The border is never far from Alex E. Chávez’s mind. The musician, writer, and professor — known for his work with the Chicago band Dos Santos — has long immersed himself in thinking and scholarship around the complexities of migration.
His latest project, his debut album, S onorous Present, goes deep, offering an intimate reflection of borderlands, memory, and both literal and figurative passages. Across Sonorous Present, Chávez dives into musical traditions from across Mexico and Latin America, turning them over and mixing them with other forms, like jazz and rock. Chávez recorded a lot of the record during the pandemic, opening up space to think about mourning and loss and his own experiences growing up near the border in Texas.
Throughout the project, Chávez interrogates his experiences as a first-generation Mexican American, while also reckoning with the death of his parents and his sister. All of it was a new, intimate process for the musician. “In my other work, I hardly ever write very personal stories,” he says.
“I rarely write in the first person. This album is all of that. It does feel a little different, a little vulnerable, a little raw.
” Below, Chávez talks to Rolling Stone about the creative process behind Sonorous Present and what it taught him about tradition, grief, and migration. Issues of immigration and both literal and figurative borders constantly come up in your work. Tell me how you were thinking about those themes on this proje.