Set against a concha-pink wall at San Jose’s Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA), photographer Diamela Cutiño’s series of black and white paintings pop.

The effect is characteristic of the gallery’s kaleidoscopic new exhibit, Beyond the Diaspora, which explores concepts of belonging, exploitation and gentrification through a riot of color and emotion.

The new exhibit showcases Afro-Latinx artists from a mix of cultural backgrounds, gender and sexual identities and artistic experiences.

“We wanted to be intentional about who was in our space, especially our gallery, and who we are offering our platform to,” says curator Maryela Perez. “To me personally, that meant making sure as many identities as we can cover are being showcased.”

As a non-Black person, Perez wanted to highlight Afro-Latinx artists while being careful not to influence the narrative of the exhibit, wanting the art—and the artists—to speak for themselves.

“I personally didn’t feel comfortable curating this by myself,” Perez says. “So I brought on a small curatorial advisor team made up of Afro-Latinx folks.”

The team reached out to artists through social media and created the prismatic exhibit featuring artists, painters, illustrators, musicians, photographers and documentarians.

Ventura-based artist Vanessa Wallace-Gonzales says she was excited to have a place in the exhibit. Her works—which layer painted sheets of paper, resin, seashells and the delicate bodies of moths and butterflies—explore our layered identities and their connections to the divine and historical.

“Getting invited into the show, I was very excited,” Wallace-Gonzales says. “I’m glad spaces like this are focusing on marginalized communities that have multiple intersections.”

Wallace-Gonzales’s more two-dimensional works reveal themselves slowly, a quiet cacophony of faces turning towards one another. Her resin pieces erupt and take flight as moths and butterflies appear to leap and fly off the work.

“Vanessa means butterfly in Latin,” Wallace-Gonzales says. “They have a very visually obvious transformation process that I really relate to. That’s something that has helped me embrace my identity: knowing that we are not stagnant entities and we can redefine and be fluid as we wish.”

Beyond the Diaspora flows from Wallace-Gonzales’s ethereal works to Dominican photo artist Patricia Encarnacion’s meditative and dreamlike photo collages. Against a black wall, the verdant green leaves of jungles surround scenes of exploitation and appropriation, a commentary on tourism in places like Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

The series is called I am from where you vacation.

In an enclave, the works of DJ Leydis and Los Rakas—part music video and part documentary—explore Cuba and the political and cultural roots of Reggaeton.

Chilean-American artist Thomas Jones is known as a muralist and street artist. His smaller acrylic paintings featured in the exhibit are a departure from his usual medium, but still include the vibrant color and Indigenous African and South American influences of his murals.

Heavily influenced by psychedelics, nature and Afrofuturism, Jones’ paints appear to flow upwards in lava-lamp-like antigravity, envisioning metropolises that are clean, bright and harmonized with nature.

“It’s very utopian,” Jones says. “I’m thinking about how we are going to evolve in the future, working in a place without capitalism, money and all those systems. That peace.”

Oakland illustrator Robert Liu-Trujillo’s Sesame Street-like works depict a child’s ownership of her neighborhood as she fights against eviction. These pieces make issues like gentrification and tenant eviction accessible to children—who are rarely included in the conversation.

San Francisco-based artist Anna Lisa Escobedo was part of the curatorial advisory team. Her painting, La Unica, is placed before an altar of Black and Indigenous self-love. Inspired by Drag Race star and Black trans activist Honey Mahogany, La Unica is meant to encapsulate the essence of Black womanhood. A photo of Escobedo’s great aunt sits beside a vase of plastic flowers.

The altar, Escobedo says, allows audience members to reflect upon their own beauty and self-care.

“I want everyone to think of themselves as strong queens,” Escobedo says. “Let’s put our earrings and lipstick on and pull people away for a few minutes. We’ll get out the door and show the rest of the world how awesome we are.”

Beyond the Diaspora
Through March 13
Fri-Sun, 12-5pm, Free
MACLA, San Jose

Matt Gonzales is a busy man. When he’s not playing guitar for local fusion-soul group Anya and the Getdown or for hip-hop cumbia duo Raul y Mexia, he’s producing beats for his own solo Latin dance project, Philthy Dronez.

