There’s a lot to admire about Ventura County’s Oxnard: the ocean, a culturally-diverse community, a rich history, and much more; but the city itself holds many complexities. Full of industry, Oxnard is home to Amazon and HAAS factories, juxtaposed by its beachfronts and beautiful strawberry fields. This duality is reflected in many ways, even between people, being a city where those who can afford the high cost of the coast interact with those struggling in the inner city. Oxnard is a place where worlds collide, and this is especially true of its musical history.
Home to many accomplished artists, Oxnard has produced rappers like Lootpack, Down, and Dudley Perkins; not to mention the acts that pioneered the nardcore punk scene: False Confessions, Dr. Know, Ill Repute, and more. Nardcore was a prevalent subgenre of the hardcore punk scene, gaining notoriety during the eighties. Despite this, the music scene was overlooked by the mainstream until recently, now that it holds a stake in hip-hop and pop music.
Within the last year, Oxnard musicians have exploded at local, national, and global levels. Acts like soul ensemble Los Honeys continue to grow as a local band, playing shows all over the county. Soft rock band Los Retros are about to accompany breakout Los Angeles act Chicano Batman on their upcoming tour. Meanwhile, Oxnard native Anderson.Paak has enjoyed astonishing success with Silk Sonic, his throwback collaborative effort with Bruno Mars. Earlier in 2021, Madlib dropped a collaborative album with English musician Four Tet and reissues of his album “The Unseen,” which he created under the name Quasimoto in 2000. All these acts have a unifying factor besides being from Oxnard: Their art is crafted with a deep acknowledgement of musical history.
Los Honeys is dedicated to making vintage-sounding soul. Similarly, Los Retros is described as being inspired by “left-field pop and soft rock groups from the seventies and eighties,” according to Stones Throw, the band’s label. Anderson.Paak’s style is almost fundamentally founded on an old-school approach to drumming, incorporating a dynamic and breathful technique often found in early eighties R&B. “He comes from a different era,” Bruno Mars said of Paak in an interview with the DJ Zane Lowe. “You don’t come from this ‘new-school musician.’ You come from those old-school musicians back in the day.”
Today, many Oxnard artists across genres are looking toward the past for inspiration. Omega Nova is a rapper and DJ from Oxnard, and his sound isn’t representative of today’s rap that’s driven by trap 808s. His music has flavors from turn-of-the-millennium artists, like Quasimoto, and he proudly wears the influence on his sleeve. “In terms of, let’s say MF Doom, when it came to him, his beats were very simple but he just knew it was good. I use the same approach when it comes to making beats myself,” Nova said. “If it’s got the groove, it’s got the groove.”
Nova said that those artists are intriguing because their music is “based off feel.” In a technologically advanced era of music where so much of the process requires technical training, he believes that most Oxnard artists gravitate toward stripped-back, vintage methods because of the resources at hand. “I finally took my first keyboarding class in college; that’s when I first had access to learn about it,” he said. “But I feel [our experience] definitely adds to the attitude that we have here as far as like, ‘Well, if we can’t get it, we’re just going to fucking make it ourselves.’”
He believes that Oxnard’s relationship with the past is embedded in its identity. “There’s just something nostalgic about Oxnard,” he said. “It’s a city that’s being pulled apart by its own influences, both in the past and future.” This push and pull between past and present is most identifiable through the lowrider culture.
Dating back to as early as the forties, the lowrider subculture is a community of vintage car lovers that is defined by so much more than their rides. But if there’s one thing as important as the car, it’s the music you play in it. It’s common to hear the sound of smooth, sixties soul flowing out of the window, and much of the surrounding culture is founded on this era. Approximately 80 years later, the style remains the same.
“The cars were made to be cool,” DJ and record collector Ruben Molina said. “They weren’t hot rods; we weren’t speeding around the streets and stuff. It was just cruising the neighborhood. The music had to fit the persona of the car.”
Although usually associated solely with LA, Oxnard has had a lowrider scene for generations. Today, the community embraces the culture with car meets and cruises. Molina was born and raised in LA, but he left the big city to check out the scene in Oxnard. “The car shows there were really cool,” he said. “We used to go with a bunch of cars and just enjoy the time there.”
Lowrider culture revolves around that feeling of cruising: The simplicity of moving slowly through a fast-paced world. For artists like Los Honeys, that sweet and slow experience is exactly what they want to capture in their music. “It’s much more mellow. That’s what soul music is about,” said Shelton Hill, their drummer. “It’s not really about chops or anything like that, but more so kicking a straight-through groove.”
Hill believes that Oxnard has all the trademarks of a great soul song: the beautiful and eclectic soundscape filled with a variety of lifestyles and love stories to tell. “Because the soul music describes Oxnard,” said Hill. “As you ride through [different parts of] the city, you hear a different soul song.”
All the members agree that mainstream music listeners are wanting something new … or, to be more accurate, something old. They want music that represents a time when computers weren’t dictating the pace of life. “Growing up, my dad would talk about, ‘I remember when Oxnard had cruise night,’ and I’m trying to picture how did that feel to be out there? What was it like? What were they playing? What was going on?” said Hill. “That was a time when life was slow. Not slow in a bad way, but a little more relaxed.”
Los Honeys see that shift happening: from an electronically-reliant production to a more organic and raw one, and believe that Oxnard has a definite role in the process. “There’s a magic here,” said Pedro Moreno, the band’s bassist. “A lot of these cats that are in LA doing music and stuff, a lot of them have some sort of ties here to Oxnard, and I think it’s for a reason.”