January 13, 2012
As we have previously reported, KCET in Los Angeles has been up to some seriously awesome (as in serious subject matter AND ALSO awesome) stuff for their Departures series about L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood.
They have struck again by imagining what a 1905 mixtape from that ‘hood would sound like. Can we get some Spanish and Native American folk song beats, por favor?
El Alisal (via KCET).
As it turns out, many of these turn-of-the-last-century jams would have been recorded at El Alisal, which was constructed between 1898-1910 by journalist and Native Americans rights advocate Charles Fletcher Lummis, who walked across the continent from the east coast (or Ohio, depending on who you ask) to Los Angeles, where he became the City Librarian. Adorable!
Today El Alisal is, quite fittingly, the headquarters of the Southern California Historical Society, which is open to the public on weekends. Fieldtrip!
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October 12, 2011
Highland Park,circa 1905 (via highlandpark wordpress).
This week, Southern and Central California public television station KCET released the first chapter of Departures: Highland Park, its new transmedia series. (And not a moment too soon; Jeffrey Deitch shouted out Highland Park as a center of LA’s emerging arts scene in today’s New York Times.)
Weaving together diverse storylines across multiple platforms using new and traditional media, Departures chronicle the largely under-told / untold history of the Highland Park neighborhood in Northeast Los Angeles.
For hundreds of years, its close proximity to the Arroyo Seco tributary has attracted a constant flow of settlers who have created and layered Highland Park’s cultural, economic, and built identity.
At the turn of the 20th century, after a major population surge, Los Angeles’ identity as a cosmopolitan metropolis began to emerge. One hundred fascinating years later, the same remains true today, as Highland Park continues to influence the pulse of contemporary Los Angeles.
Why to tune in, after the jump.
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