Grammy-winning singer Linda Ronstadt returns in better weather

The Grammy-winning singer was in town with Los Camperos for an outdoor concert to help launch Museo Alameda in April 2007.
Ronstadt cut short her mariachi show after two songs — “Los Laureles’ and “Por Un Amor” — when dangerously high winds, lightning, torrential rain and hail struck downtown. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning.

“It was the scariest weather situation that I’ve ever been through outdoors,” recalled Ronstadt from San Francisco. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God. There’s going to be a tornado here.”

She’s able to laugh about it now.

Ronstadt and Los Camperos will be tucked safely indoors for a mariachi concert at Municipal Auditorium on Saturday, Nov. 7. Show time is 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $35-$200.

“They’re brilliant,” she said about Los Camperos. “We don’t need smoke and lights. The band is really a folk orchestra. They make sound over the sound spectrum like nothing I’ve ever worked with, very powerful.”

Ronstadt is known for outspoken political views, as well as her hit pop music and her award-winning “Canciones de Mi Padre” series.

The Tucson native, and daughter of a prominent family, acknowledged that she never experienced the prejudice that many Latinos endured in Arizona.

“Everybody knew my family was Mexican, but, you know, I had the German surname and I’m very light-skinned. People often didn’t realize I was Mexican, and I would hear ‘dirty Mexican’ remarks, and I would be shocked,” Ronstadt said.

 “The really severe prejudice was reserved more for Phoenix,” Ronstadt continued. “Where Sheriff Arpaio is right now conducting his reign of terror and running his Gulags. Those people are very prejudice up there. They were horrible to black people ... the attitude toward migrant laborers is Draconian. It’s horrific. It’s shameful.”