re-issued by Arte Público Press (1999) as a kind of Chicano literary classic.
Los Many Mundos" is, as the title tells us, "Un Poetic Jazz Viaje con Friends," it is also the glimmering resonance of relevant language, of images and odes culled from the contemporary musings of a writer who remains more valid now than ever. Salinas chafes. The designation as a "pioneer"-as if he were a '57 Chevy restored to near new vintage polish-sells him short and fails to recognize what becomes apparent upon listening to the material catapulted here from the crest of the digital divide. He knows words and riffs like rugrats today know Nintendo and Sega. And he has embraced the new media as readily as he has taken on the complacency of his peers.
Who, if not Raul, would challenge the neo-liberal corporate multi-nationals that threaten to keep the world's majority in abject poverty? In "We Hafta Shaft NAFTA," the poet unveils them for the monsters they are, again demonstrating an honest concern for human dignity at the dawn of the next century. Backed on bass and trumpet by Mikey Figgins and Kevin P. Green on drums and piano, the disc (with cover art sensitively rendered by friend and frequent collaborator, award-winning visual artist/sculptor Joyce DiBona) is a renewal of the poetic manifesto, el arte comprometido-creativity with a social conscience.
At the same time, it is his own personal antidote to the melancholy nostalgia that often strikes poets and dreamers upon a return to their origins after a lifetime of journey, half a century of viajes and visions. Fueled by wanderlust and an insatiable intellectual curiosity, raúlrsalinas left Austin, at times in chains and at others with a desire to see the world and share in its splendor, a beauty reflected in friendships and alliances, in solidarity with human struggles against aggressors and oppressors.
Who, other than Raul, could correspond and collaborate in earnest with prisonmate Rafael Cancel Miranda, a Puerto Rican Independentista, and, some years later, provide simultaneous translation on a stage in San Antonio for revolutionary Nicaraguan poet-priest Ernesto Cardenal? Who among the cadre of currently vogue "Latino" literary luminaries would travel to Geneva, Switzerland with the International Indian Treaty Council to address the United Nations on behalf of the American Indian Movement activist and political prisoner Leonard Peltier then, some years later, compose "Reel Absurdity," the moving tribute to movie goddess Marylin Monroe found on this CD.
Addressing the loss of a student and camarada to the AIDS epidemic, Maestro personalizes his pain, our pain, with "La Peste Arriveé." The back beat of ritual drum-song provides the embroidered beadwork, chakiras where each word glitters in a tapestry of memory and homage. Family members and musical kinships become icons or eternal archetypes. Tomás Ramírez-appropriately revered in Austin as the Jazzmanian Devil-is immortalized in "Tejazz," a track where the Devil and his sax deliver a gut-wrenching soliloquy that rivals the poem for passion. Keith Ferguson, a "boss" bass madman who could not ultimately cure the illness he shared with the spiritual brother who here pens his elegy, is mourned in a boppin' despedida called "Bass in Yo Face." One of the original Fabulous Thunderbirds, Ferguson was a Texas rythm and blues legend and a tecato who couldn't shake his demons...
Raul Salinas remembers. He remembers the demons well, and he remembers Keith. Fortunately, Salinas healed himself long ago, and, in doing so, helped lead many of us out of our own darkness. Quien más? Who besides raúlrsalinas, aka L'il Roy, aka Tapón, aka Autumn Sun, could go from behind prison walls to university halls, lecturing the children of those who put him behind bars? Who other than the source of these glowing sound waves, the voice that sings to us from the Pine Ridge Lakota Sioux reservation to the jungles of Chiapas with a fervent war cry and a tender plea? Witness the haunting "Amorindio," a poem that bridges his work as an advocate for the International Indian Treaty Council with Xicano/Mexicano/Indígena struggles for autonomy.
Tone and essence, pitch and posture... these are the fundamental formal bearings, the domain of craft and technique. Raul has em' down, doesn't need to hear us regurgitate the de-constructionist jargon or the revisionist literary theoretics. Who, other than the voice on these tracks, could contribute a lifetime collection of letters and archives to Stanford University upon request and then, just a few short years later, hook up with the Taco Shop Poets and Calaca Press, bridging more than just a generation? These are the "many mundos" of raúlrsalinas. His friends behind the scenes, within the poems, across the land can celebrate, can rest assured that there are untold mundos left. Raul is restless and his journey, hence our own, is far from over.
Los Angeles, CalifAztlán
a quince de septiembre del 2000
