By Lookout Staff

September 19, 2016 -- Music and the written word will be showcased during Santa Monica College's celebration of Hispanic Heritage month starting this week.

The celebration kicks off Tuesday when Quetzal!, the Grammy® Award–winning East LA Chicano rock group, presents a collective songwriting workshop and community concert.

Known for combining music and social activism, the band performs at rallies, marches, and events staged by the Chicano civil rights movement.

The group is comprised by guitarist Quetzal Flores, percussionist and lead vocalist Martha Gonzálezs, violinist Tylana Enomoto, bassist Juan Pérez, cellist Peter Jacobson, and percussionist Alberto Lopez.

The workshop, which takes place Tuesday at 11:15 a.m. at the Humanities & Social Sciences Lecture Hall 165, offers participants the chance to "join the conversation and contribute lyrics and melodies as (they) exchange ideas with Quetzal’s members on a range of socially relevant issues," organizers said.

The resulting collaborative work will be performed at a concert Thursday on the SMC Quad beginning at 11:15 a.m.

The celebration concludes on October 13 with live readings by "established and emerging voices in poetry," organizers said.

They include Ernesto Padilla, whose works have appeared in prestitious literary periodicals and who was awarded a Fulbright to collect and translate the early works of Borges. Padilla helped introduce writers such as Poet Laureate of the United States Juan Felipe Herrera and SMC alumna Michele Serros to the community.

Also reading will be Wil Doucet, a poet "whose work is infused with influences ranging from Bob Marley to Bessie Smith to Carl Sandburg," and Grace Singh Smith, a writer and poet whose works have appeared in literary reviews, including the award-winning Santa Monica Review published by SMC.

Student poets Jasmin Ortega, Marlene Ruiz, Andrew Jones and Carlos Valdez will read from their works, which "has a vibrant connectivity to the quest for self-understanding, as well as to our relationships within the dreamlike regions of the human spirit," organizers said.

The readings will take place at 11:15 a.m. in the Humanities & Social Sciences Lecture Hall 165. Seating is strictly on a first-arrival basis.

The events are sponsored by the SMC History Department, the SMC Latino Center’s Adelante Program, the SMC Black Collegians Program, IDEAS at SMC, the Adelante Club, the SMC English Department, SMC Global Citizenship, the Santa Monica College Foundation, and the SMC Associates (www.smc.edu/associates).

For more information, call (310) 434-4100.