By Andrew Flanagan – WBUR.org – Image Not Credited.
Ritchie Valens’ “La Bamba,” the Chicano rock pioneer’s adaptation of a Mexican folk song, made the young Valens’ legacy just before he died in a plane crash at the age of 17. The song “continues to be a hallmark in American music and an influence on all Latino music that followed,” says Louie Pérez, whose band Los Lobos famously covered the song in the 1980s, in a statement issued by the Library of Congress.
