Man Overcomes Loss Through 'Day Of The Dead' Music

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Matt Munoz leans against the tiled wall of the old Nile Theater and taps his legs. He teases two passersby that he would play for 50 cents, then laughs a soulful laugh.

He’s a percussionist, a sax player, a product manager for a hip media company and a Latino deeply affected by Day of the Dead.

“This past year I’ve lost a lot of friends, a lot of acquaintances. I lost one of my best friends, Rey Rosales. He was there last year. I was thinking about him all day,” Munoz says.

Munoz had just taken ABC23 Managing Editor Nick Belardes into the transformed opera house and movie theater to show off where the largest Day of the Dead celebration would be held in Bakersfield.

Inside, the theater was eerily silent and dark. Old movie posters of dead movie stars adorned the walls.

The theater had yet to be decorated with flower-filled altars, Dia de los Muertos paintings, paper and wooden skeleton sculptures, candy skulls and more. The stage itself was black and silent as folk dancers and a Latino skeleton band was yet to perform.

Slideshow: Dia De Los Muertos At The Nile Theater

There was more light near the entrance by the theater’s bar. “Over here is the Latina, Rita Hayworth,” Munoz says, pointing to a framed poster. “It wasn’t her real name,” he adds. He shows off posters of James Dean, Judy Garland, Max Von Sydow and others, all dead movie stars.

In a city in Hollywood’s backyard and torn with ethnic strife, it’s no wonder the Day of the Dead is larger than ever, having outgrown a renovated mall in 2006 to fill a swanky theater-turned-club.

In recent months, Bakersfield has been known for its ideological battles in both the media and its City Council. While council member David Couch recently proposed English as the official language, he also called for Bakersfield to no longer be a sanctuary city to migrant farm workers and undocumented aliens. In the media, African-American 1560 KNZR talk show host Ralph Bailey publicly denounced Dolores Huerta and the UFW. He claimed they were badgering him as well. In 2006 several immigration protests and marches rocked the normally politically quiet city.

“I think right now is the cleansing period,” says Munoz. “People need to express themselves. We’re in America, we can express ourselves the way we’d like to.”

Whether people are for illegal immigration or not, Munoz says he’s just glad it’s being talked about in public rather than behind closed doors. Yet for the Day of the Dead, Munoz says, “We’re keeping politics out of the celebration. It’s not just about Latinos. It’s about people all over the world. It’s about everybody who has passed.”

Munoz works for Bakotopia.com, writes news articles, makes interview and music-oriented podcasts and networks socially with artists from all over the world. He spends his days working in a unique environment of catering to the hip and cool ideas of digital media and the art and music underground in a multi-ethnic community. He also delves into a Latino magazine that works out of the same office, MAS magazine. It’s a way Munoz is able to stay close to his roots while leading digital media in a community representing multiculture.

Bakersfield, Calif., is a town of mystique and seems to be transforming. The changes show in events like Day of the Dead, which has grown into more than a dozen events in and around Bakersfield, and has become a multicultural celebration, rather than stereotyped as a macabre Mexican-only day of ghouls, skeletons and fireworks.

Bakersfield’s mystique is that it was once known for its swanky highway dinner theaters. Think Route 66 on steroids. That was the power of old Highway 99 Basque dinner theaters with stages that even Johnny Carson once braved.

The Nile Theater has its own ghosts to reckon with being an old downtown 1906 opera house, and then movie theater since the 1920s, converted into a jazzy nightclub of swanky downtown patrons and music enough to fill an empty soul.

It’s such clubs and events that make cities, and that bring the cultures together.

Munoz, though a media guru, is also a musician and singer. His band, Mento Buru, is a Bakersfield cultural legacy. The Latino ska sounds of his band takes the wisdom of the Buena Vista Social Club and mixes in the heritage of working class Latinos from central California.

Their music mixes originals with tributes. The song “La Murga,” originally by Hector Lavoe, the Puerto Rican salsa singer who died in 1993, is a tribute to one of Munoz's favorite salsa singers. The recent film, “El Cantante” chronicles Lavoe’s dramatic life and stars Marc Antony and Jennifer Lopez.

Munoz himself is from the tiny town of McFarland, Calif., where he formed punk and reggae roots that naturally fused in the 1990s into a ska-centric nightclub-styled cultural band filled with guitars, horns, sax and sometimes accordions and violins. Central California and Los Angeles see only a handful of such styled music.

Mento Buru will be dressed and painted like skeletons for Day of the Dead. “We bring that whole concept to life, from canvas into actual band playing like a skeleton band,” Munoz says.

He claims performing on Day of the Dead is an act of celebration that pays tribute to those who have passed. He says performing brings back memories of being with friends listening to music. It’s a cleansing ritual that he needs.

“As I’ve gotten older I’ve had to deal with friends and family passing. Celebrating Dia de los Muertos has made it easier to deal with it. I don’t fear death as much,” Munoz says.

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