Gonzales has been performing as Philthy Dronez consistently here in the South Bay at the monthly Sonido Clash neo-Latin dance parties every first Fridays at the Pagoda Lounge. Now, Philthy Dronez is reaching for a larger audience with his debut EP Wepa Life, which will be released on Arizona label, Global Bass Experience. The release show is Friday November 1st at the Pagoda—the final show before the venue switches formats under new management.

Wepa Life is a short listen with seven songs in about fifteen minutes. It has a nice blend of Philthy Dronez’ style, which contains some classic cumbia beats with some modern dance, trap and electronica. His first single, “Don Sandia”, is one of his more traditional cumbia tracks. The content however is not so typical—it’s about a watermelon that gets all the ladies. The “watermelon” (or rather Gonzales’ friend in a watermelon outfit) made his debut during Sonido Clash’s portion of the Music in the Park. “Don Sandia” features guest vocals by Jazmin Lopez (aka Jazzy Drone).

One of the heaviest dance songs—and the farthest removed from classic cumbia—is “Ratcheta,” featuring vocals by Mexia from Raul y Mexia. “Mira Como Mueve” is the best representation to the “nu-cumbia” sound that is growing increasingly popular. Wepa Life is also strung together with a lot of clips from various radio programs and commercials. One of the best of them is the old Frito Bandito commercial for Fritos chips which closes the EP.

Philthy Dronez plays the final Sonido Clash at Pagoda Lounge on Friday November 1st with Los Macuanos. More info.

Oakland rap duo Los Rakas packed Pagoda Lounge on Friday for the latest edition of Sonido Clash.

Metro photographer Aron Cooperman caught the show.

Los Rakas, a spin on the Spanish term “rakataka”—”ratchet” or someone from the ghetto in their native Panama—came together in 2006 when rappers Raka Rich and Raka Dun met in the East Bay.

Blending hip-hop, dancehall and reggaeton, the duo has released a handful of EPs and mixtapes, independently building a fan base in California and beyond through DIY street hustle.

They perform at Live at the Pagoda’s Sonido Clash, a music series focused on the Latin diaspora and progressive sounds that have transformed Latin music, on July 5.

Debuting in the midst of the Bay Area’s hyphy movement, Los Rakas was inspired by the sound of gnarled raps and heavy bass and positioned themselves as ambassadors of Latin urban music, fusing Bay Area-inspired beats with their own Spanish bars.

Both Rich and Dun say that Panama and the Bay Area are similar in that both places have a knack for trendsetting—Panama as the creator of Spanish reggae, which expanded into Puerto Rico into reggaeton. The hyphy movement, though short-lived, breathed life back into Bay Area hip-hop and its influence can still be heard through such other mainstream artists today as Drake and Tyga.

“The hyphy movement inspired us because we lived it, we lived the sideshows,” Dun says.

Songs like “Soy Raka” and “Ta Lista” are prime examples of the Bay Area sound mixed with their native Panamanian influences. Heavy bass lines serve as the foundation with Spanish-influenced drums overlaid on the beats. Life in the ghettos live through the lyrics, with gun talk and gold teeth in the “Soy Raka” hook—””tengo mi pistola y diente de oro.”

Working closely with Bay Area producers and artists, such as Hidden Faces, Erk tha Jerk, Nima Fadavi and Martin Luther, Los Rakas have found a unique niche among local rappers working to build a following beyond the confines of the Bay Area circuit.

The duo also recently teamed up with Major Lazer, super producer Diplo’s reggae project with Jillionaire, and released a remix of the summer anthem “Watch Out For This (Bumaye)” with their song “Desorden.” Less than two weeks after its mid-June release, the track had netted more than 16,000 listens online.

Rich and Dun met up with Diplo after the producer tweeted to them that he liked their remix of Oakland rapper Kreayshawn’s “Gucci Gucci.”

Doubling Up

For the two rappers, choosing the name “Los Rakas” for their music came from a sense of pride in their ghetto roots, but also a mission to encourage people living in the ghetto to strive beyond its limitations.

“You gotta know when to control that ratchet emotion,” Rich says. “We all have it being where we’re from, but you want to think about being somebody bigger than that and we want to inspire that. Our movement is ratchet we’re ‘rakataka,’ super ratchet, that’s what it really means and we want to show everybody we come from the ratchet but that doesn’t mean we have to act like that all the time.”

The group’s latest project, “El Negrito Dun Dun y Ricardo,” is a double album set to release this summer. Dun had already completed his portion of the album and was ready to release it as a solo project before the two decided to release it as a joint effort.

