I. They aren’t–and don’t need to be–labeled by industry standards.

When I first sat down with Quetzal Flores, he told me something that reframed how I thought of genre and identity within music: “We're not a genre as much as we are a reflection of these experiences—of what our community goes through, what we love, what we aspire for.”

This October, that reflection will take the stage at The Ford with Labor of Love, a concert celebrating the solidarity formed between cross-cultural identities within labor movements and socio-political missions. Headlining are Joe Bataan, the “King of Latin Soul,” and Quetzal, the Grammy-winning Chicanx band that has spent over 30 years creating music that refuses to be contained by industry definitions. Hosting the evening is Faith Santilla, a poet and organizer, whose work has always existed at the intersection of art and activism, along with January, who will be DJ’ing at the show. 

Over several conversations, I learned that for these artists, music isn't just about performance—it's about showing up.

II. “We Choose Each Other”

Quetzal—the band—consists of seven core members. The longest-standing members are Dr. Martha Gonzalez, her partner Quetzal Flores, Tylana Enomoto, and Juan Perez. They've been making music together for three decades. Quetzal and Martha grew up in intersecting worlds—he was a Chicano with organizing in his blood, she was a daughter of Mexican immigrants who became Chicana through education and community. Together, they've built not just a band, but a family and a movement.

Quetzal's parents were Chicano organizers; activism was the air he breathed growing up and that ethic of service runs through everything the band does. Musically, his inspirations span continents and struggles: Richie Valens, who made Mexican music affirming for Brown people in the Southwest during Operation Wetback; Los Lobos, who showed him how to hold up a mirror to community; Black music—from gospel to rock and roll—as expressions of resistance and rehumanization; and even British punk from Manchester, where Irish immigrants and working-class communities organized against oppression. “Chicano music cannot be understood as a genre,” he tells me. “It is a social, cultural, and political experience.”

But unlike the typical band narrative—a group locked in forever, bound by contract and ego—Quetzal operates more like a community. Members participate based on life's demands. “We're family, we love each other, we argue, we agree and disagree, we support each other,” Quetzal tells me. “We throw down for each other whenever things get hard. We call each other in, and in the end, we love, love, love playing music together.”

All members work in the community; Tylana is a trauma therapist, Juan facilitates prison reentry programs, and Quetzal organizes many nonprofits. Martha Gonzalez is an associate professor at Scripps College. Tylana is currently on tour with Jazz Is Dead. Their work in community and cultural development astonished me. After meeting Martha, Faith, and Quetzal, I walked out wholeheartedly inspired by their work ethic, driven by love.

“We're not a marriage,” Martha explains. “We're a community of musicians who get together when we want to. And then we disperse and do other things with other people, and that's okay. It's not cheating on the band. We don't own people.”

This philosophy extends beyond the band itself. Quetzal has developed methodologies for songwriting in community, practices designed to create space for dialogue, testimonio, and collective action. “The band is sort of like a semillero for community-collective and organizational work,” Quetzal says. A semillero is a seedbed—a place where things grow.

III. “The Reason I Became a Poet Was Very Practical”

On the other hand, Faith Santilla didn't set out to be a poet. At 19, she was organizing in support of the progressive movement in the Philippines in the 1990s, trying to get young Filipino Americans to show up to political events. “Young Filipinos are into spoken word,” she realized, “so let me write some poetry and hold a poetry event, and that's how we can actually begin gathering young Filipinos so that they know what's going on in the Philippines.”

Flash forward to now, Faith is a mother of two, a union organizer, and someone who has never stopped using poetry as an organizing tool. Her early influences came from LA's underground hip-hop scene of the ’90s—Freestyle Fellowship, Project Blowed—the kind of music that wasn't getting radio play when male-dominated commercial rap commanded the airwaves.

“I would have been a rapper at the time that I grew up if it weren't so male-dominated,” Faith laughs, but poetry gave her a way in.

One of her most pivotal poems, “Mirror Images,” was written for Mujeres de Maíz's first international women's event at Self-Help Graphics in the late '90s. It reflected the lessons she'd learned from her Chicana friends about the Chicano movement—not the masculine mythology, but the real stories of women organizing. “There were so many parallels in struggles between Filipinas and Chicanos,” she told me.  

