Maldita Vecindad y Los Hijos del Quinto Patio, one of the best rock en español bands of the past 30 years, filled the lawn of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center with fans from around Southern California and beyond.

I always look (forward) to seeing Maldita,” said Gabriel Gallardo, who attended the Tecate Light-sponsored performance. “The jazzy trumpets, Latin up-tempo percussions and funky rhythms will surely inject you with a dose of joy that will make you dance till you drop.”

Gallardo,33, has been attending Maldita performances since the early 90s, when rock en español was virtually an unknown genre in Southern California. In fact, it was Gallardo who turned me on to the group, when we were classmates at Banning High School in Wilmington.

I especially love the lyrics that mainly manifest a much-needed sense of unity, peace and celebration,” Gallardo said. “That is their main goal every time they play, to celebrate life, baby.”

I got acquainted with rock in Spanish through a 5-year experience in Mexico, where my father took me in my early youth to live so that I could improve my Spanish language skills and gain a better awareness of my culture. While there, I bore witness to the huge disparities in social-economic classes and the government corruption that continues to this day.

So,when Gallardo loaned me a tape with Maldita Vecindad’s music, its lyrics and rhythms spoke to me. Maldita has a way of marrying the harsh reality of poverty and injustice with the beauty of its people and traditions.

Conceived in 1985, the band’s name is a perfect example of that union. Maldita Vecindad means damned neighborhood akin to housing projects in Spanish, and Los Hijos del Quinto Patio, which means the sons of the fifth patio evokes “Quinto Patio,” a 1950s song composed by Luis Arcaraz and interpreted by Emilio Tuero about a poor man, in love with woman who he sings, “For living in the fifth patio, you reject my love.”

Early songs such as “Solín,” “El Circo” (The Circus) and “Don Palabaras” (Mister Words) carried on the tradition of romance in a culture of poverty, describing the struggle of the working class in countries such as Mexico, where children and elders often become street performers to survive. Other songs such as “Poco de Sangre” (Bit of Blood)” call to mind the apathy and inequality of rich versus poor in societies where death is often a result of negligence by those in power.

Music is a vehicle,” said Roco, the band’s lead singer to Random Lengths News during the pre-show press conference. “[Our music] is based on day-to-day life. We’ve always spoken about these important aspects.”

Autos,fashion and rock ’n’ roll definitely is not what we are about,” interjected Aldo Acuña, the group’s bassist. The band continues to drive these messages about political, social and economic crises, particularly in Mexico, through their newest and independent album, Circular Colectivo (Circular Collective).

De Sur a Sur” (From South to South), for example, takes on the band’s views on immigration in lyrics that include, “Yo no crucé la frontera, la frontera me cruzó a mí.” (“I did not cross the border, the border crossed me.”)

[Hope] for a world [where] bridges won’t serve as barriers, but where people can be united through a free exchange,” Roco told its Long Beach audience in Spanish.

The band considers this album a symbol of universal unity and homage to the circle of life. For me, the title of the album also evokes a sense of the tribal, and even the spiritual, a connection often bound within mosh pit circles, where rock en español enthusiasts dance in circular motion, often bouncing and bumping with other dancers to the beat of the music.

We are reinventing ourselves,” said Roco. “One of the ways we are doing this is though incorporating corridas [story ballads] and norteña [northern Mexican genre] music, telling stories (and having fun) without leaving aside what’s important.”

Corrido para Digna Ochoa,” does just that, combining techno rhythms with traditional corrido music and ska to tell the story of Digna Ochoa y Plácido, a human rights activist and lawyer killed Oct. 19, 2001. She’d been representing indigenous people and ecologists at the Miguel Agustín Pro Juarez Human Rights Center in Mexico City, documenting and denouncing the army’s takeover of rural policing for counter-insurgency purposes, often highlighting the illegal influence of economic interests over the criminal justice system to target social activists. After several death threats to her and her colleagues, she was found shot in her office. The government officially reported her death a suicide.

Obviously,nobody believes that to be true,” Pato, the band’s guitarist, said.

El País de No Pasa Nada” (The Country of Nothing is Happening) calls for the end of government cover-ups and corruption, and attempts awaken listeners from complacency.

A poetic fusion of punk, ska, eclectic vibes and traditional Mexican rhythms drowned out the buzzing resonance of race cars swarming through Shoreline Village on April 16, the first evening of the 2010 Toyota Grand Prix.

Maldita Vecindad y Los Hijos del Quinto Patio, one of the best rock en español bands of the past 30 years, filled the lawn of the Long Beach Performing Arts Center with fans from around Southern California and beyond.

I always look (forward) to seeing Maldita,” said Gabriel Gallardo, who attended the Tecate Light-sponsored performance. “The jazzy trumpets, Latin up-tempo percussions and funky rhythms will surely inject you with a dose of joy that will make you dance till you drop.”

Gallardo,33, has been attending Maldita performances since the early 90s, when rock en español was virtually an unknown genre in Southern California. In fact, it was Gallardo who turned me on to the group, when we were classmates at Banning High School in Wilmington.

I especially love the lyrics that mainly manifest a much-needed sense of unity, peace and celebration,” Gallardo said. “That is their main goal every time they play, to celebrate life, baby.”

