visual arts
The Art of the Album
AN EXHIBIT AT THE UO LOOKS AT
LATE 20TH-CENTURY LATINX ALBUM COVERS
By Ester Barkai
hen I was in high school, people
cruised Van Nuys Boulevard
for fun. I would now consider
driving in bumper-to-bumper
traffi c — going nowhere — a total
bummer. Teenagers thought
it was fun, although I’m not
sure how much those driving lowrider cars at the time
thought any of this would end up in an art museum.
Think again. The Visual Clave exhibit at the Jordan
Schnitzer Museum of Art through April 21 would like
you to consider the album cover of I Wanna Be A Low
Rider / Low Rider Fever (1980) in terms of cultural
expression.
Organizers of the exhibit — Philip Scher, University
of Oregon professor of anthropology and folklore and
public culture, and Pablo E. Yglesias, Cuban-American
musician and artist — would like you to critically
consider all the album covers on display in terms of
cultural identity.
Visual Clave: The Expression of the Latino/a
Experience through Album Cover Art: 1940-90 was
inspired by Yglesias’ 2005 book Cocinando: 50 Years
of Latin Album Cover Art. Most if not all of the albums
come from his private collection. Though this is an
academic exhibition, asking you to think critically
about items you’d otherwise be handling in a used
record shop, knowing it came out of his collection
makes it personal as well.
Discussion of music and art, history and culture are
presented through album covers. The theme of dance
isn’t confi ned to a particular era. Baila Que Baila: Join
the Dance introduces a handful of album covers whose
release dates span decades, perhaps because dance,
as the show tells us, is central to music with African
roots. These origins can be “life-affi rming, communal,
ritualistic, ecstatic and trance-inducing.”
Agua! Agua! is an album that features Antobal’s
Cuban All-Stars and claims to be “the ultimate in
Cuban rhythm!” The picture on the cover is of a man in
a suit, an audience member, being enticed by a scantily
clad female dancer. He stands at his table with arms
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enthusiastically reaching towards her. There is another
man on the fl oor, wearing clothes of a performer,
amazed at the spectacle. This illustration does indeed
seem to present ecstatic and trance-inducing behavior.
Standing beside me at the museum were a man and
woman who laughed out loud at the cover. Maybe it was
because the woman portrayed on the cover was nearly
nude while the men were fully clothed. Maybe it was
the shock of being confronted with aesthetics from a
diff erent time (1959). No doubt the couple appreciated
the cover, but I believe they were appreciating it
ironically.
“Let’s see, under what circumstances do I kneel?”
the man said to the woman, as if he couldn’t ever
imagine being brought to his knees by anything.
The large majority of album covers address politics
of the day as seen from the Latinx and Chicanx point
of view. Albums such as Free by La Protesta (1970) and
Justicia by Eddie Palmieri (1969) refl ect the struggle
made at the time to attain civil rights. And Azteca,
for example, with its wonderfully illustrated Aztec-
inspired calendar including piano keys, show that the
musicians were embracing their native identity.
“Clave,” I learned, refers to the African-inspired
beat found in such styles as the mambo, cha-cha and
rumba. Music playing in the background, exhibiting
the auditory clave, might make you want to dance along
as you think critically about the visual. But make no
mistake; this show focuses on the visual.
Some album covers from the past seem particularly
relevant to the moment we’re in now. The cover to West
Side Story: The Original Soundtrack Recording (1961)
reminded me that a remake of West Side Story is in the
works with original cast member Rita Morena, who was
apparently the only Latina lead in the original movie.
The album cover that struck me as most timely
is Rolas de Aztlán by Los Alacranes Mojados (1979).
It features a black and white photograph centered
against an orange background. In the photograph are
four men carrying guitars. Two men stand on one side
of a barbed wire fence while the other two climb over. All
of the men look straight at the camera, so they’re not
really crossing the border. They’re posing for a picture.
And the picture says: We’re here to play music. ■
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