Music

Photo by Gustavo ArellanoYAOH
ICNOCUICATL
(SELF-RELEASED SEVEN-TRACK DEMO)I'm glad The Orange County Registeris so blissfully ignorant about Santa Ana's brewing Latino/Chicano/ask-them-what-they-want-to-be-called music scene. That way, this humble scribe alone is left to bring you the likes of Yaoh, the newest addition to the city's collective of punks, metalheads and indigenous players. He's a rapper/mixer extraordinaire who also happens to run the Cultural Center of Anáhuac in Tustin, where musicians and DJs meet every Thursday to cultivate the political side of their sound. On the rap/sonic experiment Icnocuicatl (Songs of Reflection), Yaoh stakes his claim to the movement with his assertive voice, unpretentious beats and activist-but-not-angry lyrics that urge everyone to join in the struggle against oppression ("Where are all the warriors at?" he wonders on "Youth Call"). Icnocuicatl should add luster to OC's flaccid rap scene while cementing the fact that the Santa Ana kids definitely know their rhymes, not to mention the meanings behind them. Even more intriguing are Yaoh's "Revolution 9"-esque doctorings of various conversations (actually eyewitness accounts from the Salvadoran civil war) and songs (a Lila Downs tune played backward) to create new tracks that are weird, conscious, yet good enough to blast from your car. Icnocuicatl is something sorely needed: sonic booms that make an aural and a political point.

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