Latin Music USA: The Chicano Wave

Director: John J. Valadez
Category: Music; Ethnic Diversities
Total Running Time: 56 min.
Release Date: 2009
Website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/latinmusicusa

Awards

IDA Documentary Awards: Limited Series Award--Nomination

Synopsis

Latin Music USA: The Chicano Wave presents a fresh take on America’s musical heritage, reaching across decades and across musical genres to portray the rich mix of sounds created by Latinos and embraced by millions. In Latin Music USA: The Chicano Wave, Mexican-Americans in California, Texas and across the Southwest create their own distinct musical voices during the second half of the 20th century. Their music played an important role in the struggle for Chicano civil rights. An entertaining look at the lively voice of Mexican-Americans.

Most American music is a synthesis of many different styles and cultures; Latin Music USA: The Chicano Wave shows how one particular community—Chicanos in the Southwest—forged their own style of music that is, in the end, uniquely American.

Trailer

About the Filmmaker

JOHN J. VALADEZ has been producing and directing award-winning nationally broadcast documentaries for PBS and CNN for the past 14 years. He directed the critically acclaimed Passin' It On, about a former leader of the Black Panther Party who was falsely imprisoned for 19 years, for the PBS series POV. His most recent film, The Last Conquistador, aired in 2008 on POV. Other films include the first hour of the four-hour PBS series Making Peace and The Divide, which was the first hour of the nationally broadcast PBS series Matters of Race. Valadez was a producer for Visiones: Latino Arts and Culture for PBS and was producer and director for High Stakes Testing, an hour-long investigative documentary about the Bush Administration's controversial education policies and their impact on American children for the primetime documentary series CNN Presents. Valadez has twice been a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, is a Rockefeller Fellow, a PBS/CPB Producers Academy Fellow and a founding member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP).