When people talk about the Westside, they think of the vibrantly colored murals they see when driving over the Guadalupe Street bridge. They think of the Our Lady of Guadalupe veladora that watches over the community or the smell of puffy tacos that infuse the air when driving past Ray’s Drive Inn.
What many don’t always think of is the music that was born in the casitas on the Westside more than 60 years ago.
In the 1950s, local Westside teenagers strived to emulate the musical sounds that were sweeping through San Antonio via “the collision of sound” coming in from Louisiana, the East Coast and up north. The teenagers took the notes they heard from genres such as swamp pop, jazz, doo-wop, R&B, blues, country and rock n’ roll, added their spin and created what today we know as West Side Sound — sometimes referred to as Chicano soul.
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