Gina Chavez and the album Up.Rooted
I have known of and followed Texas-based bilingual singer-songwriter Gina Chavez for over a decade, since we met at a performance at a San Francisco restaurant and the release of her 2014 album “Up.Rooted , which I wrote about in the Hollywood Progressive in 2015, and her song “Maiz” in the Hot Half Dozen. With a career that combines music, philanthropy, and advocacy, she is one of the most remarkable people I have met in 20 years of music writing and broadcasting.
I was recently reminded of Chavez and “Maiz” by a photograph on the cover of a local news magazine depicting Mexican President Claudia holding multi-colored ears of corn to her chest to illustrate her Second Informe – Report to the Nation. It also illustrated the emotional cry of “Maiz”, that corn is the heart and soul of Mexico. I would like to revisit the Up.Rooted album because it speaks to us today and highlights how prescient, intelligent, and musically profound Gina Chavez is.
Rather than write a few lines on every song on the album, because they deserve much more than that, I want to focus on four that especially grab me and are in my Favorites playlist, starting with “Fire Water.”
“Fire Water” is hypnotic. The song is stripped-down and rhythm-led, with Chavez’s remarkable voice at the center, telling you that the fire water can drown your soul. Hand percussion gives the song a ritualistic gospel quality, leaving much of the musical space open; Chavez lets the power of her voice and the push-pull of the percussion carry the song – no lush production needed. It may be less immediately catchy than her brighter, more pop tracks, but it is one of the album’s most distinctive uses of her voice.
Next on my list is “Miles de Millas”. A bilingual, longing cumbia love song, with a steady, dance rhythm and a Spanish hook/earworm, “Te quiero, me pierdo, si tu no estas aqui” It moves you along and makes you feel good, although she is asking, “where are you, my love – 2000 miles away?” A remarkable and very enjoyable combination of Spanish and English, both in the music and the words. Equally remarkable is how it works on two levels, or two dimensions. The cumbia rhythm makes it feel like a party song- let’s all dance. But Chavez sings from a more personal point of view, turning travel and distance into a metaphor for dislocation and a search for connection – as if no matter what is going on in the rhythm dimension room, she is alone in the vocal dimension next door. Uncanny. Beautiful.
“Like An 1nimal” grabbed me because she uses music explicitly to drive a moral message: people pay more attention to a dog across the street than to a man starving on the street in front of them. It evolves into words about inequality and how it causes suffering. It moves with deep, Middle Eastern drumming and an Arabic chorus. The Tosca Strings that back her up give it a depth that reaches from your ears to your heart – and says this is important. The cinematic feel the Strings deliver the message with a power that a Latin beat or Spanish pop would miss. A beautiful, important, powerful song with an emotional gravity that creates unity between the song’s humane plea and its uncomfortable subject matter.
Finally, there is my very favorite, “Maiz” – “Corn”. Now that I live in Mexico, I understand the central role of corn in Mexican culture. It is all around me in tortillas, masa, fields along country roads and major highways, even in people’s front yards. Corn originated in Mexico and is part of Mexico’s history and self-image. As a resident, I understand her line “For centuries you have sustained our being”, and, as a political scientist, I understand her line I arrived in ninety-four and you went running- she is singing about the 1994 NAFTA agreement, which allowed subsidized corn into Mexico, throwing an estimated 1.3 – 2 million small farmers and corn workers out of work – and over 6000,000 of them immigrating to the US to make a living.
She is singing of a national tragedy, and thousands upon thousands of personal tragedies, of people forced to leave their roots, their homelands, their families, their language and culture so corporate agriculture could get even richer. Musically, it is powerful and haunting. The song is mournful but not passive: Chavez’s vocal delivery turns grief into dignity and persistence. It is not a “protest song” nor even a lamentation, although these elements are there. It is a musical call to action using metaphor and her voice that carries both tragedy and dignity.
It strikes as relevant today as it was in 2014. Mexico is again locked in negotiations with its powerful northern neighbor, and corn is on the negotiating table, this time over the issue of GMA corn. Mexico tried to ban GMA corn imports and lost in a trade mediation panel, but still forbids growing GMA corn in Mexico. Big Ag and Big Chem are pressuring Mexico to give in – destroying the last vestige of Mexico’s corn heritage, which makes “Maiz”’ s message even more urgent. And ICE is rounding up and deporting the farmers that NAFTA forced to immigrate when they could not sell their corn.
Up.Rooted was released in 2014, and she released “La Que Manda” and “She Persisted” in 2020 and continues to perform onstage, including at MeadowFest in Austin on August 29, combining live performances with advocacy and community work. She also co-founded the Niñas Arriba College Fund with her wife Jodi Granado, a scholarship organization that helps young women in El Salvador with tuition, housing, food, transportation, and paid internships. A most remarkable artist and human being.
Patrick O’Heffernan