Oakland hip-hop quartet BRWN BFLO makes it political

By Angela Woodall -- Bay Area rappers BRWN BFLO took their name from the 1972 autobiography by Oscar Zeta Acosta, "Brown Buffalo" — a tale of an alienated Mexican-American lawyer in Oakland whose Chicano pride and sense of history are awakened.The story is a familiar one to the quartet of first and second-generation Mexican Americans who go by the stage names Somos One (Julio Magana, 30), Giant (Luke Soriano, 29), Big Dan (Daniel Mora, 23) and Jacinto (Jacinto Mingura, 19).Except their barrio story is set to a hip-hop beat.On stage, BRWN BFLO is fun and energetic but always political with the intellectual creativity of old-school rappers like Afrika Bambaataa."If you feeling what we feelin' put your hands to the ceiling" they chanted during a rehearsal for their Wednesday night Oakland Metro show in the basement of Somos One's North Oakland house.In the background Jacinto worked his AKAI sampler like Charles Mingus playing bass and the guest DJ Oja resembled Thelonious Monk on the piano, only his fingers were flying across vinyl."They can't kill us all and they can't deport us," rapped Big Dan, his long black hair flying about his face as he sang about coming up Chicano in the United States.Hip-hop, ethnicity and a dedication to political activism brought together the quartet of college-educated Californians who characterize BRWN BFLO as a Chicano-conscious revolutionary group."We're all on the hip-hop tip," So using hip-hop was the logical choice as their medium to communicate with young people grappling with broken schools, broken homes and a broken system. "It was natural for us," Somos One said, sitting on a sofa surrounded by political posters and handwritten Muhammad Ali and Carol Mosley Brown quotes. "We are part of the hip-hop generation. My heart beats to it." Calling themselves "edu-tainers" and block educators, they try to stay close to their community roots and preach the gospel of violence prevention, cultural pride and La Raza resistance that they said students in dysfunctional schools learn piecemeal — if at all. as Jacinto put it.nly they do it through music and multimedia — an approach that has won them recognition.Their music has also gotten attention. They have shared the stage with Goapele, Ise Lyfe, Frontline, Blue Scholars and Zion I, who they credit as one of their influences along with WAR, Fuga, La Collectiva, Entre Musicos, Los Rakas and Wu-Tang Clan. As their success grew and number of shows increased, the group decided to create a board whose members are DJs, students, community advocates and others. "We want to stay relevant to what's going on," said Big Dan, who learned the hard lessons of a Fruitvale district gangbanger with some serious brushes with the law. Now he and the other members of BRWN BFLO try to reach youth for whom gangs seem like a better option than school. Somos One likened their role to a storyteller who brings history alive and turns the "you're at risk of failure" mantra upside down. "We're all survivors."SOURCE:OAKLAND TRIBUNE