Rockabilly Raza Style

Ritchie Valens Album Cover https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/ritchie-valens-la-bamba-song/

In the 1950s, a new style was born, the Rockabilly style. “The genre of music known as Rockabilly music combined elements of Black rhythm & blues and white country music in the 1950s.” (Centino vii) With the emergence of 1950s Rock ‘n’ Roll, like Ritchie Valens’ song, La Bamba, and Elvis Presley’s music came rock parties and festivals that influenced the emergence of tighter dresses and bumper bangs. This style is also marked with hot rods and low riders. Even though the Rockabilly style gets its aesthetic roots from the 1950s, the style became extremely popular in the 1980s and 90s and “gained a strong foothold in the Los Angeles area where Chicana/os and Latina/os now dominate.” (Centino, vii)

Rockabilly style is still very much alive and well today and the scene has been kept alive by Los Angeles’ working-class Chicana/os. They have been “the driving forces behind the consumption and production of the scene dedicated to its survival nearly sixty years past its prime.”

(Centino, 1)