“Dun was already set to drop the album and I was working on some experimental stuff,” Rich says. “We had done every style of music already and I felt like I really wanted to challenge myself and try this new uptempo, old school house-type of sound.”

The goal for Los Rakas was to make music separately, taking a more experimental approach, but still operate as a duo with the same musical goals in mind.
“You can listen to any of our tracks and they can really vary from dancehall tracks done in Spanish, or Bay Area hip-hop tracks done in English,” Dun says. “We don’t really think about the music, we just do it.”

Both rappers say that the upcoming project has a vastly different sound than their previous releases and the subject matter is geared toward a more mature audience, with songs like “She Likes Me” and “”Let’s Get It On (Pa’encima).”

The “She Likes Me” cut features Richmond’s Erk tha Jerk and shows off the group’s softer side as they rap over Hidden Faces’ R&B piano riffs.

“Let’s Get It On” carries the same sensual context, but it holds traces of Los Rakas’ dancehall origins.

According to Dun, the switch in tone came from influences like Billie Holiday and Tupac Shakur, artists that were “really vulnerable and talked about things going on in their life.”

The duo has plans to then go on tour in Latin America, expanding their fan base as well as promoting their clothing and merchandise projects in their home country.

“We’re excited to see how it is when we go back and how big that show is going to be,” Dun says.

Los Rakas
Pagoda Lounge
July 5
9pm $12-$15

For 34 years, the Puerto Rican festival, El Dia De San Juan, has brought traditional Puerto Rican foods, dance and music to San Jose. For music, that of course means salsa and meringue, but the folks behind the event didn’t want the festival to only feature traditional Puerto Rican music.

That’s why they’ve included a second stage, dubbed the “Youth Stage,” which has been in the festival the past four years.

“We wanted to touch base with the younger crowd. The main stage is the salsa stage. That’s for the older folks. On the youth stage, we have a lot of the younger performers, kids from the community,” says Rene Baez, the booker for the youth stage.

Most of the performers they’ve booked on the youth stage this year are hip-hop, and quite a few of them live here in San Jose. The headliners are an East Bay group called Los Rakas. Originally from Panama, the duo moved to Oakland when they were in high school, so they have musical influences from both countries. They rap primarily in Spanish over traditional hip-hop club beats, but mix in loops and samples from Latin music.

Baez hopes to continue to expand the music genres and cultural diversity represented on the youth stage. Already this year, he’s booked Mexican American musicians and African American musicians.

“It’s not just a Puerto Rican Festival. We reached out to a lot of people. A lot of folks didn’t want to get involved because they kind of saw it as a Latino kind of festival, which isn’t true. We are looking to reach out to everybody. This is an event that people in the bay area and San Jose really look forward to every year, just the same as the jazz festival,” Baez says.

The Western Region Puerto Rican Council (WRPRC) is the organization behind El Dia De San Juan. Baez is also hosting an after party at the Agenda Lounge with KMEL’s Rick Lee that will feature Mayhem the Don.

El Dia De San Juan will be held in San Jose’s History Park on Saturday, June 23, 11am; $20 adv/$30 door.

San Francisco super DJ J Boogie has started off this year releasing a crazy barrage of sound—New Orleans bounce, East Indian bhangra and electro-funk remixes for the single “It’s On Fire” with his group J Boogie’s Dubtronic Science. He performed every day at South By Southwest, and then at Miami’s Winter Music Conference. Next week, he’ll come to Pagoda Lounge in San Jose as part of a benefit for scholarships at the School of Arts and Culture in East Side San Jose.

J Boogie, aka Justin Boland, got his start as a college DJ with the popular “Beatsauce” show on KUSF, and broke with his 2003 debut album that featured guest artists like Goapele and People Under the Stairs. As a club DJ, he now plays all over the world.

On April 6, he’ll come to Pagoda for a special D1ME night that’s been redubbed with the pronunciation “Dee-may,” which means “tell me” in Spanish. The point of this particular show is to highlight the work of the new School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, and it’s expected to be the first of many D1ME benefits for various worthy causes in the community.

Also at this show, Oakland’s Los Rakas will perform their Spanish-language hip-hop. The group is cousins Raka Dun and Raka Rich, who draw on reggae, dancehall and future bass in their cross-cultural style.

D1ME will be held Friday, April 6 at the Pagoda in San Jose, 9pm; $5-$10 sliding scale.