Vibrant in a fading East L.A. scene

It's Wednesday night on Cesar Chavez Avenue in Boyle Heights. At 8 p.m., the lights are still on at Jesse's Barber Shop, but the botanica is closed and so is the orthopedist whose sign says "Doctor de los Huesos" (bone doctor). The sidewalks are empty as a police cruiser glides down the street in the heart of this historic immigrant neighborhood.

A screen door cracks open in the middle of a mysterious building covered by a wall-to-wall mural depicting twin serpent figures, as if the painting were beckoning a passerby to come inside. Through the door, which is painted as a large guitar, appears Randy Rodarte, sporting a pointy goatee and dressed as nattily as a zoot-suiter -- vest, suspenders, pleated pants and two-tone, black-and-white shoes. "Welcome to the compound," he says, closing a chain-link gate behind me.

The compound -- home in the back, work space in the front -- is actually one rambling, creaky building that takes up almost the entire lot near Evergreen Cemetery. This is the headquarters of Ollin, a Chicano band founded in 1994 by Randy and his twin brother, Scott, "recovering punk rockers trying to play [Mexican] music we used to make fun of," as Randy puts it.

The '90s were a heady time for Chicano music from East L.A., witnessing the rise of groups bent on expressing barrio culture while exploring other genres in a new fusion, switching between styles as naturally as they switched languages. Inspired partly by the Zapatista revolt in the Mexican state of Chiapas, socially conscious groups such as Ozomatli and Quetzal mixed politics and partying as they created a new chapter in Chicano music history, with a tip of the hat to predecessors such as Los Lobos and Tierra.

Today, that musical movement has all but vanished. Many bands have moved on or broken up and the venues they played have shut down (the Peace and Justice Center) or scaled down (Self-Help Graphics). Ozo's success lifted it out of the barrio and into the ozone. Quetzal's uncompromising vision has taken it to Xalapa, Veracruz, for a year-long immersion in the jarocho culture of southern Mexico. Meanwhile, many mainstays of the scene have either disbanded or retreated, including the Blues Experiment, Quinto Sol, Aztlan Underground and Slowrider.

"People say it's dying, but I think it comes in waves," says drummer Joshua Duron, formerly with Blues Experiment. "It's like we need a Chiapas uprising every 14 years."