Sonic Trace

As they prepare to launch their website, Sonic Trace producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and her team decided to make a video portrait of some of the stories they’ve collected in the past year:
For the past year, the Sonic Trace team has been hard at work documenting pockets of LA that become gateways into villages and towns across Mexico and Central America. You might have heard our …

KCRW’s Sonic Trace has been conducting a whirlwind tour of cultural holiday celebrations around Los Angeles. For their last holiday season installment, producers Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and Eric Pearse-Chavez visited Our Lady of Victory Parish in Compton. Every year on January 6th, this community does a re-enactment of the arrival of the Magi. Mass ends with candy, a gift give-away and a huge party with a …

Sonic Trace producers Eric Pearse-Chavez and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes spent almost a month exploring the various Christmas celebrations and traditions within LA’s Mexican communities, and have some incredible photos to show for it. Among the more unique traditions is La Noche de los Rabanos, The Night of the Radishes:
¡Feliz 2013! The beginning of a new year has arrived, but for the past three weeks millions of …

KCRW’s Sonic Trace is a story-telling project that begins in the heart of Los Angeles and crosses into Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. We gather stories from immigrants all over LA in our portable soundbooth, La Burbuja (The Bubble), creating an oral history mosaic of the city. This series of short profiles was produced for KCRW’s Morning Edition.
42-year-old Aldo Velasco was born in Mexico. …

Today, thousands in southern California celebrate one of Mexico and Latin America’s most important religious figures: the Virgin of Guadalupe. The tale of the Virgin’s first appearance centuries ago is central to the story of Mexico. But the Virgin of Guadalupe isn’t the only virgin in the Mexican religious pantheon. Others are venerated as well, and they all cross paths here in Los Angeles. KCRW’s Saul …

In this story, producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortes looks to find meaning during this year’s Day of the Dead celebration.
In Mexico, Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, is an important national holiday where people honor their loved ones that passed away by throwing them a party. The celebration is a tradition inherited from the country’s pre-Hispanic past. It falls on November 2.
These days, it has …

Los Angeles is home to one of the most diverse populations in the world. The largest number of people in the city is of Latino origin, but there are many ethnic groups within Latin-American culture, like the enclave of Zapotec villagers from Southern Mexico who have migrated to LA’s Koreatown.
In this story, we follow Julian Gonzalez. Julian is a teenage tuba player from LA who heads …

Los Angeles is home to one of the most diverse populations in the world. The largest number of people in the city is of Latino origin. But there are a lot of different ethnic groups within Latin-American culture, like the enclave of Zapotec villagers from Southern Mexico who have migrated to L-A’s Koreatown. We’ve been focusing on migrants, who come from the tiny village of …

Santa María Tavehua is a tiny village in the hillsides of southern Mexico. It is known for its ceramic arts made from an indigenous orange clay. For centuries, the people of Tavehua made pots and plates, cups and bowls to barter and trade among themselves. In the modern economy, their work shifted to decorative pieces, specifically these little bunnies playing instruments. In recent decades, their …

Since the 1970s, Los Angeles has become a hub for Mexico’s indigenous Zapotecs, a culture that predates the Spanish conquest of the Americas.
There is a deep connection between Santa María Tavehua, a tiny village in the hillsides of southern Mexico, and LA’s Koreatown, where more than half the village now lives.
This is a story is about putting down roots. We hear from 17-year-old Jocelynda Salvador. …