Linda and the Mockingbirds

Linda and the Mockingbirds

Directed by
James Keach
2020
40 minutes
English & Spanish
"Linda and the Mockingbirds" is a song-soaked, foot-stomping trip straight to the heart of what it means to be Mexican, and to be American, and the complex joy of being both at the same time. Linda is Linda Ronstadt, and the Mockingbirds are Los Cenzontles ("mockingbirds" in the Nahuatl language), a band and a music academy for young people in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ronstadt, musician Jackson Browne, and a busload of Cenzontles travel from Arizona to the little town of Banámichi in Sonora, Mexico, where Ronstadt's grandfather was born. Eugene Rodriguez, a third-generation Mexican-American and musician, founded the Cenzontles 30 years ago to reconnect working-class kids with the dignity and beauty of their ancestral music and culture.