Luna Roja is her second album, following 2002's Ojo de Tiburon. She's also just released her mystery novel Chasing the Jaguar.
I talked to Michele about her music, her writing and growing up in a bicultural environment.
Your new album is called Luna Roja (Red Moon). Does that name have any special significance?
Well, I’ve always thought of the moon as female, a symbol of woman. And red is the color of the warrior; it’s a strong color. It’s the idea of empowerment for women. The big, full moon gives the idea that we can be as expansive as we are able to be. Because there are things in our culture that want to pigeonhole us. The song shows that this big, full life is what we should want, what we can have.
How would you describe your music?
It’s a fusion between Latin American and folk music, with a political bent.
Tell us a little bit about your background.
I was born in Las Vegas. My mother was a singer with her two sisters, she went to do a gig in Las Vegas at the Golden Nugget and met my father. So I was born there. Later on they moved to L.A.
Since your father was American, where did the “Dominguez” come from?
Cecilia Dominguez was my mother’s grandmother, a tiny woman from Chihuahua. She got married young and had kids. She became very independent after she was widowed.. She came here and wanted to be an actress and artist. She was the matriarch of the family.
I’ve really wanted to add ‘Dominguez’ to my name for a long time. I used it for my book, a pen name, where you have a little more leeway. And because my new CD was coming out at the same time, I thought, well, that will be sort of confusing, won’t it? Because the CD will have Michele Greene and the book will be Michele Dominguez Greene and we wanted to tie some press together.
When you look like me, like such a gringa, and you have 7 minutes to talk about a project, sometimes you spend 5 of them answering “So how do you speak Spanish? I just never would have thought that you were Hispanic”. They think I’m a nice white girl from the valley.
I got tired of it, and said OK, I’m adding Dominguez to my name and they can just figure it out. I’ve also found that once you have that name on there, people stop asking those questions.
