purchase [Chavez Ravine]
File under: Songs that reference baseball
Ryland P Cooder has always gone out of his way.
Gone out of his way to promote music that most others would not. See his JAZZ album that includes non-traditional instruments such as: cimbalo, tuba ... See various songs from Into the Purple Valley, Paradise and Lunch, Chicken Skin Music, Bop Till You Drop
Gone out of his way to bring back music that others forgot. Hawaii, Carribean ...
Gone out of his way to speak up for others who had only a small voice. (How's about Down in Hollywood, for that perspective?) Then there's the Buena Vista Social Club project that - in and of itself -revived an entire genre of music.
Among the issues he has raised (because raising issues through his music is what he does) is the <Chavez Ravine> story.
Now .. you're about to ask what the relation to the theme is?
<3rd Base, Dodger Stadium> is about BASEball, because the Chavez Ravine area was torn up by eminent domain in order to build the baseball stadium, and its mostly Latino residents were left out in the open - the land eventually ending up as the ball park.
Cooder's song highlights one of the displaced residents who eventually ends up with a job tied to the new ball park venue: parking cars around the stadium. (His house was 3rd base, folks!) But, at least in Cooder's version he takes it with a grain of salt, without the kind of chip on his shoulders that you and I might have had...
The song relates how his home was located at the spot where 3rd base ended up. He lost his home, but found work right there all the same.
Muy Fifi from that album:
