Prototype Issue
Breakthrough Artist Lysa Flores Breaks It Down
By Mandalit delBarco
(page 1 of 1)An East LA state of mind sheds light on music generated in the heart of the city.
Lysa Flores likes to say she’s “pura Chicana,” born and raised in East LA. A bilingual, bicultural daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, she glides inventively across musical borders. As a soulful singer-songwriter who helped pioneer the Chicano alternative and punk scenes, she sings about being a woman, a Mexican-American one at that, living the American experience. In her tough-minded way she shuns the traditional Latina model for something more authentic and locally compelling—or as she puts it, “what’s really happening” to those striving to live the American Dream.
Flores runs her own record label, Bring Your Love, which released her first folk-punk album, Tree of Hope, in 1998 and The Making of a Trophy Grrrrl. Her newest CD Immigrant Daughter features her musical heroes, David Hidalgo from Los Lobos, John Doe of X , Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers, Flaco Jimenez and more. For the past decade, she’s explored a more playful side, touring the world as an Elvette—singing in wild outfits to accompany the campy, political performance artist El Vez, the Chicano Elvis. For those shows, she becomes “Lysa Marie.”
Lysa also starred in and produced the soundtrack for the 1997 independent film Star Maps. As an actress, she appeared in the films Menace and White Oleander and was a recurring guest star on the telenovela Reyes y Rey. She was also the lead for a Hollywood theater production of The Furthest Room, a play based on her songs.
She lives in Los Feliz with her fiancé Ian Brennan, a musician, producer and violence prevention teacher, and their two dogs.
How did you get started as an Elvette? The Elvettes thing started nine years ago. I had just finished filming Star Maps and had been performing a lot as a soloist around town. I was also performing with El Vez in the same venues and same nights. I got a call from his manager, saying, “We are going to offer you three months in Europe, and it’s just one great big vacation. We’ll fit you for your outfits. We’ll pay you every day. You get per diems. It’s going to be all over Germany, France, Spain. You’ll have a wonderful time.”
I had just finished all this work and was at this place where I needed to get away, so I said yes. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. My entire upbringing had been like this serious girl. I always thought I was this tomboy. I was so serious with my guitar, and I would stand there and sing this song for you. Then all of the sudden, I’m flying to Germany and I have only one rehearsal with El Vez. I had to learn the rest of the material with the other new Elvettes. Suddenly, we’re in Germany playing to thousands of people and wearing the outfits for the first time.
In the very first show we had five costume changes in total for the Elvettes, while El Vez, I think, had 12. Totally ridiculous and it blew my mind. I just can’t even tell you what it did to me as a person, as a performer, as a woman. It was the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to me during that period, because I was 22 years old and all of the sudden I was this personality. In Europe they thought I really was an Elvette; that I woke up in the morning and had pigtails and platforms and I was this persona.
We would do interviews at 9 o’clock in the morning or be on MTV or VH1 or whatever and we would have to be in our full gear and playing these parts. I felt like I was totally compromising myself as a person, as a performer. I started getting more emotional. By the second month I was crying. I didn’t know whether I was doing the right thing. Three months turned into almost an entire year with back-to-back performances. I think I saw my family like six days out of the year.
I quit the first time after that year because Star Maps had gotten bought and I had to come back and do music work on it and other stuff. Then I would be in an elevator and I’d hear a song, and I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s the musical reference that El Vez put into Blue Suede Shoes and David Bowie is in there and T. Rex and God knows what else.” So I’m constantly amazed by his capacity to infuse all these different musical references. And the political Chicana references are just absolutely amazing.
So I went through this process where once I realized this is so much more than just this act. There’s so much more that’s being said, and people are understanding it. I began appreciating what we were saying and relating. I got to understand this is so much bigger than anything that I ever imagined. So I’ve been performing with him on and off now for about nine years and having such a wonderful time. If you go to an El Vez show, it’s like rock ’n’ roll 101 plus Chicana 101. It’s all that and a little bit of singing and dancing.
You’ve been described as a Chicana alternative with some punk roots. What were your influences? The strangest part of my musical upbringing was that my parents did not listen to music in our home. I cannot remember my father liking a song or playing a song. My earliest memory of my mother playing music was a Donna Summer eight track. She also had a Van Halen eight track and a Roy Orbison eight track. So those are three entirely different musical styles. The only one I really remember her playing as I got older was Roy Orbison. There’s this beauty in his songs, and he’s almost like a Mariachi singer.
