Rubén Funkahuatl Guevara’s musical career is so extensive, it’s virtually impossible to boil it all down into one short paragraph. What’s more, his long and varied back story is so stellar, it reads almost like the plot of a surreal movie. He’s perhaps most widely recognized for his collaborations with Frank Zappa, bringing to life and making real what had previously been Zappa’s fictional doo-wop parody Ruben & the Jets. But the Boyle Heights native’s roots extend all the way back to 1965, when he appeared with Bo Diddley and Tina Turner on the pop television show Shindig! In the ’80s, he reinvented himself as a Chicano activist, fronting the influential band Con Safos and working as a promoter to champion Latin-punk groups like the Plugz and the Brat and such rock en español comers as Tijuana No! Guevara’s own music has moved restlessly from his early days as a blues, R&B and doo-wop stylist into stranger, freakier explorations that draw upon jazz, funk and his extensive spoken-word experience.

This magic medicine man is back after too long of an absence with a new album, The Tao of Funkahuatl, which draws upon all of his varied personas, from the funky downtown grooves of the title track and the spoken-word insights of “La Virgencita de Boyle Heights” to the cool blue introspection of “The Eyes of God.”

-Funkahuatl (The neo-Aztek deity of Tantrik Funk)

Tantra: “Where sex is transformed into love and love is transformed into the higher self.” -Osho

“When connected in sacred, conscious sex, our human bodies – mirrors of the cosmos – rejoin the wholeness of essential reality.” Tantra Demystified by Vikas Malkin

Taoism: A variety of related philosophical and religious traditions and concepts that have influenced East Asia for over two millennium and the West for over two centuries^. Taoist propriety and ethics emphasize the Three Jewels of the Tao: compassion, moderation, and humility.

Sufism: A science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God, the Beloved.

Pachukismo: “A Pachuk@ is a rebel who does not care to make something beautiful in his/her life but rather, to make of one’s life, a work of art.” Alurista, Chicano poet

The Sixth Dalai ["Lover"] Lama: “Tsangyang Gyatso (1682-1706), who was enthroned with grand ceremony as the Sixth Dalai Lama on the golden throne in the Potala palace in 1697, was a special Dalai Lama. He brought to holy Lhasa and Shol taverns some of the purest and most beautiful lyrics of all times.

Extraordinary as a lover of wine and women, melodious as a singer of love songs and above all, tragic as a national hero of the status of a Dalai Lama, reduced to become a heroic pawn at the hands of the Qosot Lhazang Khan, the Sixth Dalai Lama became a legend within his short lifetime. Worshiped and loved by Tibetan people with stainless faith, Tsangyang Gyatso’s songs became famous in every corner of Tibet receiving once again the fascination of simple folk poetry.

“White crane!
Lend me your wings
I will not fly far
From Lithang, I shall return”

So wrote a desolate and lonely Tsangyang Gyatso (whose name means ‘Ocean of Melodious Songs’), the Sixth Dalai Lama of Tibet, wrote to a lady-friend of his in Shol town in 1706, when he was being forcibly taken away to China by the Mongol soldiers of Qosot Lhazang Khan — away from his people and the Potala palace. [Other stories have it that he went to Mongolia and lived a long life as a revered spiritual teacher]. No one understood the hidden meaning contained in the song nor did anyone suspect that the young Dalai Lama had decided to end his earthly manifestation and yield the Tibetan spiritual and temporal realm to the care of the next Dalai Lama. But when that very year the sad and shocking news of the ‘disappearance’ or more probably the ‘murder’ of Tsangyang Gyatso at Gunga-Nor lake spread across Tibetan landscape, the secret meaning of the last of his many songs dawned on the grief-stricken and bewildered Tibetan masses who dearly longed for his presence during a turbulent turn of history, and anxiously looked towards Lithang for the next incarnation.

It may be correct and safe to state that some of the verses indirectly show his deep knowledge and practice of tantra, as it is clear from the one song in which he has claimed:

“Never have I slept without a sweetheart
Nor have I spent a single drop of sperm”

“The claim of control over his flow of sperm openly declared his grasp and mastery of tantric practices.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

