Y La Bamba is stopping at Northside Tavern on Friday, May 19th with Turtledoves and Aaron Magical!

Y La Bamba released their new album Lucha on April 28th. The album explores multiplicity—love, queerness, Mexican American and Chicanx identity, family, intimacy, yearning, loneliness, and chronicles a period of struggle and growth for lead vocalist and producer Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos as a person and artist.
 
 “Lucha is a symbol of how hard it is for me to tackle healing, live life, and be present,” Mendoza Ramos says of the title behind the album which translates from Spanish to English as ‘fight’ and is also a nickname for Luz, which means light.
 
 Lucha was born out of isolation at the advent of COVID-19 lockdowns, beginning with a cover of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and following Mendoza Ramos as they moved from Portland, Oregon to Mexico City, returning to their parents’ home country while revisiting a lineage marred by violence and silence, and simultaneously reaching towards deeper relationships with loved ones and themselves. The album reflects “another tier of facing vulnerability,” as Mendoza Ramos explains, and is a battle cry to fight in order to be seen and to be accepted, if not celebrated, in every form—anger and compassion, externally and internally, individually and societally. As much as la lucha is about inner work, fighting is borne from survival stemming from social structures designed to uplift dominant groups at the hands of suffering amongst the marginalized.