Los Cenzontles: ‘Valor Latino’

The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.

Eugene Rodriguez wants to change the narrative of Latino storytelling in the media.

“To be proud of being anything in life … it shouldn’t be predicated on whether you’re rich,” he said. “It should be predicated on what you contribute.”

Often, there’s an overemphasis on people with white-collar jobs, he said. “If you’re a custodian or you’re a landscaper, these are also super important jobs.”

Rodriguez is the founder and director of Los Cenzontles, a nonprofit organization and band.

The song ‘Valor Latino’ celebrates the many contributions Latinos bring to the United States. Rodriguez said he also wants “to challenge Latinos, to have the courage, the valor, to represent ourselves and to speak up for our interests.”

Cenzontle means ‘mockingbird’ in Spanish, and the nonprofit explores music with Mexican roots. He founded the group because of a personal need for connection. In 1987, after graduating from music school, he had a child who died in surgery. During that same time, his wife was going through cancer treatments, he said.

“I didn’t have the heart to try to enter into a professional music career,” he said. Los Cenzontles provided “a much more meaningful way to make music” and “create a community of people.”

Rodriguez said he had always felt a connection between love and music ever since his first memories of his father playing guitar for him when he was about four years old. “He used to sing folk songs,” he said.

The band will be performing at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco on Aug. 23. The event is also a celebration of the Rodriquez’s new memoir, ‘Bird of Four Hundred Voices: A Mexican American Memoir of Music and Belonging.’