The Brief

This story  was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on July 1, 2025.

In 2015, photographer and videographer Piero F. Giunti had a dream about Art Kane’s iconic “A Great Day in Harlem” photograph featuring 57 jazz musicians — including Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie — on the steps of a Harlem brownstone.

Originally shot in 1958 for Esquire magazine, the photo followed Giunti for weeks, popping up in conversations and on social media. When a musician friend mentioned the photograph at a Boyle Heights recording studio, he knew he had to honor Eastside musicians in the same spirit.

“When Black and Brown people weren’t allowed to play the Sunset Strip and the clubs downtown, East L.A. always had its doors open,” said Giunti, who was born and raised in L.A. to a Mexican mother and Italian father. “There was Lalo’s Nightclub, The Paramount ballroom, Catholic Youth Organization (C.Y.O.), which became Self Help Graphics. East L.A. has always been a safe haven for every genre.”

Giunti teamed up with musician and historian Mark Guerrero, whose father, Lalo Guerrero, is considered the “Father of Chicano Music.” Together with UC Riverside Chicanx history professor Jorge Leal and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes senior curator Karen Crews Hendon, they co-curated “A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound,” the largest exhibit of its kind, which opened Saturday at LA Plaza.

Co-curators of “A Great Day in East L.A.” exhibit at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. From left: Piero F. Giunti, Esperanza Sanchez, Karen Crews Hendon, Mark Guerrero and Jorge Leal.

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Courtesy of LA Plaza.

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Giunti shot 170 black and white portraits of 450 artists, including East L.A. DIY jarocho punk band ¡Aparato! and Indigenous Chicano rap-rock band Aztlan Underground standing proudly in full performance attire. The portraits form the visual centerpiece of the exhibition.

“I’ve been a part of the East L.A. music scene since 1963. I know everybody, played with everybody, worked with everybody,” said Guerrero, 76, who as a teenager sang in the popular band Mark & the Escorts, playing at dances with Thee Midniters and The Premiers. In 1972, he released the socially-conscious hit protest song “I’m Brown” on Capitol Records. “The interviews we conducted are basically conversations with my peers.”

In 1998, Guerrero started chronicling Chicano and East L.A. musicians who, like himself, are often ignored by mainstream media. His website is an encyclopedia of untold Eastside music stories that helped inform the exhibit, which spans 75 years–from the 1950s to the present–and features 500 artifacts, including rare photographs, clothing, instruments, concert tickets and posters of over 450 artists who are from, inspired by or are beloved on the Eastside.

A woman plays an instrument during the opening of “A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound,” on June 28, 2025.

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Courtesy of LA Plaza.

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Scribbled Los Lobos song lyrics, a sleeveless polyester pantsuit worn by tribal electronica duo Mezklah, soul singer Brenton Wood’s very own grey wool zoot suit and the dress that Martha Gonzalez of Quetzal wore to the Grammy Awards are on display for the first time. Band merch like bright cotton T-shirts, CDs and stickers, nostalgic flyers, records and out-of-print magazines fill El Rockero Store, one of six themed galleries that include The Venue, The Garage, Radio Rebelde, From East Los to the World and Los Lobos’ very own Come On, Let’s Go!

“The biggest fear of a project like this is people passing away,” said Giunti, citing Wood, who died January 3, and Rudy Salas of Tierra, who died in 2020. “It made it even more important to capture as many artists as possible. No artist was left behind.”

The project, which took 10 years to compile interviews, shoot photos and gather paraphernalia from community donors and the curators’ and artists’ own collections, drew hundreds of musicians and music aficionados to the opening.

“We would crash weddings to hear Thee Midniters,” Olivia Rodriguez, 82, who grew up in East L.A. and attended the opening with friends, said with a laugh. “One night we saw them open for The Temptations at Union Hall. They didn’t charge much. It was like $2. Shows were jam-packed with wall-to-wall people. Sometimes you couldn’t even dance, but they sounded fantastic. We cheered them on and they played for hours.”

The exhibition opened amid ICE raids and uprisings — a resonance not lost on those involved. The Eastside sound has long intersected with social justice movements: bands like Tierra and Los Illegals provided the soundtrack to a generation asserting cultural pride in a post-Moratorium era. Later generations, including Quetzal and Las Cafeteras, developed their sound alongside immigrant rights advocacy.

