Artown Closing Night: Y La Bamba

To declare one thematic narrative from Lucha, Y La Bamba’s seventh album, would be to chisel away a story within a story within a story into the illusion of something singular. “Lucha is a symbol of how hard it is for me to tackle healing, live life, and be present,” Luz Elena Mendoza Ramos, lead vocalist and producer of Y La Bamba, 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. The album explores multiplicity—love, queerness, Mexican American and Chicanx identity, family, intimacy, yearning, loneliness—and chronicles a period of struggle and growth for Mendoza Ramos as a person and artist.