For the past two years, Los Angeles has been home to the Aztlan Fest, the largest Chicano festival in the country, with a lineup of artists ranging from pop-punk to nu-metal to hip-hop. Now approaching its third installment, a smaller version of which will visit the Valley this weekend, the Los Angeles event spans two stages and a DJ lounge, with a Lollapalooza-like peppering of vendor booths and the Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling) "El Super Pocho Loco Half Time Show," where masked marauders El Hijo del Santo and Misterioso will headline a fight card like few seen north of the border.
Aztlan Fest producer Mario Cobian hopes to expand the mega-spectacle, wrestling and all, to Phoenix and other cities in future years, but for now he's feeling out the viability of such an event by throwing a mini-festival featuring some of the bands performing at the Los Angeles event. "This is our first year in Phoenix and Tucson; we're just barely starting off," he explains apologetically when we express disappointment at the lack of Lucha Libre at the Phoenix festival. "We're just hoping we can get a good turnout and try to build next year."
Logic would seem to predict success for a Chicano-focused event like Aztlan Fest in Phoenix. The Valley's Spanish-speaking and bilingual youth should jump at the chance to embrace their own subcultures, and Anglo aficionados of punk rock and hard-core can broaden their perspectives at the same time. "We definitely cross the lines," Cobian says. "Most of the bands are multiracial; I think they will get a good cross-audience because we have bands like Audio Karate, which usually tends to draw about half-Anglo and half-Chicano crowds, then you have bands like Garrobos from Mexico who are going to draw the more recent immigrant type of crowd. . . . We have bands that sing in English, bands that sing in Spanish, and the genres are different — we've got from alternative to punk to metal."
Headlining the Phoenix date is Union 13, a hard-core outfit from East L.A. that's on über-punk rock label Epitaph Records and likely will draw a substantial gringo audience. Also confirmed on the bill are Garrobos, a thrash-metal band from Mexico City; Audio Karate, Californian pop-punkers who record for the Vandals' Kung Fu Records; and Epidemia, a Modesto outfit that kicks out sociopolitical nu-metal en español. Those frustrated that they can't attend the Los Angeles event, with its 25-plus bands, will have to await the Aztlan Fest 2002 Tour Compilation, soon out on L.A. indie label SourPOP Records.
