Photo by Whitney Devin
Story by Kennedy Williams
The Chulita Vinyl Club helps its members and those in the broader Latin American community in Austin hold space, celebrate, and reminisce as gentrification in East Austin wipes out significant communal spaces.
Spinning vinyl records and challenging erasure may seem disparate. But for members of the Chulita Vinyl Club, a self-described “all-girl, all-vinyl club for self-identifying womxn of color,” this is common practice.
Claudia Saenz, also known as DJ Teardrop, founded Austin’s Chulita Vinyl Club in 2014 in reaction to the lack of diversity in the late-night music scene. Saenz works in the non-profit industry and collects vinyl during her time off.
“Creating Chulita Vinyl Club was important because I didn’t see brown girls like myself behind turntables when I was going out,” Saenz said. “I believe that if you don’t see yourself somewhere you feel like a space isn’t for you.”
The male-dominated environment of the entertainment industry is difficult to navigate, Saenz said.
“Women are often misunderstood and underestimated on their technical skills, from people believing that we don’t know how to set up turntables to doubting that the vinyl records we play are ours,” she said.
Challenging widespread gender and race-based exclusion within the nightlife scene spurred the expansion of Chulita Vinyl Club. There are now chapters in San Antonio, the Rio Grande Valley, and northern and southern California.
Although thousands of miles separate these chapters, they remain connected through vinyl. DJs in the collective spin vinyl exclusively, allowing them to tell stories and remember their histories.
“Chulita as a whole spins vinyl because it activates musical archives that otherwise would not be activated,” said Xochi Solis, head of Chulita Vinyl Club’s Austin chapter. “There is a fear of erasure that moves us forward.”
Solis descends from an Austin-based lineage that goes back several generations. Along with DJing for Chulita Vinyl Club, Solis is a visual artist whose work layers color and texture with found imagery that documents various expressions of the Latino experience. Being a part of Chulita Vinyl Club has helped with asserting an identity, she said.
“It was through Chulita that I learned that I had pretty important Tejano and Chicano Soul artists in my family,” Solis said. “Finding records with music from family members that I have never met has helped me think about my legacy, my lineage, and my place of origin.”
This also holds true for Camila Torres-Castro, a member of the Austin chapter of Chulita Vinyl Club. In 2016, Torres-Castro migrated to Austin from Guadalajara, Mexico to pursue a doctorate in Iberian and Latin American Language and Culture. Chulita Vinyl Club helped with understanding her Mexican heritage, she said.
“My grandfather lives in a town in Michoacán, Mexico and I think he knows he’s going to die soon, “Torres-Castro said. “He recently gave me his whole record collection and I learned a lot about him because some of the records have notes or dates.”
Cultural productions such as music and dance are significant because they help proclaim the presence of marginalized communities, said Cary Cordova, associate professor in the Center for Mexican American studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Cultural productions become incredibly important in showing that there are models out there, that you are not alone, and that you exist as a part of a larger community,” Cordova said. “They also offer documentation of an existence and presence.”
As gentrification continues, recording histories of black and Latino people in Austin becomes imperative, said Bo McCarver, president of Blackland Community Development Corporation.
“The culture of East Austin is symbolic at this point,” McCarver said. “The population that supported it has been displaced and the real culture is gone.”
Gentrification in Austin is often thought of as a new occurrence by those who are unfamiliar with its pervasiveness. But gentrification is the legacy of the 1928 City Plan which displaced black people from west Austin to east of Interstate 35. According to this plan, black residents were living in “practically all sections of the city” on land that was “valuable.” This led to the creation of a “Negro District” in east Austin where “value of the land was very low.”
As property taxes rise in East Austin, those who cannot afford to keep their homes must relocate to the suburbs, often Elgin and Round Rock. This displacement leads to the loss of cultural relics and communal spaces, said McCarver.
“Natural community events where people get together and sing, and read, and perform don’t occur unless you have a true community,” McCarver said. “We have had a loss of a community because people don’t know each other.”
East Austin businesses have lost their leases and been demolished because of gentrification. However, the loss of communal spaces such as homes is most devastating for McCarver.
“Gentrification takes out the places you never hear of: churches, small bars, and peoples back porches,” McCarver said. All of these spaces became venues for people in East Austin to commune and play music.
Spaces that allow the Latino community in Austin to celebrate and gather are disappearing, allowing venues that have survived gentrification to be treasured. One of these places is La Perla, a Tejano bar where Chulita Vinyl Club DJs frequently.
“Making choices of where we put our bodies and where we help put dollars is the biggest part of how we are choosing to navigate the atmosphere of this current political time and the gentrification of Austin,” Solis said.
Allowing the audience to experience joy during tumultuous times is at the core of Chulita Vinyl Club events, Solis said.
“In a time when every day can feel like a battlefield, Chulita events are a place where people can come to have a good time, be themselves, and explore themselves,” Solis said. “The space that Chulita provides from behind the decks allows people to be whatever they want to be.”
Kennedy Williams is a third-year journalism student from Dallas, Texas. You can follow her on Twitter @kennedy_symone
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