• Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen

latinopia.com

Latino arts, history and culture

  • Home
    • Get the Podcasts
    • About
      • Contact Latinopia.com
      • Copyright Credits
      • Production Credits
      • Research Credits
      • Terms of Use
      • Teachers Guides
  • Art
    • LATINOPIA ART
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Film/TV
    • LATINOPIA CINEMA
    • LATINOPIA SHOWCASE
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Food
    • LATINOPIA FOOD
    • COOKING
    • RESTAURANTS
  • History
    • LATINOPIA EVENT
    • LATINOPIA HERO
    • TIMELINES
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • EVENT PROFILE
    • MOMENT IN TIME
    • DOCUMENTS
    • TEACHERS GUIDES
  • Lit
    • LATINOPIA WORD
    • LATINOPIA PLÁTICA
    • LATINOPIA BOOK REVIEW
    • PIONEER AMERICAN LATINA AUTHORS
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Music
    • LATINOPIA MUSIC
    • INTERVIEWS
    • FEATURES
  • Theater
    • LATINOPIA TEATRO
    • INTERVIEWS
  • Blogs
    • Angela’s Photo of the Week
    • Arnie & Porfi
    • Bravo Road with Don Felípe
    • Burundanga Boricua
    • Chicano Music Chronicles
    • Fierce Politics by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
    • Mirándolo Bien with Eduado Díaz
    • Political Salsa y Más
    • Mis Pensamientos
    • Latinopia Guest Blogs
    • Tales of Torres
    • Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr.
    • Julio Medina Serendipity
    • ROMO DE TEJAS
    • Sara Ines Calderon
    • Ricky Luv Video
    • Zombie Mex Diaries
    • Tia Tenopia
  • Podcasts
    • Louie Perez’s Good Morning Aztlán
    • Mark Guerrero’s Chicano Music Chronicles
      • Yoga Talk with Julie Carmen
You are here: Home / Blogs / Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr. / WORD VISION with HARRY GAMBOA, JR. 6.02.13

WORD VISION with HARRY GAMBOA, JR. 6.02.13

June 2, 2013 by

 Bow Tie

 Harry Gamboa Jr & GrandfatherIn 1958, I was seven years old when I witnessed my grandfather, Mariano Perez, undergoing the Catholic ritual of Last Rites.  He was silent as the priest said prayers and my mother and aunts huddled close to their dying father.  I had often ditched classes in elementary school in favor of playing on the streets of Boyle Heights or so that I could accompany my uncles on joyrides, sometimes playing dangerous games with cousins, and sometimes to be indoors watching live TV that carried intensely informative live programming that frequently featured famous movie stars or infamous criminals.  Missing school on that day to be among my family proved to be a pivotal experience.  My grandfather pointed to me and held my hand explaining that it would be important for me to be smarter than everyone else as he explained that I should never be seen in public without a suit and bow tie.  He died later that same evening.

He was born in Mexico City and raised his family of twelve children along with my grandmother in El Paso, Texas, where he was the proprietor of a barber shop.  He was very set in his ways and would never jaywalk or step outside unless he was dressed in a pressed suit, starched shirt, shined shoes, and a bow tie.  He had an influence on my uncles who were usually dressed in stylish suits with each uncle focusing attention on accessories like cufflinks, tie pins, shirt collar architecture, pin stripe suits, specialty buttons, silk lining, secret interior pockets, sleek belt buckles, or silk ties from Italy, Austria, and France.  They would be dressed to kill on a daily basis as their time had finally come to be free of intense ethnic hatred that they faced in early 20th Century America and believed in ongoing moments of celebration for having survived bloody battles in uniform while serving as lethal warriors on behalf of the U.S. during WWII.

In 1968, I attended a rock concert at Shrine Exposition Hall where more than a thousand young people danced, smoked hashish, dropped acid, ate candy, and participated in the free love era while Frank Zappa, B.B. King, The Moody Blues, Eric Burdon, Canned Heat, and other bands performed in the darkened space illuminated by the psychedelic light shows that caused everyone to swoon and fall into a vortex of seemingly inconsequential timelessness.  I was in the midst of a dynamic cultural flux as my Walk Out Girlsinvolvement in the East L.A. Walkouts was at a pitched intensity but was also intermixed with my interest in contemporary music, countercultural poetry, avant-garde fashion experiments, and stylized graffiti.  I walked among my peers in the concert hall wearing a blue gabardine suit with a thin powder blue silk bow tie, I would sometimes dance in the fast lane of Sunset boulevard in Hollywood wearing coat with tails with formal black satin bow tie, and on a weekly basis I would walk, march, run, and skip in celebratory defiance along Whittier boulevard in East L.A. where I could be seen in striped bell bottom slacks, high collars shirts, and oversized mauve velvet bow ties.

