Cultural mainstream is still pretty strong, even in these faux quirky digital times. Folks like to think we have access to everything and know about more stuff that ever, but the algorithm is still driven by pre-conceived biases, and so much shit exists outside the mainstream. There's all these non-mainstream living legends who exist, and do their thing to a big successful scale, and it's integral to certain scenes, but the mainstream still has no clue. Sunny Ozuna is an example. Dude has been making the brown-eyed soul bangers for decades, probably most famously with Sunny & The Sunliners (or Sunny y Los Sunliners, depending on your heritage). A lot of his classics have been reissued through some modern souldie labels, but Sunny himself is still out here, at age 80, playing big Chicano car shows and regional festivals, and pretty much still a staple wherever there's a large Mexican-American population.
It's summertime cookout season, and I remember being at the neighbor's cookouts back growing up, blessed to have experienced a non-white majority environment at an early age (to learn humility and how to shut the fuck up and get along better), and I think about this cultural mainstream vs non-mainstream norms with cookout season, because Frankie Beverly & Maze feels like cookout music to me. Just hearing certain Maze songs just bring those vibes, completely, like I can imagine the potato salad and barbecue chicken in front of me lol. But the mainstream (meaning, white culture) doesn't even know about that shit. Even in all the genres that the mainstream has Christopher Columbused over the decades, certain things like Maze or Sunny seem to somehow still escape the nets.
Anyways, Sunny is a classic, and for the most part, I've ended more DJ sets I've had than not with the 45 of Sunny & The Sunglows "Smile Now Cry Later" played at 33. It's my "turn out the lights, the party's over" song. This ain't that song, but it's still a banger. Sunny's got a deep discography of them.
It's summertime cookout season, and I remember being at the neighbor's cookouts back growing up, blessed to have experienced a non-white majority environment at an early age (to learn humility and how to shut the fuck up and get along better), and I think about this cultural mainstream vs non-mainstream norms with cookout season, because Frankie Beverly & Maze feels like cookout music to me. Just hearing certain Maze songs just bring those vibes, completely, like I can imagine the potato salad and barbecue chicken in front of me lol. But the mainstream (meaning, white culture) doesn't even know about that shit. Even in all the genres that the mainstream has Christopher Columbused over the decades, certain things like Maze or Sunny seem to somehow still escape the nets.
Anyways, Sunny is a classic, and for the most part, I've ended more DJ sets I've had than not with the 45 of Sunny & The Sunglows "Smile Now Cry Later" played at 33. It's my "turn out the lights, the party's over" song. This ain't that song, but it's still a banger. Sunny's got a deep discography of them.
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