Like when he was going for the crying and other stuff. He is so dramatic and just over the top. I can see why my mother was so into him as a performer. But I really was not raised with any music at all in the house. My older brother started listening to punk rock music. Friends of his would make him these punk rock compilations. So that’s basically the first music that I started listening to and really understanding that these were artists. This is who these people are.
Then I got this weird Prince fascination. I think that I saw an article in the [Los Angeles Times] Calendar in 1983 or ’84 around the release of Purple Rain. I was so fascinated by him. “Whoa, what is this? This is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.” I begged my mother for something, and she got me the Prince record that had him riding this Pegasus or something ridiculous, and he’s naked.
Eventually, we got a boom box and started listening to the radio. It was 96.90 out of Tijuana, and they played a combination of new wave and punk. Then it became more pop. I remember listening to that station a lot. Those were my early influences.
It wasn’t until I checked out a Joni Mitchell cassette at the library that I was opened to the whole folk experience and I really got into listening to folk music. That was the first music that I truly embraced and wanted to know more about. So my influences are totally strange.
You were born and raised in East LA. Talk about its influence on your life and music. I think its less about growing up in East LA and more about being in a household of second generation Mexican Americans. My mother decided to become a U.S. citizen, and my father decided that he didn’t want to deal with becoming a citizen. I think that when I talk about East LA or talk about being Mexican American or Chicana, its about finding my identity here as an American. How much do I hold on to and how much do I let go?
Are you bilingual? I’m definitely bilingual. When my mother came to this country she was 12 years old and went to Garfield [High School]. She did really well in school and got a scholarship to continue on to college but decided not to and ended up having five children and a whole other life instead. So with them, we would speak predominately in English, and with my grandparents in Spanish. But when I get in the presence of Cubanos or Puertorriqueños we’d start talking, and I was like, “I have to brush up on Espanol for sure”
A lot of your music is very personal and about being a woman and sometimes even about being a Latina woman. Do you think there’s not enough said about it? I do. I used to feel like it’s going to get taken care of. Someone’s going to do this. Someone’s going to sing about these issues and people are going to be enlightened to what the experience is really about. Unfortunately, I haven’t really seen too much of that, even though there are a lot more Latino pop stars or rock stars. I don’t feel that the experiences are really being conveyed. It’s kind of like the same traditional pop format song but being sung by a Latino.
I don’t mean to degrade it, because, of course, being Latino it brings other musical references. But I don’t necessarily feel that it attacks a lot of the real issues that for me are important. So I’ve recently found myself writing a lot more about being Mexican-American and being really straightforward with my point of view and saying, “I’m a Latina and this is how we feel.”
You talk about the attacks on immigrants right now and an anti-immigrant sentiment that’s out there. What other ideas are you exploring in your music? In some ways we want to say that we have been so progressive, but if you watch television but had the volume off, you see an entirely different thing. There’s just so much more exploitation and so much more compromise. It doesn’t really feel progressive. It’s the same kind of the thing for the Latino experience.
I was channel surfing, and Bill O’Reilly was talking about these aliens jumping the border. And I think he showed the exact same person, in a 20-minute segment, jumping over, like, four times. It gives us the illusion, like, “They’re invading. Look, look at this.”
I was sitting there so pissed off, and I’m thinking, “Where is this being broadcasted to?” People that don’t interact with Latinos and don’t understand the Southern California workforce, the existence of Latinos throughout time. I’ve gotten older it makes me a little bit more angry. And I feel more of a responsibility to talk about it in the context of my music.
What song tells the most about you? On the first record, Tree of Hope, it was this song entitled “Mom’s Song”, because it was a specific recounting of my mother finding out that my father had cheated on her. They had been married at that point for 22 years. It’s the most personal to me because it tells of her decline, sleeping in the hallway and dissolving into the furthest room, trying to keep her mind off of him. It really defined a huge period in my life. It was by telling my mother’s story and doing it in a bilingual fashion that made it a kind of mother-daughter thing.
My songs are about the American experience. It is being two different things and existing as one but being able to take from my Mexican side and take from my American side and produce something organic and beautiful, something viable and profound and just beautiful. For me being Chicana means being beautiful and being a part of this country. You couldn’t describe the United States without really and truly embracing what Chicanos have done for this country. Chicanas. Chicanas. Chicanas.
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