At LA Plaza, local artist collectives Ni Santas and Art Space HP hosted anti-ICE-fueled art-making workshops as KCRW Summer Nights headliner The Altons conducted sound checks for an eager audience. Across the way on Olvera Street, labor and immigrant rights groups continued their 30-day “Summer of Resistance” activation, with lucha libre-masked cumbia group El Conjunto Nueva Ola performing “El Jom Dipo (Pa’ la People)” to a crowd protesting ICE raids.

“A Great Day in East L.A. is born out of resistance,” said Giunti, who’s working on a Los Lobos documentary. “Resistance to systematic oppression, cultural erasure, elitist gatekeeping of our stories by institutions, academics, authors and museums that continue to revise, distort or ignore our truths. This project stands in solidarity with the immigrant community.”

KCRW Summer Night with The Altons during “A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound” Opening Day Celebration on June 28, 2025.

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Photo courtesy of LA Plaza

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East L.A. was a high-energy tour stop for bands like Slayer, Metallica, Bad Religion and the Dead Kennedys and artists like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder. In 1981, Paul Ruben released “The Pee‑Wee Herman Show,” an original cast recording from a live performance at the Roxy Theatre on Fatima Recordz, the first independent punk music label in East L.A., co-founded by Yolanda Comparan Ferrer, Tito Larriva of The Plugz and printmaker Richard Duardo, who also signed East L.A. punk band The Brat.

“I was a part of this Eastside music world,” said Leal, 48, who was born in Guadalajara and raised in Glassell Park. “I never played an instrument, but I went to shows in East L.A.

It was three bucks and a kegger. You paid and stayed until the cops showed up.”

As The Altons took the stage at Saturday’s opening, Chicana singer-songwriter Irene Diaz watched from the back with bandmate and partner Carolyn Cardoza.

“I never imagined something like this,” said Diaz, whose silk slip dress and portraits are a prominent part of the exhibit. “I started my career in 2010 and to be able to see myself in an exhibit where I’m still alive is pretty amazing.”

“A Great Day in East L.A.: Celebrando the Eastside Sound” exhibition runs at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes from June 28, 2025, through August 23, 2026.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Louis Armstrong was in the “A Great Day in Harlem” photograph. It also misspelled Piero F. Giunti’s last name. The story has been updated.

The U.S. took the unprecedented step Monday of dropping the number of vaccines it recommends for every child — cutting protection against a half-dozen diseases in a move slammed by the nation’s pediatricians.

The overhaul is effective immediately, meaning that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now recommend vaccines against 11 diseases. What’s no longer broadly recommended is protection against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis or RSV. Instead, protections against those diseases are only recommended for certain groups deemed high-risk, or if their doctors recommend them in what’s called “shared decision-making.”

Trump administration officials said the overhaul, a move long sought by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., won’t result in families who want the vaccines losing access to them, and said insurance will continue to pay. But medical experts said the move increases confusion for parents and could increase preventable diseases.

The change came after President Donald Trump in December asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising its guidance to align with theirs.

HHS said its comparison to 20 peer nations found that the U.S. was an “outlier” in both the number of vaccinations and the number of doses it recommended to all children. Officials with the agency framed the change as a way to increase public trust by recommending only the most important vaccinations for children to receive.

Among those left on the recommended-for-everyone list are measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, chickenpox and HPV.

“This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday.

Medical experts disagreed, saying the change without public discussion or a transparent review of the data would put children at risk.

Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics said countries carefully consider vaccine recommendations based on levels of disease in their populations and their health systems.

“You can’t just copy and paste public health and that’s what they seem to be doing here,” said O’Leary. “Literally children’s health and children’s lives are at stake.”

The new guidance also reduces the number of recommended vaccine doses against human papillomavirus from two or three shots to one for most children, depending on age.

The decision was made without input from an advisory committee that typically consults on the vaccine schedule, said senior officials at HHS. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the changes publicly.

“Abandoning recommendations for vaccines that prevent influenza, hepatitis and rotavirus, and changing the recommendation for HPV without a public process to weigh the risks and benefits, will lead to more hospitalizations and preventable deaths among American children,” said Michael Osterholm of the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota.