October 2009 Archives

The assimilation of Gustavo Dudamel is playing well on the red carpet. Walking into Disney Hall Thursday night, Quincy Jones told me Dudamel reminds him of a young Leonard Bernstein. Andy Garcia said he's proud Dudamel's Hispanic but loves him for being a great conductor. Angela Bassett said she admires his humility and "of the earth" background. And Eli Broad gushed, "He's brought young people together, he's brought the Latino community together, he's brought us all together." And you know that Broad with his billions in philanthropy has as much power to anoint and legitimize as anyone in Los Angeles.

Gustavo Dudamel's Simon Bolivar- tinged declaration on Saturday opened the door even wider. Several on the red carpet repeated his words. Remember Dudamel said he's proud to be Venezuelan, Latino and American. And the echo of those words appears to be in a pinball machine bounce off the Hollywood Hills, the San Gabriel Mountains down to the Anaheim Hills.

But can we consider this list: Salma Hayek, Robert Graham, Gustavo Dudamel, Lupillo Rivera, George Lopez, Julieta Venegas. All are accomplished artists or performers, all either Latin American-born or Mexican American, and all at various stages of personal assimilation and mainstream acceptance. I suppose Lupillo Rivera is the one who sticks out the most. Is it because banda music remains on the fringes of American mainstream culture? When will it join zydeco? When do we wear our foreign nationalism proudly and when do we couch it in larger multi-ethnic terms? When is it OK to be Mexican first? How do the doors of mainstream acceptance open and close depending on how you express your national identity?

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The end is near. That's what my senses told me Sunday at Chavez Ravine. The cool air fluttered the flags to the east. The Santa Ana winds retreated to hibernation. Many of the seats on the west side of the stadium were in the shade. No sizzling sunburns on this day. The zig-zag canopy shading the top deck created a moon-curve shadow on the field below, just a few feet from the pitcher's mound.

The one o'clock game felt more like a late afternoon, early evening game. The top row in Reserve 14, above first base, had a tail wind from the ocean. Clouds form above the shark-tooth ridge of the San Gabriel Mountains. The winds and the clouds remind us that the coming winter rains will wash away the sins of summer. The trees in the hills where the parking lot ends plead for rain. Maybe the houses from 50 years ago left some roots. Maybe the trees think that with some water the neighborhood will return, and the kids will climb their branches.

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The Dude clinched it! And he did it an hour before our boys in Chavez Ravine.

Really, Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Philharmonic brought the house down Saturday night. He did it while conducting more than a hundred South L.A. students who'd feverishly rehearsed Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" this summer through the L.A. Phil's new youth orchestra program. The performance wasn't up to par to the discriminating classical music ear but it was a great achievement given the cards they were dealt. And it was a seed planted in the arid working-class flatlands.

Dudamel had us 18 thousand people in his pocket leading the white-tuxed L.A. Phil musicians in Beethoven's 9th Symphony. The composition is a plea to leave divisions and to embrace thy neighbor in brotherly love. It sounds to me like the composer's last gasp, knowing the end is near, and calling out what's important.

And did I tell you the Bowl's closest seats, the Pool Circle, the seats usually occupied by the crema y nata de la sociedad, nestled students' family members?

It was an unusual concert night at the Hollywood Bowl in several other respects, from the Mexican cowboy hats, yellow-blue-red Venezuelan shirts and hats, and a kaleidoscope of Spanish accents that joined French, Russian, and Armenian hovering toward the brush in the Hollywood Hills arm in arm.

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