Songs of Struggle & Hope

The veteran Mexican singer-guitarist Lira graduated from fieldwork to songwriting in 1965, championing Chicano equality via theatre and music, while growing up in California. His Mexican-tinged songs, sung in Spanish, fare better than the English-language ballads here, which tend towards blandness. The opening ‘Quihubo, Raza’ is a prime cut, with its lively strut, button accordion and percussion. The core Alma trio consists of Lira, Patricia Wells Solórzano on guitar and Ravi Knypstra on upright bass, with all three singing, but some of the best numbers feature one or two guests, strengthening their Chicano style. The first English-language song comes six tracks in, a choice that seems to bring out the smoothness in Lira's repertoire. In these songs, the music is far too cheery and fluffy to be a vehicle for protest. His love song to Solórzano, ‘The Leaf’, is particularly squirmy, and the music for ‘If You’re Homeless’ is lightweight, given the song's subject matter. Lira gets the tone just right on ‘Taps for Coke’, an ode to sugar-intake awareness, which is surely one of the most unusually specific songs ever penned. Some, like ‘The Old Man’, do benefit from a gentler, softer treatment, but this is assuredly not the angry confrontation of much protest songwriting.