~ By STEPHANIE HOLMES ~
Special to the Monitor
September 24th, 2004 McAllen Texas
It was interesting to see the names of hip-hop pioneers such as Mellow Man Ace appear in the documentary Pass the Mic!. I viewed the film around the time of the Latin Grammy hype, so it was just the right time to lean back listen to the stories behind The Brown Town Looters, Molotov, Psycho Realm and other old school hip-hop acts.
For true lovers of hip-hop, the movement spun out of control when the music transitioned from being a regional art form in the 1970s and 1980s to a mass-produced genre that is still widely broadcast for mainstream audiences.
When hip-hop started to become more well known, documentarian Richard Montes said the media gave all credit to the African-American emcees, leaving Latino artists in the dark. Montes wanted to make a documentary that told another side of the birth of hip-hop, so he started by searching for musicians that he enjoyed listening to during his youth.
While Montes was on his search for the musicians and their stories, he found a bigger story about the darker side of the music industry and how it splintered emerging Latino hip-hop communities of the time.
Another surprise for the filmmaker was that Montes’ curiosity for finding these hip-hop icons was not isolated. He and producer Jessica Martinez, a Pharr native, were in the midst of making plans for their documentary to be screened at hip-hop festivals, film festivals and university settings when the film got picked up for distribution in 2003.
This year, they are bringing the documentary to CineSol to show Martinez’s friends and family her work and other locals the stories behind many of their favorite hip-hop acts. The documentary features hip-hop artists speaking in unscripted prose. The in-their-own-words style documentary tells of Latin hip-hop’s rise to the mainstream. This above-ground approach lasted for several years before it fizzled out and crawled back underground.
A return wasn’t such a bad things for some artists, like Molotov, as they were making more money without the middlemen that lurk inside the guts of a recording contract. The artists were accessible and easy to find, but it took Montes and Martinez four years to complete the film due to personal and financial struggle.
“I started this project while I was still in college. I was meeting a lot of artists. The main (benefactor) for the film was George Montes. He was my brother and he served as an executive producer for Pass The Mic!. He passed away in a car accident three years into the movie. It set us back personally, emotionally and financially,” Montes said. “He never got the see the movie before it was finished. Just days before his passing, we talked about our dreams. Now, I’m living his dream. There are times when I want to quit and give up, but I would be letting him down and I can’t let that happen.”
The film created some positive buzz about the artists and unleashed another healing process for some of them. For those that left the music industry, there is some bitterness that lingers, Montes said.
“It has to do with the way record labels have (dealt) with Latino hip-hop. You have to play oldies in the background or live up to the (West coast) cholo gangster rap image in order to get signed to a major label,” Montes said. “I really think that it’s changing a bit. We have a bigger variety of rappers out there now.” Some of the artists whose careers were cut short because of racial barriers in hip-hop in the ’80s and ’90s found new life in their creative work.
“By the time we were done with this movie, it actually helped a lot of artists that were on the film secure major labels,” Montes said. “I feel that this film helped open doors. I hear about artists getting signed now and getting played on MTV.”
Stephanie Holmes covers features, entertainment and general assignments for The Monitor.