Photo Credit: Alyson Camus
With the current 24-hour news cycle being something straight out of a dystopian novel—hourly updates on a “zero tolerance” border policy, reversal of affirmative action guidelines, constant attacks on reproductive rights—drawing up a blueprint for combating intolerance feels all the more critical lately. Cue musicians like Alice Bag, the 59-year-old Chicana trailblazer, punk singer, songwriter, author and activist, and her most recent feat, Blueprint.
Bag’s second solo record “began as a quiet, solitary exploration of ideas that turned into a collection of songs,” she tells the Shepherd Express. Over the course of 40 minutes, Bag delves into the erasure of people of color and ’70s Chicano activism in East L.A. (“Etched Deep,” “White Justice”); rages with fellow punk veterans Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Allison Wolfe of Bratmobile about wage injustice (“77”); combats ageism and gossipy onlookers (“Se Cree Joven”); and talks survival strategies and rebuilding (“Blueprint,” “Sparkling Path”) with that same kind of urgency found in the Bag’s 1978 full-length debut, Survive. It’s only fitting that Blueprint landed a spot on NPR’s 40 Favorite Albums of 2018 last month.
The record’s track list and accompanying videos (like the one for “77”) boast inter-genre collaborators like Martin Sorrondeguy from Chicago hardcore legends Los Crudos; queercore heroes Limp Wrist; Teri Gender Bender from Le Butcherettes; musician Francisca Valenzuela; and artist and vocalist Seth Bogart—just to name a few. Alice Bag is as big of a fan of soul music and ’50s bolero-ranchero singers like Javier Solis as she is of punk contemporaries like Allison Wolfe’s newest band, Sex Stains, and the melding of various soundscapes and snippets from different musical eras is evident on each one of her solo releases.
Bag singlehandedly invented an entirely new genre called punkchera, and she cites working with other musicians and artists she admires as a source of inspiration. “Collaboration expands my vision, inviting me to approach my songs in different ways and solidifying my relationships with others who hold similar points of view,” she says. “It feels like we’ve joined forces to deliver messages that we find important.”
For Bag, the power of praxis—taking a theory or ideology and putting in into practice in the real word—extends beyond making music with comrades and friends. Rather, it serves as one of the many ways in which she works collaboratively with other Latina and queer changemakers across the punk and hardcore world to mobilize each other through teaching and direct action.
“Volunteering and teaching each other is a powerful exercise in agency,” Bag says. She has decades of working as an educator under her belt and plays an integral role in intergenerational projects like Chicas Rockeras—southeast L.A.’s Girls Rock Camp, a not-for-profit music education and mentorship program—in what she describes as World Cup energy in a quinceañera hall. “It’s young girls shouting, singing, strumming and banging out a soundtrack to accompany their vision of a better future,” she explains. "We are allowing ourselves to change and be changed by the experience of mentoring a future generation of strong, self-confident women and that is tremendously exciting.” Bag adds that she advocates for open dialogues with community members and sees “coming to an agreement about the changes you’d like to see” as an essential part of these processes.
Alice Bag’s work as an author and songwriter not only serves as an ongoing personal archive, but doubles as a guide that constructs a women-of-color-led feminist future. She frequently talks about channeling anger into punk and using songs and storytelling as a way of combating racism, sexism and domestic violence.
However, it wasn’t until she began writing for her blog, “The True-Life Adventures of Violence Girl” (which would eventually become her 2011 autobiography, Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story), that Bag says she began to fully realize the power of telling your story on your own terms.
“During the time that I was blogging, people started to write to me, telling me how they related to certain stories,” Bag says. “Many of those responses had to do with being a woman in punk, with anecdotes related to our shared Mexican heritage and/or Spanish speaking experiences. Some readers thanked me for talking about subjects they didn’t feel prepared to discuss themselves.”
Given the constant onslaught of xenophobic rhetoric from Donald Trump’s administration, Blueprint and Bag’s narrative as a punk rock Chicana with a working-class background and the daughter of immigrant parents has become all the timelier.
“I cannot speak about this administration without feeling the most intense rage,” she says. “The Kidnapper-in-Chief speaks and behaves as though we are subhuman, so it is more important than ever to share and celebrate our stories. People of color have contributed so much to this nation. Our stories are woven into the fabric of this nation. We must write, share and archive our stories because to fail to do so is to accept erasure.”
Alice Bag—plus Law/Less and Gallery Night—plays the Cactus Club on Thursday, July 12 at 8 p.m.
