Chicano was once a term of vicious abuse. These days it's something of a badge of pride for the very people who once suffered under it - the Hispanic population of East Los Angeles. The power of the word began to change for the better in the 1960s - a period of considerable political and cultural activity which saw the growth of the Brown Berets and the Chicano Power movement. It was in this heightened atmosphere that, in 1973, David Hidalgo and three friends formed a group called Los Lobos del Esta de Los Angeles - a very audible sign of reclamation and of a generally increasing awareness of culture and roots.
"Before that, being Chicano was just something I grew up with. What I had learned from the culture was to more to do with my values - the whole family thing and sense of community that we had. It was just the way I lived. But it changed when the Chicano art boom started and we started studying about ancient people in Mexico. It really got everyone interested in our own culture, but still nobody was playing the music. The music had been around, but us being kids, we were listening to The Yardbirds, The Stones, The Animals and to soul music. Black music was really big in the Chicano community - and country music too - but nobody was doing Mexican music. And we were the first guys to do it."
Hidalgo and his friends Cesar Rosas, Louie Perez and Conrad Lozano had already been playing music in the area, but they were beginning to realise that the particular rock era which had initially attracted them was already over. As Hidalgo puts it: "Everybody we were into was either dead or had gone away." And so, simply for something different to do, they began to experiment with Mexican folk music.
"It was like a lark or a joke. We went to Cesar's mother's record collection and learned a few songs so the four of us could serenade our parents for Christmas. We went to each house and played these songs. But the worrying part was that the songs weren't that easy. It took some work and I think that was how we first got hooked. It was a challenge. "There was a ballad singer called Xaxier Solis and he was the sort of Caruso figure. So we learned some of his songs. Another great singer was Miguel Aceves Mejia and he was the falsetto king - real dramatic. It was not as easy or as hokey as we had thought it was." They named themselves after a popular Tex-Mex band called Los Lobos Del Norte and began to rush headlong along what must have seemed like a very lonely road indeed. This was music which had certainly always been in the background, but for young musicians like Hidalgo, was never likely to be popular or profitable. And at this early stage, they were still very much in the excited, exploratory and inexperienced stage. They hadn't yet even addressed the recordings of the various Tejano groups who had already achieved considerable popular success with musical fusions many years before. Back then, the young Los Lobos were still very much in regional territory - and digging very deep indeed.
"We went way back! We went to the jungle first! We got excited about and started getting into the harps, little guitars, fiddles and things made out of armadillos and turtles. People would ask what are you doing that for? Is there a lot of money in it? And no there wasn't. We just did it for the fun of it. "I remember we did a Christmas party for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and we all had long hair and beards and looked more like Canned Heat than a mariachi band! When we began to set up, the old folks started to pack up their gear and leave. But when we started playing some of the old songs, the old folks came back. They listened to us and, when we were done, they came up and started blessing us and kissing us on the cheek. And we thought, man this has never happened before! So from the little kids sliding around on the floor to the old folks crying and giving us blessings - we had connected! We had connected with our roots and that was when we knew we had to go on with it."
Full of zeal, Los Lobos worked their way through their musical heritage and finally made it to Texas where people like Freddy Fender had already explored the possibilities of mixing traditional music with rock 'n' roll. In 1978, they released their debut album - Just Another Band from East L.A - and then one night in an Orange County restaurant they decided to plug in - an act which almost instantly unleashed one of the best live bands California had ever seen.
Surprisingly, it was the LA punks who embraced them most. They signed a record deal with Slash Records which took them well into the 1980s with albums such as How Will the Wolf Survive and By the Light of the Moon. Commercial success peaked with the soundtrack to La Bamba - the film of the life of America's first Chicano rock 'n' roll star, Ritchie Valens. It made No 1 on the Billboard Chart and then, quite typically, Los Lobos followed this huge mainstream success by going straight back to acoustic traditional.
Los Angeles is a city where Spanish predominates on radio. And while it's a city known musically for everyone from the Doors to James Taylor to Snoop Doggy Dogg, the contribution of its vibrant Hispanic side cannot be overestimated. Currently the Chicanos of East LA are expressing themselves within the Banda boom - teenagers dancing to huge orchestras playing Mexican music arranged for brass. It is both new and old school all at once - and typical of the Chicano approach to music. For David Hidalgo, whether it's Ritchie Valens, Xavier Silos or Los Lobos themselves, it's all about connections - and roots.
"I think, early on, we knew we were the only ones doing anything like this, so we accepted the responsibility. We weren't exactly role models because we were trying to get our own lives together - but we knew we had a responsibility to the community. And that was to try to do away with some of these stereotypes and let people know that we're human beings just like the rest of you. But we do have a point of view. As Mexican-Americans we have our take on things, but when you come down to it we'd all fight for our country."
Los Lobos play the Olympia Theatre Dublin tomorrow night.