Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos of Y La Bamba is Reborn in Music

Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos is the embodiment of the phrase the one who is “not busy being born is busy dying.” Seemingly every second of the day, compounded weekly, monthly, yearly, Mendoza Ramos is learning, growing, changing. It’s an organic process that mirrors their very entry into songwriting.

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When they were 18 years old, Mendoza Ramos would play a friend’s guitar at their house. There, Mendoza Ramos learned a few chords and a few strumming patterns. Suddenly a life that included music as much as air or water now had a fresh avenue to travel toward expression. For Mendoza Ramos, who was born to Mexican parents who played music in the house endlessly, music is as much an extension of time and space as it is a product of work. And it’s with this backdrop that their new album, Lucha, with their band, Y La Bamba, finds listeners on Friday (April 28). The record is as lush and complex as its creator. A prism of seemingly disparate sound beams that coalesce into a churning galaxy.  

“I only know my world with music,” Mendoza Ramos tells American Songwriter. “So, that’s a gift, a blessing. Just knowing music… like breathing and eating.”

Mendoza Ramos went down vulnerable roads to create their new album. It’s the byproduct of much personal growth. A stream of waking up to a waking dream. “And knowing you have a role in it,” they say.

A significant portion of Mendoza Ramos’ vulnerability is enmeshed in their sense of identity, and the mere idea of identity. The artist is a highway system of cultures. Mendoza Ramos is privileged in ways their parents never were. They also have the gift of their guidance. But Mendoza Ramos has their own knots to untie, personal touchstones to their roots that they never, until recently, got to explore. And clashes, as a queer Latinx Mexican-American artist, with the oppressive powers that be. Every day—moment—is a process. And in the music, it comes out and in the music, people have, in that way, access to Mendoza Ramos’ inner workings, even their mental health. 

“It’s intense,” says Mendoza Ramos. “I don’t really think people have the time to dig into that story. Everyone has their own stuff… the music is an extension of how I get to express a little percentage of that.”

But the point of the music for the Y La Bamba front person is also to build community. It’s not fodder for judgment. It’s for making a space to live and breathe and talk about the perils of doing so. In this way, the album has sturdy legs, from Mendoza Ramos’ own compositions like the laid bare-head bobbing “Collapse,” and the floating, twilight-hour cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” There is a new wrinkle to every song, emblematic of the concerted every-rock-turned exploration of its creator.

Mendoza Ramos, who was born in San Francisco, traveled to New Zealand, Mexico, and India as a young adult, and, until recently, lived in Portland, Oregon. But they have also spent much time in Mexico City as of late. Their new album was PNW-born and Mexico-finished. Lately, Mendoza Ramos has had a chance to live in the worlds from which their parents came. Those layers were added to Lucha, too. 

“It’s super loaded,” says Mendoza Ramos. “Hella meta. What informed me, the music I grew up listening to as a kid where my parents were from, all of a sudden I’m living in it as an adult in Mexico in a way I never fathomed or imagined.” 

Mendoza Ramos is filling in missing links from their life now on their journey. This shows up in the songs, too. Whether on the dreamy, longing guitars or the steady, hopeful percussion. Or on their rippling vocals. Mendoza Ramos recalls their father, swimming through rivers to get to the United States. The migrant camps he worked and lived in along the California highway. This is in the music, too. Memories, tones, twinges, traumas, and glories. Personal processes. For Mendoza Ramos, 41, the way to make a record includes the writing of many songs. And on this one, they allowed themself to be vocal about new things in their life, including writing about a woman in a way they never have.

“Little personal celebrations,” Mendoza Ramos says. “I allowed myself to be that vulnerable, to really explore being queer and what that means. The pain of not being able to really say or explore those things because of the way I was raised. And being the age I am… Wanting to allow my voice to take the wheel in a different way.” 

Mendoza Ramos can’t help learning. In the process, they are shedding dead skin. Whether that means giving themself more power in the studio and standing up when things aren’t going how they want or whether Mendoza Ramos is allowing their truest self at the moment to shine in a lyric, Mendoza Ramos is getting better. It’s constant. As such, making records can be painful. This one was no different. But flags are planted at the tops of mountains. And it was important for Mendoza Ramos to be honest about who they are, to underscore the existence of the person behind the music, as they climbed. The album, which began during the pandemic, started with the Williams cover. It continued over the years since. And now that it’s out, new journeys will begin for its composer, including playing a concert, for the first time with a full band, in Mexico City, on an upcoming tour.

“There is so much opportunity in music,” says Mendoza Ramos. “It’s one of those really beautiful gifts in life. It’s like water. Whenever you drink a glass of water, you’re so grateful.”

Photo by Jenn Carrillo / The Syn

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