An Evening with Los Lobos

For all the trailblazing musical acts who’ve emerged from Los Angeles, very few embody the city’s wildly eclectic spirit more wholeheartedly than Los Lobos. Los Lobos has sold millions of records, won prestigious awards and made fans around the world. But perhaps its most lasting impact will be how well its music embodies the idea of America as a cultural melting pot. In it, styles like son jarocho, and norteño, and Tejano, and folk, and country,  and doo-wop,  and soul,  and R&B,  and rock ’n’ roll and punk all come together to create a new sound that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

Early on, Los Lobos enjoyed critical success, winning the Grammy® for Best Mexican-American Performance for “Anselma” from its 1983 EP, And a Time to Dance, and following that a year later with a full-length, major-label debut, How Will the Wolf Survive?  Co-produced by Berlin and T Bone Burnett, the album was a college rock sensation that helped Los Lobos tie with Bruce Springsteen as Rolling Stone’s Artist of the Year. In 1987, the quintet’s cover of Ritchie Valens signature song in La Bamba topped the charts in the U.S. and the U.K. Through the years, they’ve managed to keep things interesting with unexpected side trips like an album of Disney songs in 2009, along with countless contributions to tribute albums and film soundtracks. One of those – “Mariachi Suite” from the 1995 film Desperado­ – earned the band a Grammy® for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.