Razabilly: Transforming Sights, Sounds, and History in the Los Angeles Latina/o Rockabilly Scene

by Nicholas F Centino

Vocals tinged with pain and desperation. The deep thuds of an upright bass. Women with short bangs and men in cuffed jeans. These elements and others are the unmistakable signatures of rockabilly, a musical genre normally associated with white male musicians of the 1950s. But in Los Angeles today, rockabilly's primary producers and consumers are Latinos and Latinas. Why are these "Razabillies" partaking in a visibly "un-Latino" subculture that's thought of as a white person's fixation everywhere else? As a Los Angeles Rockabilly insider, Nicholas F. Centino is the right person to answer this question. Pairing a decade of participant observation with interviews and historical research, Centino explores the reasons behind a Rockabilly renaissance in 1990s Los Angeles and demonstrates how, as a form of working-class leisure, this scene provides Razabillies with spaces of respite and conviviality within the alienating landscape of the urban metropolis. A nuanced account revealing how and why Los Angeles Latinas/os have turned to and transformed the music and aesthetic style of 1950s rockabilly, Razabilly offers rare insight into this musical subculture, its place in rock and roll history, and its passionate practitioners.

Genres: Music

256 pages, Hardcover

Published July 13, 2021

Reviews

[Jay Gabler · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I ask you to picture the classic rockabilly look, you might imagine the T-Birds from Grease. Sure, but where do you think those guys got their style? In Razabilly, Nicholas F. Centino writes:

As early as World War II, Chicano boys were cuffing their blue jeans, rolling cigarette packs into their t-shirt sleeves, and slicking back their hair in exaggerated pompadours with ducktails — a look that would be adopted as the white working-class tough guy a decade later in the 1950s.

The Beach Boys were initially named the Pendletones in honor of Pendleton shirts, another style that white youth of the '50s and '60s copped from Latina/o kids.

Razabilly isn't a brief about the erasure of BIPOC communities in the whitewashing of the 1950s in popular culture, but Centino cites the role of Latina/o music and culture in mid-century history by way of reminding any unaware readers what many of today's Latinx rockabilly fans know well: the rock and roll era was never just about Black and white, but about every shade of American skin.

Even so, it was far from obvious that rockabilly music — one particular style of early rock and roll — would become hugely popular in 21st century L.A. Latinx communities.

I reviewed Razabilly for The Current.

[Colleen Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging history about the spirit of rockabilly and how the Latinx community in and around LA made it their own.