Before moving to the Philippines at 19, Faith grew up in Boyle Heights, a neighborhood that was predominantly Black and Brown, with a mix of Filipino and Mexican residents living side by side. Her family lived in a predominantly Filipino neighborhood. Years later, she discovered that her colleague Kat Corridos from KB Media (producer of the Labor of Love show) also grew up in the same area, and coincidentally, had a grandmother who used to meet Faith's grandmother at the fence every day to talk, to share chisme (gossip). “Red string theory,” Faith says, smiling at the coincidence that may not have been a coincidence, but rather fate. 

Today, Faith visibly works full-time as a union organizer with hotel and restaurant workers. She, along with other members, does so much for the community: hosting community events, providing mutual aid, and organizing community watches. And now, she's hosting Labor of Love—nervous, excited, grateful.

IV. “We Can’t Survive in Our Silos”

Back to the band Quetzal–Martha grew up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in a household where English was rare. Her father, a singer, filled their home with the sounds of his homeland—Rancheras, Mariachi, Juan Gabriel, Vicente Fernández, Rocío Dúrcal, and many other artists. "When I became a musician and started doing my own music, it had a very rooted Mexicano influence," Martha tells me.

After her father's death, the household shifted. But it was at UCLA, studying ethnomusicology and learning Chicano theory, that everything clicked into place. American culture gradually began influencing her art, life, and music. 

“I met Quetzal and began to experience the world of Chicano, and learn about it in college,” she explains. I identified with it because all the theory and studies around it resonated with me—it mirrored what I was living.” She'd grown up navigating two worlds: a home culture and the American culture outside it, where people told her she had an accent, where she felt different, where she was intimidated by whiteness and privilege. 

“But being Chicano, for me, really empowered me,” she says. “We have recipes older than the Declaration of Independence. I don't need you to validate me." That empowerment shapes everything—how she raises her child, how she makes music, how she thinks about the future. We see the empowerment through her songs about Chicana women, identity, speaking truth to power, all woven together with the different sounds she's grown up with. 

When I ask about her hopes, she doesn't hesitate: “Against the prejudice, I'm hoping that we never lose hope and a sense of creativity and imagination...Right now, more than ever, we can't keep our Chicano communities over here, immigrant communities over there, Filipinos over here, African Americans over there, Japanese...we have to reach across other communities and struggles, because we have so much in common.”

The collaboration happening in Labor of Love—across Filipino, Mexican, Black, and Latin communities—is exactly what she and the band strive for. “If we can be together more often and keep thinking together through this time, then we're going to accomplish so much. We can be better for all our families, make it better for us all, not just Chicanos. We're not just Mexicanos, you know?”

V. The Work Continues

Labor of Love isn't just a concert. It's a continuation of a story that began decades ago with cross-cultural solidarity movements, such as when Filipino and Mexican labor workers in California recognized each other's struggles and stood together. Labor of Love is a reminder that Los Angeles has always been a city built by cross-cultural collaboration, even when the freeways and boundaries tried to divide it.

“We're really good at writing good fucking songs,” Quetzal tells me with a grin. “We're really good at telling stories. And when we get onstage, we're good performers. We're really good at authentically and honestly bringing together influences that move us and utilizing them to create things that move people.”

Onstage, he says, there's a relevance that can't be captured in a recording. “I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm just there to give people an experience so that they can feel more human, so they can feel more seen, so they can see themselves in what we're talking about, so we can see each other.”

In a moment when so much feels uncertain, when communities are under attack and hope feels fragile, these artists remind us what remains unbroken: the power of showing up for each other, of choosing collaboration over isolation, of making music that holds up a mirror and says, “You are beautiful, you have worth, you belong here.”

Labor of Love, that's the sound of solidarity.

About the author: Catherine Rodriguez-Dueñas (she/her) is a first-generation Chicana majoring in design/media arts and minoring in film/television at UCLA. She began her artistic journey through classical music at Harmony Project. She realized the intersecting aspects of visual art with the art of music and therefore ventured into visual mediums. Her curiosity has no end, so she continues to explore new mediums whenever possible—illustration, graphic design, and videography, to name a few. Cat believes that creating for emotional and cultural expression is crucial—not only to the individual, but for society. With her discovery of Las Fotos Project in 2020, Cat has further practiced this belief with the themes of community, self-expression, and movement in mind.