[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVCeJM4Ios&w=560&h=315]

Back in May I actually had the opportunity to see Alice Bag while she was on tour for her book. I saw her at this small, super punk, record store, Dr. Strange Records. I had just finished reading her book Violence Girl and I remember standing in this crowd of punks, feeling a tiny bit awkward, but experiencing some genuine emotions from the crowd of her loyal fans. Reading the book and seeing her perform live were too quite separate experiences. But it is safe to say that Alice Bag inspired me. With her attitude, the fan loyalty and her punk sensibility she became my definition of what Chicana punk is and what a Chicana punk can be. So much so that I’ve actually written and presented a paper where I compared Bag’s writing in Violence Girl to Cherríe Moraga’s writing in Loving in the War Years, but that’s still a work in progress (it’s actually my senior capstone project for Chicana/o Studies!) and another story in itself.

Anyways, Bag’s performance consisted of her reading a chapter from her book and then playing a song. Each chapter was from a different time of her life; her early years, high school and then the punk era, and the songs corresponded as well. The first chapter she read was “I’m a Barbie Girl.” Everyone laughed at this coming of age moment and then Bag transitioned into her performance. She told us that she was going to do her own “punkchera” of Miguel Aceves Mejía’s “No Soy Monedita de Oro.” She transformed the song and reinterpreted it in her signature style. She has this way of singing where she almost growls, she’s brave, she gives all of herself in the performance. To put it simply, she is punk. The video I posted above is actually of her reading that chapter and preforming the song- see for yourself.

After doing the reading from last week, Josie Méndez-Negrete’s Las Hijas de Juan I noticed that she also makes reference to the song. During her slideshow we heard her sing a couple of lines and she makes direct reference in the book. In the book she writes about it when she is telling us about her sister Felisa. She writes that the song helped to go through some pretty difficult situations and that “for a moment she became a famous singer in the movies. It wasn’t Felisa” (Méndez-Negrete, 112). She lightened the situation some in the presentation by saying that that genre was actually she favorite type of music now, but it still bothered her sister. Alice Bag describes her relationship with music and how what her parents listened to influenced her. Her dad was big on the rancheras in the same way that Méndez-Negrete’s father was and for both of them it seems that this type of music stayed in a specific part of their memory. But both of them transform the songs that held painful memories into songs that had special meanings for themselves. Redefining theses songs could possibly be seen as coming of age moments for the both of them. They are redefining tradition ranchera ballads and adding their own attitude to them both. Davalos and Cantú made this point back when we read about quinceañeras. These two scholars argue that traditions are fluid and I think that Bag and Méndez-Negrete are examples of that idea as well.