I got acquainted with rock in Spanish through a 5-year experience in Mexico, where my father took me in my early youth to live so that I could improve my Spanish language skills and gain a better awareness of my culture. While there, I bore witness to the huge disparities in social-economic classes and the government that continues to this day.

So,when Gallardo loaned me a tape with Maldita Vecindad’s music, its lyrics and rhythms spoke to me. Maldita has a way of marrying the harsh reality of poverty and injustice with the beauty of its people and traditions.

Conceived in 1985, the band’s name is a perfect example of that union. Maldita Vecindad means damned neighborhood akin to housing projects in Spanish, and Los Hijos del Quinto Patio, which means the sons of the fifth patio evokes “Quinto Patio,” a 1950s song composed by Luis Arcaraz and interpreted by Emilio Tuero about a poor man, in love with woman who he sings, “For living in the fifth patio, you reject my love.”

Early songs such as “Solín,” “El Circo” (The Circus) and “Don Palabaras” (Mister Words) carried on the tradition of romance in a culture of poverty, describing the struggle of the working class in countries such as Mexico, where children and elders often become street performers to survive. Other songs such as “Poco de

Sangre” (Bit of Blood)” call to mind the apathy and inequality of rich versus poor in societies where death is often a result of negligence by those in power.

Music is a vehicle,” said Roco, the band’s lead singer to Random Lengths News during the pre-show press conference. “[Our music] is based on day-to-day life. We’ve always spoken about these important aspects.”

Autos,fashion and rock ’n’ roll definitely is not what we are about,” interjected Aldo Acuña, the group’s bassist. The band continues to drive these messages about political, social and economic crises, particularly in Mexico, through their newest and independent album,Circular Colectivo (Circular Collective).

De Sur a Sur” (From South to South), for example, takes on the band’s views on immigration in lyrics that include, “Yo no crucé la frontera, la frontera me cruzó a mí.” (“I did not cross the border, the border crossed me.”)

[Hope] for a world [where] bridges won’t serve as barriers, but where people can be united through a free exchange,” Roco told its Long Beach audience in Spanish.

The band considers this album a symbol of universal unity and homage to the circle of life. For me, the title of the album also evokes a sense of the tribal, and even the spiritual, a connection often bound within mosh pit circles, where rock en español enthusiasts dance in circular motion, often bouncing and bumping with other dancers to the beat of the music.

We are reinventing ourselves,” said Roco. “One of the ways we are doing this is though incorporating corridas [story ballads] and norteña [northern Mexican genre] music, telling stories (and having fun) without leaving aside what’s important.”

Corrido para Digna Ochoa,” does just that, combining techno rhythms with traditional corrido music and ska to tell the story of Digna Ochoa y Plácido, a human rights activist and lawyer killed Oct. 19, 2001. She’d been representing indigenous people and ecologists at the Miguel Agustín Pro Juarez Human Rights Center in Mexico City, documenting and denouncing the army’s takeover of rural policing for counter-insurgency purposes, often highlighting the illegal influence of economic interests over the criminal justice system to target social activists. After several death threats to her and her colleagues, she was found shot in her office. The government officially reported her death a suicide.

Obviously,nobody believes that to be true,” Pato, the band’s guitarist, said.

El País de No Pasa Nada” (The Country of Nothing is Happening) calls for the end of government cover-ups and corruption, and attempts awaken listeners from complacency. While their songs have yet to directly tackle the rise of drug cartels in Mexico, Maldita decried the massive loss of innocent civilians in the ongoing war between the cartels and the government during the press conference before their performance.

[The government] entered this war without asking anyone,” said Roco about the violence and resulting deaths in the country. “Forget about fighting death against death, all the money that is being spent should be invested on life. All this money is going to the trash and innocent people are dying.

Drug cartels have not diminished, addiction has not diminished; it’s a global issue … this is not a new problem. The options [to deal with the problem] still are there.”

The money spent on militarizing the country in a lost war should go toward education, health, housing and human rights, Roco said. Another one of these options is embracing youth, rather than treating them as criminals, Acuña and Roco said. And, that is something Maldita has continued to find success in, said Cal State Northridge graduate student of history Jorge Leal.

Itis a socially conscious message that you still don’t get from pop bands,” said Leal, who recently took on compiling a historical archive of rock en español in Los Angeles. “There is a sense of empowerment that a band that spoke to the youth still can speak to the youth today. This music genre has been able to bring conversation with other people of Latin America and also Latinos from different generations here in the (United States).”

Maldita continues to breach the generational gaps as they did with earlier fun songs such as "Pachuco,” a tribute to the zoot-suit era parents and punk-ska loving children. Now they do so with their song “Fut Callejero” (Street Soccer), a game that seems to cross class disparities in Latino America.

Although many rock en español groups of the early 1990s are often considered to have “sold out” to the mainstream, there still are many groups emerging with diverse messages, here in Southern California, Leal said.

The interesting thing in rock en español is that it grew so big that you no longer have to worry about being political,” Leal said. “There is no longer one single genre.”

East Los Angeles’ La Resistencia, Mata Mosca and Viernes 13 are among some of the groups putting their own spin on urban rock. Roco agrees.

Mexican rock is going toward a great diversity; a great vitality,” he said.

Thereafter,the band stepped onto the center stage with a performance that had its audience bouncing,singing and uniting in a ritual of folkloric modernity and existential release.