It\u2019s a summery, late-afternoon Saturday on the backyard lawn of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, with the kind of warmth and variety of sounds, sights and smells that have defined weekends in many Los Angeles neighborhoods for generations. This one happens to be for a KCRW Summer Nights event headlined by East L.A. soul revivalists the Altons, but the blend of demographics, cultures and backgrounds on display gives it an authentically local feel that could be mistaken for an informal block party in any decade \u2014 except perhaps for the screen printer creating band merch and a design of Snoopy humping an ice cube with an expletive about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n
That same blend of history and cultures that has brought Los Angeles together across generations is also what\u2019s given the Altons their signature sound and made them one of the city\u2019s latest breakout stars. When they go on tour and bring their unique blend of soulful \u201coldies,\u201d modern rock and bilingual R&B around the world, they aren\u2019t just sharing their music but also their culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn any given weekend, you can have some party down the street playing cumbia or music that your parents grew up on, their next door neighbor might have a punk rock show, and another guy down the street that\u2019s just listening to oldies and Art Laboe,\u201d vocalist and guitarist Bryan Ponce explains about the roots of the Altons\u2019 diverse sound stemming from their collective Los Angeles childhoods. \u201cWe all grew up on all of this music that we\u2019d hear in our neighborhoods, so all of our influences just came together and came out in our music.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Altons members Adriana Flores, Caitlin Moss, Bryan Ponce and Joseph Quinones perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes on June 28.<\/p>\n
(Brian Feinzimer \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
For a band that started with modest expectations nearly a decade ago, the Altons now find themselves heading out on international tours and playing to thousands of people at a time \u2014 as they will Saturday when they rock the Oldies 2 Souldies show with Los Lonely Boys at the Greek Theatre. And while their rise has been more of a gradual incline than anything particularly stratospheric, they\u2019ve carved their own path without compromise. They\u2019re willing to fuse genres, languages, tempos and sounds as they see fit and based on what they feel will work best for the songs and messages they\u2019re wanting to deliver instead of catering to what may be popular in the moment, a choice that\u2019s made them the face of the \u201coldies revival\u201d now that millennials and Gen Z are falling back in love with tunes from their grandparents\u2019 day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s incredible to play a show where a grandmother\u2019s there with her daughter and grandkids, and just have multiple generations of people come together,\u201d vocalist Adriana Flores says. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of shows that I would even take my dad to, so I think it makes the music even more special and I\u2019d like to be one of the bands shedding the light on what\u2019s been happening in L.A. We\u2019ve been doing it for years and just sharing the types of music we like \u2014 which is the retro sound of soul mixed with other elements. We like to show people what\u2019s been happening in L.A. that\u2019s not just Hollywood.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Altons\u2019 Adriana Flores and Bryan Ponce perform at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in late June.<\/p>\n
(Brian Feinzimer \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
That desire to show the \u201creal\u201d L.A. that they know and love is a driving force for the Altons, particularly as they go further and further from home. All of them \u2014 Flores and Ponce along with Joseph Quinones on guitar\/backup vocals, Chris Manjarrez on bass, Christian \u201cElyzr\u201d Meraz on keyboards and drummer Caitlin Moss \u2014 are proud to represent their East L.A. roots for those who only see the California that gets presented on television. The group eagerly reminisces about a fan they met at a show in France who had never set foot in California but loved the culture so much that he dressed the part of a classic cholo. \u201cHe looked like he could have been related to me or went to school with me,\u201d Ponce says with a laugh. \u201cHe was bald, he had the Locs on, the Pendleton on and he was screaming our neighborhoods.\u201d They recall the times they\u2019ve felt like cultural ambassadors bringing their hometown heritage to cities like Boston.<\/p>\n
But the self-placed weight of representing and sharing their lifelong culture isn\u2019t always all fun and games. Just a matter of weeks before they were walking through the halls of LA Plaza\u2019s museum to see their brand-new exhibition on the importance of East L.A. musicians, they were on tour in the U.K. feeling helpless as they watched the ICE raids and protests flood the city.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Bryan Ponce and Adriana Flores onstage at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes.<\/p>\n
(Brian Feinzimer \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cYou couldn\u2019t really grasp what was going on,\u201d Ponce says. \u201cI would watch videos and see stuff online, but I didn\u2019t really see it until we came home for a couple of days before we left again. [Manjarrez] and I live close to each other, and we started seeing videos of all these places and stores and people in our community. It was just devastating to have to leave again and see that they\u2019re getting even closer to your house and seeing it happening on your street. You\u2019re trying to go and play music to entertain people, but you\u2019re also trying to find a balance. It\u2019s like \u2018Are we going to speak on what\u2019s going on?\u2019 Because some people thought that L.A. was burning down, and that\u2019s not really the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWatching the community go through something so heartbreaking while being away was really difficult,\u201d Flores adds. \u201cIt was really tough seeing our community being targeted, but I\u2019d like to believe that music and being creative and spreading joy is a form of resistance. I hope that people can come to our shows and escape. Even though this is way bigger than us, we have to use our platform to be vocal about what\u2019s going on. It\u2019s scary times, but another scary time was the \u201860s when the whole civil rights movement was happening, and some of the best music came out of that because people were finding that outlet and creating.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a summery, late-afternoon Saturday on the backyard lawn of LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, with the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":88625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[59403,59405,59407,1582,276,59408,2451,392,59404,46267,2961,224,5337,975,3546,59406,4370,55283,6620,1446],"class_list":{"0":"post-88624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-altons","9":"tag-band-merch","10":"tag-blend","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-chris-manjarrez","14":"tag-city","15":"tag-culture","16":"tag-east-l-a-soul","17":"tag-generation","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-losangeles","21":"tag-music","22":"tag-people","23":"tag-ponce","24":"tag-show","25":"tag-sound","26":"tag-time","27":"tag-tour"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114908238196473240","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}