Pop Conference 2025

This roundtable will explore the fashions present and developed within the Los Angeles Eastside sound music scenes throughout different historical eras by showcasing key fashion items that will be part of the upcoming A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound. This is a multi-media exhibition that explores the dynamic musical influences of East Los Angeles artists who developed an eclectic musical identity and history that, against all odds, developed a rich musical tradition that became known all over the world in the last century and into the present.
The roundtable will center the discussion on the concept of self-fashioning as one of the key elements within the Eastside Sound music scenes, past and present. As Marci McMahon reminds us, “the term self-fashioning highlights the intersections of dress with bodily performance and the possibility of these sites in the negotiation of gendered and racialized ideologies.” Ethnic Mexican women —who have long been a part of the Eastside music scenes— have pushed against gendered ideologies of domesticity through self-fashioning as pachucas or reinventing punk-rock and gothic aesthetics in the 1970s and 1980s, even when faced with a scarcity of materials due to their marginalized economic status. In the 1990s and the beginning of the twentieth-first century, artists within the “Chicano Groove” scene used their clothing, such as t-shirts, jackets, and shoes to highlight their connection to their Mexican roots, messages on jerseys a form of social commentary, while also displaying their pro-immigrant and global-left solidarities. The participants will assess how clothing, and the look of the Eastside Sound community (artists and fans) are more than just fashion statements, but in fact are artistic expressions that highlight the development of their Eastside identity formation.
Piero F. Giunti and Jorge N. Leal the exhibit co-curators, along with textile and fashion conservator Laleña A. Vellanoweth, will showcase and discuss both visually and on site, various attires worn by musicians and fans of the Eastside sound, such as the suit zoot worn by Lalo Guerrero, early Chicano music icon, the coats worn by Thee Midniters in their performances, the leather jackets customized by Chicano hip-hop group Aztlan Underground, artisan-made shoes worn by Marisoul, the singer of La Santa Cecilia among other fashion-related objects worn and created by fans of the Eastside Sound artists. Media and cultural studies scholar Veronica Paredes will moderate the conversation.

Moderator: Veronica Paredes, University of California, Los Angeles

Piero F. Giunti
Jorge Nicolás Leal, University of California, Riverside
Laleña Arenas Vellanoweth