Roger Velasquez: making his mark with CD 'Quiero Besarte'

Where do you get your appreciation for funk, soul, oldies?

"I grew up in the seventies with Earth, Wind and Fire, and watching 'Solid Gold,' and 'In the Midnight Hour,' so I saw groups like the Fifth Dimension and Earth, Wind and Fire, Commodores, that's who I grew up with. That's what I've always gravitated to in English music. Early on, that's why Tejano bands would hire me to sing on the English. But I began to listen to Latin Breed a lot, and one day Gibby Escobedo asked me to audition for the Breed, and that was actually the first band I ever sang Spanish with. But I saw the people, the love they had for the music, and I really got into listening to the Latin Breed. The guitar player's name was also Velasquez, and mine is. And with the Royal Jesters, there was another Velasquez - Gilbert Velasquez. And wow, I felt like, 'Hey, this is where you're supposed to be.' I began to research it more and more. I was probably about 12 when I started to study it. And now, there's been a decline in the attentiveness of the audience."

Why would you say that is?

"I think that's due to some confusion that's happened with the buyouts of a lot of our Tejano radio stations. Program directors are coming in and they know absolutely nothing about Tejano music, so they put on what they get from the labels, and of course they're being bombarded by FonoVisa and these people that are pushing all of these bands from Mexico. So, we want to re-establish what the original Tejano music is. Beto Villa started this thing with the horns and all that stuff. I know there's a lot of other pioneers. Bernal, but Bernal also his arrangements and the way he approached la música Tejana with a big-band sort of feel. He only achieved it with one instrument, with the accordion.

"I think that we've gotten away from that musically. From the music, from the beauty of the arrangements and those things and we sort of want to put the focus more on that style of music because it's uniquely our own. It's like what blues is to the blacks. They made it, they invented it out of their African rhythms and French style of music, and it happened in the French Quarter and all that. That's the same thing that this orquesta chicana is. Groups like Beto Villa and Isidro Lopez were taking the boleros that were there and creating them in very artistic fashion, you know with horns, and making these elaborate arrangements like copying or emulating such people as Count Basie and Glenn Miller. That type of thing that was happening in the thirties and forties. So we got away from that, and I think it's time that we reclaim that music.

What would you say was the most challenging part of finshing this album?

"The hardest part of doing this album is the sacrifice. Putting away your immediate needs and thinking on the long term. What do I want to do with my life. Where am I headed? Do I want to be a nightclub musician all my life, or just filling in here, singing a song there? Or do I want to take my own music, because I am a songwriter. Do I want to take my music, which I've always wanted, and give it to the people, and have them make it their own? That was a tough thing to do, and it's still tough now, because there's a lot of sacrifice involved. There's a lot of work involved, pushing this stuff, doing the radio tours, organizing the groups. It's a lot of work.

"The sweetest thing is to stand there and listen to the people singing the words to the songs, that to me were only feelings that I had at one moment, and the next moment, I put them on paper, and I can see them read them back. And now, I'm performing them in these wonderful song forms and listening to the people, I'm getting that immediate response from them. Their immediate approval or disapproval. To me, that's the best thing."

 Roger Velasquez interview Pt I:

Roger Velasquez: making his mark in latest CD 'Quiero Besarte'