Image: "Estudillo Adobe," 1875, courtesy USC Libraries and the California Historical Society. 
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

El Cazador (The Hunter)

"Captain of a Ship' and "The Sighs Come from Here" 
Image: "Eddie Rodriguez and Captain Madrid," 1950, courtesy Los Angeles Public Library 
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

"El Capitan de un Barco" and "Los Suspiros de Aqui Salen"

Image: “Mexican Couple of Friends,” nd, courtesy USC Libraries and the California Historical Society 
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Dia Feliz (Happy Day)

Image: “Governor Pío Pico,” nd, courtesy Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley 
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Cuando yo Contempla (When I Contemplate)

Image: “José Ruiz and Josefa Abila Wedding Portrait,” nd, courtesy UC Berkeley 
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Cuando me Enamoro (When I Fall in Love)

Image: “Church Interior, San José, NM,” 1898, USC Libraries and the California Historical Society
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Contentate Y Dame Un Beso (Be Happy and Give me a kiss)

Image: Women cooking tortillas at a relief camp after the Saint Francis Dam Flood (1928), courtesy Los Angeles Times Photographic Collection, UCLA Special Collections

Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This playlist includes all the tracks you can hear in the  Picturing Mexican America app as you travel along LA Metro's E Line. It comprises a collection of songs García recorded on wax cylinders with Lummis, and a binaural soundscape produced in collaboration with the Autry Museum of the American West.

Barquillera (The Wafer Maker)

Image: “Portrait of a Man,” 1876, Los Angeles Public Library
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Ay Que Horrible es Vivir sin Esperanza (How Horrible it is to Live without Hope)

Image: “Bride and Groom,” ca 1900, courtesy California State Library 
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Acercate Bien (Come Closer)

Image: "Man in Chair," ca. 1890, courtesy Los Angeles Public Library.
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

El Desvalido (The Underdog)

Image: “Mexican Art Display,” 1939, courtesy Los Angeles Public Library
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Chata Cara de Bule (The Gourd's Flat Face)

Image: “Hermina de la Guerra,” 1870, courtesy Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Ya Llego la Hora (The Time Has Come)

Image: “Women walking near the old stairs at San Gabriel Mission,” 1896, courtesy UCLA Libraries 
Manuela García was an early-twentieth century, LA-based, Mexican American artist who collaborated with the historian and City Librarian Charles Lummis to document the music of Mexican Los Angeles. This song is included on a playlist of tracks you can hear in the Picturing Mexican America app (available for iOS and Android) as you travel along LA Metro's E Line.

Los Rizos (The Curls)

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Welcome to “Daily Life in Early Los Angeles,” a self-guided bike tour through nineteenth-century Mexican LA.  No bike?  No problem!  Most of this ride can be walked, and you can follow all of it on Google Maps using Street View.  Download a PDF of the route at: http://www.laexplorersclub.com/self-guided-tours This ride is a collaboration between Picturing Mexican America and the Los Angeles Explorers Club, designed to get you out and about, experiencing the city afresh.  Los Angeles in the mid-nineteenth century was, as John Mack Faragher describes it in Eternity Street, a “violent place in a violent time,” (xi).  Nevertheless, people still managed to have a lot of fun here. What did early Angelenos do to entertain themselves before Union Station, and what do entertainment, popular culture, and daily life in the nineteenth-century reveal about the racial and ethnic tensions in Los Angeles today in 2020?  Ride along with us as we explore that very question and uncover the hidden histories of some DTLA landmarks!

Daily Life in Early Los Angeles

A 15-minute soundscape introducing the life and works of Manuela García, produced by the Autry Museum of the American West, https://theautry.org/ (Image: Manuela García and friends, ca 1900, courtesy The Autry Museum)

Manuela García Soundscape

Welcome to “Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker - The Woman Behind Santa Monica,” a self-guided bike tour through Santa Monica and West Los Angeles. Many of you, we’re sure, have strolled along the beach in Santa Monica or hopped on the freeway near the Veteran’s Administration complex, but you may not know the area’s rich and interesting past, much of it involving, or thanks to, Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker. You might think of Santa Monica as the Berkeley of Los Angeles, but it had racial covenants, segregated beaches and its fair share of discrimination. It’s just fascinating that this mostly white city with a kind of racist history was made possible through a Mexican woman’s philanthropy.

Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker: The Woman Behind Santa Monica

Un paisaje sonoro de 15 minutos que presenta la vida y obra de Manuela García, producido por el Museo Autry del Oeste Americano, https://theautry.org/.

Popular tracks by Picturing Mexican America