Singing Our Way to Freedom

As I write this review of Paul Espinosa's Singing Our Way to Freedom (2018), I experience a visceral response of chills, tears of anger, and hope. Documentaries like this are more relevant than ever, especially in 2025. Watching historical footage from the 1960s of violence against farmworkers contrasted with modern footage of anti-immigrant policies creates a powerful impact while making me wonder how this summer (2025) will witness similar injustices once again. Espinosa masterfully blends archival footage, still images, and ethnographic interviews with community activists, musicians, family members, and former students to tell not only Chunky's story but how music transcends generations and movements.The eighty-six-minute biographical documentary uses advanced life history methods, tracing Ramón “Chunky” Sánchez's journey from marginalized farm worker to nationally recognized cultural icon within the broader Chicano movement context. Drawing from his anthropological background—PhD from Stanford and professor emeritus at Arizona State University—the director balances observational cinema with participatory documentary techniques. Integration of intimate family eight millimeter footage creates temporal depth, revealing how political consciousness emerges from domestic spaces, not just protests. Special three-dimensional effects animate still photographs while voiceover combined with archival images illustrates individual trajectories within the movement.Cinematographers Vicente Franco and Simone Hogan effectively blend archival family footage with modern interview material, creating visual flow across time periods. Their performance documentation captures both intimate musical moments and larger community gatherings while respecting cultural protocols. The sound design skillfully balances archival audio of varying quality with contemporary recordings. The musical score by Quetzal Flores transforms this documentary from good to essential. As Grammy-winning founder of East LA Chicano rock group Quetzal, Flores mirrors Sánchez's community organizing commitment. He helped organize the 1997 cultural exchange with Zapatista communities in Chiapas and spent decades building “Fandango Sin Fronteras,” connecting Chicano and Veracruzan musicians across borders.Flores's production philosophy involves spending considerable time with artists, creating trust that allows deep interrogation of lyrics and meaning. This isn't background music—it's cultural conversation. Flores weaves Son Jarocho, salsa, R&B, and rock into sonic bridges between Sánchez's world and today's Chicano artistic landscape, effectively tracing transnational evolution while showing how artists thoughtfully combined different musical genres and linguistic traditions while maintaining their political soul.This documentary makes significant theoretical contributions by demonstrating music as constitutive social practice rather than mere cultural reflection. When Sánchez recognizes that “picket lines can be boring,” bringing guitars to transform mobilization into a community celebration, we witness music's transformative political potential. The film engages sophisticated concepts of identity formation and “third space” theory, pointing to subjectivity “that is neither aquí o allá,” contributing valuable evidence to postcolonial discourse on hybrid identities within diaspora communities. As a scholar who has collaborated on ethnographic documentaries with Mexican American and Chicana communities, I find this film ideal for classroom use from high school through graduate levels. The eighty-six-minute structure with ten chapters enables pedagogical flexibility while maintaining narrative coherence.Despite these significant theoretical contributions, the film's treatment of gender dynamics reveals a notable analytical gap. Gender dynamics receive insufficient examination. While documenting that “Sánchez's mother taught him to harmonize as a child” and noting his father's patriarchal stance, Sánchez's wife never speaks—a missed feminist ethnomusicological opportunity. Women musicians are mentioned as contemporary singers but receive minimal attention beyond Joan Baez. Images of Dolores Huerta and Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife, appear without name identification, further marginalizing women's contributions to the movement.Narrator Alma Martinez brings irreplaceable authenticity—the voice of someone who lived this history through decades with Luis Valdez's Teatro Campesino. Her delivery represents cultural testimony from someone who understands the stakes, serving as a bridge between Sánchez's personal story and the broader movement.Having Martinez guide the narrative reflects thoughtful consideration of documentary authority. Rather than relying on outside academic voices to explain the Chicano experience, the film centers on the community's perspective. The bilingual presentation, accompanied by thorough subtitling, demonstrates an understanding of audience needs and cultural authenticity. Four decades of documenting Latino and border communities, combined with anthropological training, position the director to bring essential cultural understanding. The additional educational tool kit with reference materials signals meaningful community engagement.Contemporary relevance extends beyond historical documentation. Watching archival footage of 1960s violence against farm workers contrasted with early 2000s anti-immigrant policies creates a powerful emotional impact while highlighting ongoing struggles for social justice. This temporal bridging makes the documentary particularly valuable for understanding how musical activism remains relevant to current political movements.My heart skipped a beat when I saw footage of the Library of Congress's National Education Association recognition ceremony because I was there at that 2013 Washington, DC, concert. It was an honor to accompany my former Smithsonian mentor, Dr. Olivia Cadaval, and her husband, David. Chunky's influence creates major ripple effects through intergenerational mentorship—the interviewees who were his students are now educators in their local communities, continuing his pedagogical approach. This pattern of musical mentorship, from his mother's early lessons to his own teaching, shows how cultural knowledge is passed down through personal relationships rather than through institutional channels. Additionally, Dr. Estevan Azcona, alongside Dr. Russell Rodriguez, coproduced Rolas de Aztlan: Songs of the Chicano Movement (2005) with Smithsonian Folkways, reinforcing the importance of Chicano protest music within national institutions.As an archive, this documentary preserves musical repertoire, performance practices, and community testimonies alongside important contextual information and intergenerational transmission patterns. Sánchez's career challenges the art/politics binary—he “consistently made music in support of social justice while fostering broad appeal among diverse audiences.” As noted in the media kit, multiple academic reviewers have highlighted its educational effectiveness across various disciplines. The film appeals to audiences interested in American history, ethnic studies, ethnomusicology, and cultural anthropology, showing its ability to bridge disciplines while maintaining scholarly rigor.Singing Our Way to Freedom represents significant ethnomusicological scholarship through its sophisticated documentation of music's role in the formation of social movements and identity construction. For ethnomusicologists, this provides archival preservation, methodological modeling for community-engaged documentation, and theoretical contribution to understanding music's social functions within diaspora communities.The film's emotional power—those chills, tears of anger, and hope—reminds us that effective ethnomusicological documentation must engage both intellect and affect. In our current political moment, this documentary offers not only historical insight but also an urgent reminder of music's enduring capacity to mobilize communities and sustain resistance across generations. This is essential viewing for understanding how culture and politics intersect in the ongoing struggle for dignity and justice.