Once upon a hill

In beautiful old black-and-white photos, Chavez Ravine doesn't look like much, but for hundreds of poor residents, it was home. Knots of dilapidated houses cling to a dusty Los Angeles hillside, the smoggy city basin unfurling below. Somber-faced neighborhood children stare past the camera. Elderly men in worn fedoras go about their day, perusing a Bible, visiting with friends.

The focus of a new concept album by LA musician Ry Cooder, Chavez Ravine was also home to an ugly bit of history. In the early 1950s, 300 families, most of them Mexican and Mexican-American, were evicted from the area. The land was supposed to become the site of a low-income housing project, but under circumstances that remain cloudy to this day, politicians allowed it to be sold. The homes were bulldozed and Dodger Stadium erected.

Cooder, who is known best for his Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club records, revisits the saga on ''Chavez Ravine," an ambitious street opera in stores Tuesday. ''The people who lived there were marginalized," he says. ''And they were already marginalized because many were old and poor."

Cooder discussed the new album during a recent trip to Boston to pick up an award for his work in revitalizing the lives of Cuban musicians connected to the Buena Vista Social Club. Dressed in a multicolored hippie shirt, the 59-year-old Cooder looked a little out of place in a staid Boston hotel lobby, but an hour later, he was still speaking animatedly about the project.

''I sensed a renewed interest in this story," Cooder says. Indeed, his project is the latest of several in recent years. Chicano agitprop theater company Culture Clash put on a play called ''Chavez Ravine" last year that dealt with the neighborhood's history. And a documentary called ''Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story," will air here as part of PBS's ''Independent Lens" series later this month. Directed by Jordan Mechner, the film is full of the dramatic 1949 photographs of Don Normark, who in 1999 authored a book called ''Chavez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story." Cooder contributed some of the score for the film.

''I've spent an unbelievable amount of time on [the album], and I know that, like the Buena Vista Social Club, there are no guarantees," Cooder says. ''This is not music that you'll probably put on your iPod and go listen to down at the mall."

Cooder spent the past three years writing and collecting the songs. He also tracked down local Latin music legends Lalo Guerrero, Don Tosti, Little Willie G., and Ersi Arvizu to share singing duties. The result is an acutely sensitive CD that spins across Latin, pop, jazz, and blues styles, anchored by his piquant guitar.

While he expresses his anger at the political dealings that ultimately destroyed Chavez Ravine (one housing authority director, for example, was branded a communist and fired), Cooder felt his main task was to humanize the residents. Thus, there is considerable joy in some of the songs depicting this ''Poor Man's Shangri-La," to quote the album's opening track. Like a documentarian, Cooder creates images of what it must have been like to spend Saturday nights in the community -- to dance, to celebrate, to share time with loved ones.

Half the songs are in English, half in Spanish. They address both real and imagined people from the '50s. He writes, for instance, about two boxing brothers named Chavez who fought honorably in their careers but, as a lyric goes, ''were not able to win the fight of Chavez Ravine." As for fictitious characters, the most memorable (and here Cooder invokes his love of science fiction) is an alien who gets out of a UFO and warns residents that ''there are some Anglos that want to take your land."

The album also includes such buoyant songs as ''Muy Fifi" (about a woman all dressed up and ready to dance) and ''3 Cool Cats," a Leiber and Stoller tune about men who meet their match.

''Ry's album is a wonderful portrait of a community that is resilient," says Gene Aguilera, who is writing a book on the East LA music scene and has managed a number of artists, including Little Willie G. and national touring act the Blazers. ''It proves that our community is not just about a geographical location."

As a young boy, Aguilera remembers seeing photos in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner of sheriffs dragging people out of their homes in Chavez Ravine.

''We didn't have rights like we do now," Aguilera says. ''I'm happy that Ry is exposing this to other Mexican-Americans. A lot of young people didn't know that this happened."

It won't resonate with only Latinos or Angelenos. Cities across America have chapters in their histories like that of Chavez Ravine. Here, the tale will evoke Boston's West End in the late 1950s. In the name of urban renewal, the city razed building after building, displacing immigrant communities.

Cooder also knew about Chavez Ravine as a boy but says that no one from his Santa Monica neighborhood ever went up to that hillside community. He became deeply intrigued four years ago when he met photographer Normark. ''I said to him, 'I'm crazy about your book. I look at it every day,' " Cooder recalls.

Cooder then approached Guerrero, who contributed the song about the boxing brothers called ''Corrido de Boxeo" (''Ballad of Boxing"). Cooder brought in old friend and accordionist Flaco Jimenez to spice it up, and the project was born. Guerrero further sang the rumba ''Los Chucos Suaves" (a Latin dance hit in 1949) and ''Barrio Viejo."

The new album runs a gamut of emotions. ''Ejercito Militar" (''Military Exercise") imagines Latino soldiers fighting for America only to return to see their community demolished. ''Don't Call Me Red," which Cooder sings in a Tom Waits-like twang, is about the fears of being branded a communist at that time. And ''It's Just Work for Me" is a spare blues number about a bulldozer operator who doesn't care whose house he knocks down because all he's trying to do is make payments on his own trailer.

''This is one of the best records I've ever been part of," says Little Willie G., who had relatives in Chavez Ravine and wrote lyrics for four of the songs. They include ''3rd Base, Dodger Stadium," about watching a game there while thinking of former residents who had gotten their first kiss on those same grounds.

''I was 5 or 6 years old when this happened -- and I still feel the sting of it," adds Willie G., who is known for playing with the band Thee Midniters. ''When Ry came to me and began to share his heart, I experienced his passion, and I really wanted to be part of this record."

Cooder says he won't tour behind ''Chavez Ravine," especially because a couple of the main singers -- Guerrero (often hailed as the patron saint of Chicano music) and Tosti -- recently died. But oddly, he wouldn't mind if someone wanted to turn it into a musical. ''I hate musicals, but if someone has a good idea about it, I'd be curious," he says. ''And I looked into it as a possible movie, but I abandoned that idea. To me, this is more like radio theater."

He has no idea how the public will react to this work. But then again, he didn't know if people would embrace ''Buena Vista Social Club." The album has reportedly sold 8 million copies.

''If you had told me that some 80-year-old Cubans were going to be the next big thing," Cooder says, ''I wouldn't have believed it."

''Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story" airs June 26 on WGBX-TV (Ch. 44) at 10:30 p.m.