ReCurrent

In this episode, we go back to 1980s Los Angeles, when civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua sent hundreds of thousands of people north and helped turn LA into “Little Central America.” With professor and longtime participant Rubén Martínez as our guide—someone who lived through this moment firsthand—we follow the Sanctuary Movement as churches quietly, and then publicly, open their doors to refugees the U.S. refused to recognize. Sanctuary meant food and a place to sleep, but it also meant music, theater, poetry, and posters that challenged U.S. policy while helping people process their grief.From there, we step inside Echo Park United Methodist Church, where artist and performer Elia Arce and a circle of Central American poets, musicians, and organizers transform the basement into a cultural home. We also sit with Rev. David Farley, pastor emeritus of Echo Park United Methodist, who was there to witness it all. Upstairs, families try to stay invisible on classroom floors; downstairs, performances inspired by banned writers, songs from back home, and handmade banners turn fear and exile into shared story.Our last stop is the Getty Research Institute, where archivist Jasmine Magaña—a Salvadoran Angeleno herself—is helping build a new, expansive record of this era. Through in-depth oral histories with artists and organizers, she and her colleagues work to preserve stories that were never formally recorded but continue to shape Los Angeles today.Together, Rubén, Elia, and Jasmine show how the art around the Sanctuary Movement didn’t just document a moment—it held people together, reshaped Los Angeles, and still offers a blueprint for solidarity in our own tense times.Special thanks to Rubén Martínez, Elia Arce, and Jasmine Magaña. Deep gratitude to Lindsey Gant and Diana Carroll for their generous support in publishing and creating the web pages and Gina White for her work on rights and clearances.

Before the Supremes, before Berry Gordy, a Los Angeles record label run out of a garage was shaping the future of American music.Founded by Dootsie Williams in the early 1950s, Dootone Records became a hub of innovation—recording doo-wop, jazz, and the first Black comedy albums that would influence generations. But while the physical site of Dootone has nearly vanished, its intangible heritage—the voices, rhythms, and entrepreneurial spirit it carried—still reverberates through today’s culture. Through interviews with historian Robert Petersen and Getty preservationist Rita Cofield, this episode explores what it means to preserve sound as history: how a song like “Earth Angel” can outlast the walls that once contained it, and why the legacy of Dootone still matters today.Join Jaime as he retraces Dootone’s path with Robert Petersen and Rita Cofield—following the threads from a Central Avenue porch to playlists today and uncovering how keeping these sounds in circulation keeps Dootone’s legacy alive.Special thanks to Rita Cofield and Robert Petersen (https://hiddenhistoryla.com/).

Jaime Roque follows a lost concert that almost never happened—and the homemade tape that kept it alive.The story begins in 1968 with a teenager who can’t get into jazz clubs and decides to bring Thelonious Monk to his public-school auditorium instead. Tickets lag in mostly-white Palo Alto, so he turns to nearby East Palo Alto and invites neighbors who actually know the music. On a rainy Sunday, a school janitor tunes the piano, sets up a reel-to-reel, and hits record. The concert fills. The night is calm. Then the tape disappears into a box for decades.From there, the episode tracks how a forgotten spool becomes a record the world can hear. Jaime visits the GRI at the Getty to see how fragile tapes are assessed, cleaned, and safely played back—how cleaning cloths, aging machines, and careful hands can turn a closet keepsake into public memory. And with a jazz scholar’s ear, he listens for why this set matters: the character of Monk’s touch that night and how a public-school stage becomes a time capsule.Jaime asks what it takes to keep culture from slipping away—and how one Sunday afternoon can carry forward, beautifully, half a century later.Special thanks to Danny Scher (https://dansun.com/), Dr. Ron McCurdy (https://music.usc.edu/ronald-c-mccurdy/), Jonathan Furnanski, and Thelonius Monk.

A community photo classroom opens the door to a different way of entering a museum.Inside Las Fotos Project—part classroom, part studio, all community—young photographers use images to say who they are. A new collaboration connects their voices to a landmark exhibition on migration, memory, and identity. The takeaway isn’t a style—it’s a method: meaning first, then the vessel.Back in the studio, that spark becomes an independent study. Students dig into family archives, kinship, place, and displacement—choosing forms that can hold what they need to say. Then we meet Wendy—a participant and student in the independent study—who builds a soft pink tent you crawl into, images overhead inviting you to look up and remember: her story, and maybe your own. The cohort carries their work into a neighborhood gallery, where strangers step closer and the vulnerability of being seen turns into applause.Follow Jaime as he traces how a museum show doesn’t end at closing time. It travels—through classrooms, archives, and city blocks—linking one Los Angeles from community space to museum.Special thanks to Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, John Giurini, Las Fotos Project (https://www.lasfotosproject.org/), Christian Morales, Arlene Mejorado (https://www.amejorado.com/), Diego Torres-Casso, and Wendy Cubillo (https://www.eonagapi.com/12540648-home).Check out the María Magdalena Campos-Pons exhibition page (https://review.getty.edu/exhibitions/campos-pons/) for related events and images.

Jaime Roque follows photographer George Rodriguez through two LAs at once—red carpets and street marches.Hollywood assignments put him beside movie stars and musicians; lunch breaks send him to East LA walkouts, the Chicano Moratorium, and UFW marches. One camera, two worlds. Jaime meets the people and places keeping that record alive. At the Getty Research Institute, curator Idurre Alonso opens thirty boxes—the first Chicano archive to enter the collection—and together they handle images that feel both historic and close to home. You see the craft: studio light brought to sidewalks, composition in the middle of a moving crowd, patience for the breath between chant and silence. In Santa Ana, photographer and educator William Camargo traces how George’s example shaped his own work—celebrity gigs by day, community documentation by night—and how a new generation is mapping their neighborhoods before the stories are erased. Join Jaime as he follows the images that built a city’s memory. Hear how archives, street corners, and studio lots weave one Los Angeles.See more of George’s photography on the Getty website (https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/105RWY).Special thanks to George Rodriguez, Idurre Alonso, William Camargo, Marcia Prentice, and Nicole Belle.