Beer & Tall Buildings

EPISODE 35: CHEECH MARIN

Yesterday B&TB met Cheech Marin at Thomas Paul Fine Art, where he has been busy selecting from an exceptional cast of Chicano artists that he and the gallery will be presenting next week at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair. Our conversation drifts from the definition of “Chicano” to the artists of New America who fit this definition, to a curiously common linguistic phenomenon called “code switching” which, if you listen further, you'll discover is a phenomenon that happens on a subconscious level all the time: in bilingual communication, in monolingual socio-cultural flag waving, and especially, as Cheech explains, in the work of the Chicano artists for whom he advocates.