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750 Hornby St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H7

Drawing from a myriad of influences—from Mexican tunes from the 1930s to the experimental folk of recent collaborator Devendra Banhart—Y La Bamba ”suffuses their dream pop soundscapes with beguiling cumbia and mariachi rhythms” (Rolling Stone). Their seventh album, Lucha, explores multiplicity—love, queerness, Mexican American and Chicanx identity, family, intimacy, yearning, loneliness—and chronicles a period of struggle and growth for lead vocalist and producer Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos.

At the advent of COVID-19 lockdowns, Mendoza Ramos moved from Portland, Oregon to Mexico City, and in returning to her parents’ home country, she revisited a lineage marred by violence and silence, while simultaneously deepening relationships with loved ones and herself. Full of vulnerability and pathos, it’s a battle cry in the fight to be seen and to be accepted, if not celebrated, as a full self, in anger and compassion, externally and internally, individually and societally.

Lucha is as sonically sprawling and bold as its subject matter. Whether laying spoken word poetry into a minimal, avant-garde soundscape, or building intricate trestles of experimental pop and bossa nova rhythms for their melodic guitar interplay, “Mendoza is becoming a visionary, and her band continues to intrigue as it evolves” (NPR Music).