Chulita Vinyl Club

A New Creative Platform for Women of Color

In this club, you don’t need to recite a chant, wear your clothes a certain way or perform ridiculous tasks to get in. In fact, you don’t need to change a thing about yourself. Your individuality is enough—all you’ll need is a rad vinyl collection to go with it.

In April, Resistencia Fest brought the communitytogether at Austin’s Pan Am Park with music, foodand voter registration. Families danced to the livemusic performed by local artists while others enjoyedfresh fruit with chili powder. Important communityfigures also made appearances, including DeliaGarza, Austin’s first Latina City Council Member, tomake an important point about getting the Latinxcommunity involved in civic engagement efforts.Among the attendees were Jennifer Rother and XochiSolis, Chulita Vinyl Club members who were ready tospin some vinyl for the crowd to enjoy.

Chulita Vinyl Club is a collective composed of self-identified women of color who provide music at different events within their community. There are currently seven Chulita Vinyl Clubs in the country including chapters in the Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Launched in December of 2014, the Chulita Vinyl Club already has a massive following on social media with over 15,000 followers on Instagram and over 6,000 followers on its Facebook page. Solis, who works as a full time visual artist, is the leader of the Austin chapter. “There’s no repertoire in the Chulitas,” Solis says. “I think what’s cool for us is to share each other’s personal tastes, and kind of have this larger umbrella of the collective to perform that music. We can perform anything from records that we got handed down [to us] from family members or grandparents, to new things we collect when we go shopping at the local record store.”

All of their music is vinyl. In fact, Solis has been collecting vinyl since she was a teenager. Her music tastes have changed over the years, which has helped cultivate the broad collection that she plays today. There is no specific genre that stands out when Chulitas play. From cumbias and punk rock, to genres like motown and dancehall reggae, their music tastes shine through during their sets. “I am a big fan of ‘80s music and disco funk,” Rother says. “I’m all about anything that will make people dance.”

Chulitas get a chance to create their own mix made straight from their vinyl collections. Every Tuesday, a new mix is published onto the official Chulita Vinyl Club Soundcloud page for the world to hear. The mixes are typically dedicated to an important figure or inspiration that the creator holds close to them. Similar to their live sets, there is not one genre or style that particularly stands out in each of these mixes. One could hear the distinct personality of Chulitas at the Resistencia Fest—the crowd got to hear Tejano music, oldies and Prince all in one sitting.

As a Tejana, Solis is particularly interested in Tejano music. Many generations of her family have been in, according to Solis, the land now called Texas. “I’m really interested in learning the cultural roots coming out of all the Tejano labels that came to be because major labels were not recognizing the musical strains that were very indigenous to this borderland,” Solis says. “[That music] wasn’t being pressed and shared. It’s a story that often goes untold so we get to tell it through the music we play.”

I think in the way that CVC stands as a group of empowered women is a political stance

Many of the Chulitas identify as Tejana, Chicana or Latinx, which has shaped their inspiration and use of music. Their personal experiences as women of color in the areas they grew up in influence their stories, which they express in their original mixes. “We have all of these layers of our identity, and we want them to be represented,” Solis says. “Some of us identify with different levels of cultural, ethnic and racial identities, but all of that adds on to how we are lensed and how we see things.”

Being part of an organization means more than just association. It creates a powerful statement. Many Chulitas are activists who participate in initiatives that help marginalized communities in Austin. Chulita Vinyl Club only plays at events that share the same values as them, whether it’s a nonprofit event, a fundraiser or designing art,

Chulita Vinyl Club stays true to its roots and helps their community in any way they can. “I think in the way that CVC stands as a group of empowered women is a political stance,” Solis says. “The events we choose to do are supporting POC communities, and also communities that require solidarity to create a safe space for action. When we are coming together with other organizations with similarly aligned values, we become stronger and more potent. Playing a show comes with careful consideration on who we want to align ourselves with because we think it’s so powerful when you unite yourself with another person,” Solis says.

What makes Chulita Vinyl Club unique is the open space for women of color to express themselves and be who they are through doing what they love . For Rother, being part of Chulita Vinyl Club has given her a new sense of community with people who share similar identities. “Community is a big thing for me,” Rother says. “It means even more as women and people of color, which I feel like in today’s present times is important more than ever.”

Resistencia Fest encompassed all the things that Chulita Vinyl Club stands for; community, culture and music. Although there are many outlets in the city of Austin where one can go to express themselves creatively, Chulita Vinyl Club gives the mic, or in this case, the turntable, to members of the collective to share their stories without interruption. “I guess it sounds strange, but what I wish for CVC in the future is for it to not be such an oddity,” Solis says. “I think so many people are like, ‘Wow, there are brown women doing this.’ We enjoy getting to talk about it and sharing it but hopefully this isn’t something that’s out of the ordinary and something that’s very equally represented.”

In such a short amount of time, Chulita Vinyl Club became a known success. As the collective grows, Chulita Vinyl Club will strive to inspire listeners, break barriers, tell stories and stand with communities to advocate change all through the love of music. “I am a woman of color, I come from Mexican heritage and this is what I have to say,” Solis says. “In CVC, I at least have a posse that gives me strength to be able to have a space to say it. A very simple thing can be very powerful like that.”

Words by Jennifer Hernandez

Photos by Aaron Dehn