Through the 1940s, Southern California became the prominent settlement for Mexican immigrants, post war. Communities began substantially filling up, creating an emergence of Latin Music throughout the city of Los Angeles. Lionel “Chico” Sesma became a prominent figure during this time and was credited with the spread of Latin music, a “true bridge-building pioneer of Los Angeles Bilingual radio who left a long lasting impacting on the broadcasting industry” (Areyan 2010). Chico Sesma was ultimately a prevailing radio personality and producer of Latin music concerts of artists during the 1950s through the 1970s. He became one of the most influential artists in the Chicano community, who assisted in the uprising of many other Mexican-American…show more content… It was an independent station interested in “specialized radio programming: disc jockeys, or personalities, staging a program designed for a special segment of the community” (Johnson 2013). The idea of creating a bilingual program derived from radio stations and record companies becoming aware of the successes that could be made, postwar Los Angeles, on cultural politics of musical forms they encountered (Johnson 2013). He began by slightly introducing two Latin music recordings per half hour, from Artists of Tito Puento, Benny Moré, Machito, Tito Rodriguez, or Pérez Prado; but in just three months Sesma had converted too an all Latin music format. As the months progressed, the support of the Mexican-American community had converted the show into a three-hour broadcast. As Sesma became increasingly more allocated as a radio broadcaster, he took time to research record stores downtown to determine the musical category that was currently in high demand. When he realized the majority of the community listened to rancheras, mariachis and boleristas; he decided to listen to a few records and if he enjoyed the music he would broadcast it to his…show more content… Chico Sesma along with his radio broadcasting put together his own orchestra who released a disc of an Extended Play 45 RPM. This discography consisted of the styling of cha cha chá, with songs named “Cha Cha Bounce” and “Lulluby in Cha Cha.” Throughout the disc, there are only a series of instruments playing such as the Guiro, piano, trombone and several other percussion instruments to make out the cha cha chá style that, during the 1950s, was in extremely high demand. Since “dance” was a tremendous crave during this era, Sesma involved himself with this specific style to both concur with the popular demand and simply because he was a Latin musician and even he was a admirer of this and other Latin music