By the 1980’s, I was delivering artist talks at museums, universities, public spaces, television, and before live audiences across the United States.  Each event would be an opportunity to present complex issues related to current intellectual and artistic developments of Chicano culture in a contextualized manner that would point to ways of deconstructing the negative stereotypes that are perpetuated by mass media, governmental policies, and inferred by exclusionary practices on many levels of national and international cultural production/representation.  Each talk would be suitably knotted and bowed.

Harry Gamboa JrIn the 21st Century, I’ve had the opportunity to lecture and present my visual works at major U.S. cultural institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Smithsonian Institution, as well as in Mexico with exhibitions at Palacio de Bellas Artes, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Museo de Arte Moderno, along with U.K and E.U. venues such as Tate Liverpool, Centre Pompidou, Universiteit Antwerpen among others.  My lifetime of engagement with cultural practices has played a contributing role in expanding the definition of the Chicano experience to a world that is intrinsically linked via endless immediacy of communication that flows past borders and delivers us all into a quickly evolving future.  I’ll be certain to always be among the fashionably dressed with an impressive bow tie to greet the dawn of an even newer age.

_____________________________________________________________ 

Bow Tie

©2013, Harry Gamboa Jr.

You can contact Harry Gamoba Jr. at: wordvision@yahoo.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Word Vision Harry Gamboa Jr. Tagged With: ASCO, Harry Gamboa Jr., Word Vision

RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 2.20.21 “LESSONS FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION”

February 20, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Lessons of the Great Depression: A Latino Perspective By Ricardo Romo, PhD A New York Times front page article on Sunday [Feb. 7, 2021] titled “As Jobs Dry Up, Renters Pack in and Fall Behind” got my attention. When talking about today’s job losses, poverty, homelessness, and hunger, many commentators often cite statistics from the […]

POLITICAL SALSA Y MÁS with SALOMON BALDENEGRO 02.14.21

February 14, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Trumpism: A Death Cult… “The (Republican) party is his. It doesn’t belong to anybody else.” QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) Whom are you not allowed to criticize? Following the dynamics of the Trump Impeachment – not only the Impeachment itself but also the events that led to it – is at the same time […]

PENSAMIENTOS WITH ALFREDO SANTOS 02.07.21

February 6, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Bienvenidos otra vez a La Voz Newspaper. Primeramente, we would like to call to your attention a number of our stories in this issue. First is the article on page 4 about what the University of California is doing to help farm workers. A lot of people say that farm workers are essential workers, but […]

BURUNDANGA BORICUA DEL ZOCOTROCO “CRISIS DE LA ESPERANZA PARTE IV”

January 31, 2021 By Tia Tenopia

Crisis de la Esperanza Parte IV Esperanza Política Si aceptamos que la inmovilidad en la condición política mas indigna imaginable por seis siglos y bajo dos naciones, se presenta como uno de esos asuntos al que no se le ha dado solución, pues hay desesperanza para llorar hasta la eternidad. Pero de la esperanza vive […]

More Posts from this Category

New On Latinopia

LATINOPIA WORD RANDY JURADO ERTLL “HOPE IN TIMES OF DARKNESS”

By Tia Tenopia on February 9, 2014

Randy Jurado Ertll is a Salvadoran American author and political activist. He and his family fled the civil war in El Salvador by coming to the United States. He grew up in violence-torn South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s but managed to avoid gang life through the intervention of the A Better Chance Scholarship […]

Category: LATINOPIA WORD, Literature

LATINOPIA MUSIC LOS FABULOCOS “UNA PURA Y DOS CON SAL”

By Tia Tenopia on January 4, 2015

Delta Groove Music recording artist Los FabuLocos is a Southern California band whose unique sound, “Cali-Mex,”is a fusion of blues, Americana and Chicano soul music. Band members include Jesús Cuevas, accordion and vocals; Rubén Guaderama, guitar,bajo sexto, tres and vocals; James Barrios, bass and vocals; Mike Molina, drums and Kid Ramos, guitar( not in this […]

Category: LATINOPIA MUSIC, Music

LATINOPIA ART SONIA ROMERO 2

By Tia Tenopia on October 20, 2013

Sonia Romero is a graphic artist,muralist and print maker. In this second profile on Sonia and her work, Latinopia explores Sonia’s public murals, in particular the “Urban Oasis” mural at the MacArthur Park Metro Station in Los Angeles, California.

Category: Art, LATINOPIA ART

© 2021 latinopia.com · Pin It - Genesis - WordPress · Admin