“Over the eastern hills rises
The smiling face of the moon;
In my mind forms
The smiling face of my beloved’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘If only I could wed
The one whom I love,
Joys of gaining the choicest gem
From the ocean’s deepest bed would be mine’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘She smells sweet of body
My sweetheart, the highway queen;
Like the worthless white turquoise
She was found, to be thrown away’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘Longing for the landlord’s daughter
Blossoming in youthful beauty
Is like pining for peaches
Ripening on the high peach trees’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘Sleepless I am
Because I am in love;
Fatigue and frustration overwhelm
When day brings not my beloved to me’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘I incline myself
To the teachings of my lama
But my heart secretly escapes
To the thoughts of my sweetheart’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘Even if meditated upon,
The face of my lama comes not to me,
But again and again comes to me
The smiling face of my beloved’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘If I could meditate upon the dharma
As intensely as I muse on my beloved
I would certainly attain enlightenment
Surely, in this one lifetime’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘When the gem was mine
I cared not, and ignored its value.
Now that the gem is lost to others,
Melancholy overwhelms me
As its pure worth dawns on me’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘My sweetheart who truly loved me
Has been stolen to wed another.
I am sick with longing sorrow
And frustration emaciates my frail body’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘If the maiden will live forever
The wine will flow evermore.
The tavern is my haven;
With wine I am content’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘Even the stars in the sky
Can be measured by astrology.
Her body can be caressed,
But not so fathomed
Her deep inner longing’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘Sweetheart awaiting me in my bed
Yielding tenderly her sweet soft body,
Has she come to cheat me
And disrobe me of my virtues?’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘People gossip about me.
I am sorry for what I have done;
I have taken three thin steps
And landed myself in the tavern of my mistress’

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘In the short walk of this life
We have had our share of joy.
Let us hope to meet again
In the youth of our next life’

“Of exceptional interest is the tale of three sandalwood trees Tsangyang Gyatso planted close to each other before leaving Tawang. He prophesied that the trees would grow identical to each other on the day he would once again visit Tawang. In 1959, the local people noticed to their amazement that the three sandalwood trees were growing equal to each other in size and had become identical in shape. Unfortunately, the trees caught fire which plunged the local people into anxiety and dismay. Soon afterwards they heard of the unrest in Tibet caused by the Chinese invasion, and after a week-long spectacle of crowds of foreign and Indian pressmen, security personnel and unusual suspense, they saw that the Dalai Lama had indeed come to Tawang once again, this time as the Great Fourteenth, on his way to exile in India.”

From “Songs of the 6th Dalai Lama: The Rebel Dalai Lama”. Translated by K. Dhondup, Dharamshala

Song list after the jump. 1.) LA VIRGENCITA DE BOYLE HEIGHTS 2.) AT THE EASTSIDE LUV 3.) SACRED HEARTS 4.) FLESH & BONE 5.) THE EYES OF GOD 6.) WHEN I WAS YOUNG 7.) CRAWLIN’ IN LUST, LOVE & LIGHT 8.) THE TAO OF FUNKAHUATL

THE TAO OF FUNKAHUATL

“Freaky, funk, rock, jazz, and spoken word by a magic medicine man” -Falling James, LA Weekly

“Amazing artistry” -Anthony Valadez, 89.9 FM KCRW, Los Angeles

“Funky and deliciously delightful” -Dave Marsh, The Loft (SIRIUS, Satellite Radio)

“Fearless and transcendent” -Vincent Ramos, (Curator, Vincent Price Museum)

RUBEN GUEVARA & THE EASTSIDE LUVERS

Ruben Guevara/Vocalist/Composer (Frank Zappa, Ruben and the Jets, Con Safos); Steve Alaniz/Tenor Sax (Stanley Clarke, George Duke); John Avila/Bass (Oingo Boingo); Ramon Banda/Drums (The Banda Brothers); Bob Robles/Guitar (Jackson Browne, Thee Midniters)

House of Blues

Los Lobos

West Hollywood, CA

Sunday, December 19, 2010, 9pm

$30

Tropico de Nopal Art Gallery

CD Release Party

1665 Beverly Boulevard

Los Angeles (Echo Park) CA 90026

March 20, 2011, 9pm

$10

A Night at the Phillips Music Company : A Tribute to Boyle Heights

Hiroshima, Little Willie G. (Thee Midniters), East L.A. Taiko, Ersi Arvizu (El Chicano), Ollin, La Santa Cecilia, Ceci Bastida, Ruben Martinez, Marisela Norte, George Sanchez. Curated by Josh Kun

Grand Performances/California Plaza

Downtown, LA

Saturday, August 27, 2011, 8pm

Free

ADELANTE! Mexican American Artists: 1960s and Beyond (Including Cheech Marin’s Collection)

Forest Lawn Museum

Glendale, CA

Thursday, September 8, 2011, 6pm

Free

MEX/L.A. “Mexican” Modernism (s) in Los Angeles, 1930-1985

Pacific Standard Time Series

Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA)

628 Alamitos Avenue

Long Beach, CA 90802

Sunday, December 4, 2011, 3pm

Free

50TH ANNIVERSARY AS A RECORDING ARTIST

The Eastside Luv Bar

1835 E. First Street

Los Angeles (Boyle Heights), CA 90033

Wednesday, December 14, 2011, 9pm

$8