Print Issue: July 17, 2002

From Cutting Hair To Cutting Demo Tapes: Gyla González Makes Waves

La Voz Hispana airs in Spanish Saturdays from 3-6 p.m. and the Sounds of Pangea airs in English Wednesdays from 8-9 p.m., both on 90.7 FM in Carroll County. Latin Beat/Ritmo Latino, a bilingual program, airs on the 15 member-stations of Georgia Public Radio Saturdays from 9 p.m.-midnight. In Atlanta Latin Beat can be heard on 88.1 FM. It can also be picked up on the Web site www.gpb.org. (Photos by Michael Alexander)

By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

ATLANTA - With a lifelong love of Latin music, Gyla González was cutting hair in Carrollton in 1993 when a new client heard her fluid voice on the answering machine and left her a message insisting she create a radio show for the Latino community.

Going from curling hair to making waves on the air, in a few months she and her client, Mexican-American Rafael Cardona, did just that, and, as volunteers, launched La Voz Hispana, (Hispanic Voice), the first radio show in Spanish in Carrollton, featuring music, interviews and news related to the Georgia Latino community.

"That first show, when I heard it I really had to laugh at myself," González said in a recent interview from a midtown Atlanta studio of Georgia Public Radio. "It sounded like someone was putting a gun to my head and making me talk."

She feigned a faint, raspy voice, "Están escuchando La Voz Hispana."

"I just couldn't (project). It was just like something not in me. I loved talking to people and that relationship with the audience, but that was it."

"I was afraid of laughing on air and afraid of everything, but step by step I started being interested."

That year González, a native of Nicaragua, enrolled in the State University of West Georgia in Carrollton where she majored in mass communications with an emphasis in public relations, and got top grades, awards and more encouragement to work in radio.

"I was thinking I wanted to work in a public relations firm, that's what I really wanted to do. And God was sending me all these messages about radio and I was not paying attention. When I graduated many teachers kept saying 'you have a beautiful voice.'"

Yet she felt she had too strong an accent, recalls González, from the capital city of Managua, who fled communism in Nicaragua in 1988 with her family.

Gradually she picked up the signals and found her frequency. She continued volunteering in radio throughout the '90s, producing La Voz Hispana and later the Sounds of Pangea, for GPR's affiliate in Carrollton. In 2000 she became a GPR staffer, when she was asked to create the bilingual program Latin Beat/Ritmo Latino, which airs every Saturday statewide, in addition to continuing her work on the two Carrollton programs.

Gyla González sits at the control board in the radio studio at Georgia Public Broadcasting where she is host and producer of Georgia Public Radio's Latin Beat. González, a native of Nicaragua who has been in radio since 1993, is a parishioner of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, Carrollton.

She was surprised when Carrollton station manager Kevin Sanders asked her to put together a demo tape to be considered for the job at GPR, a network of 15 stations around the state.

"I was like 'It's not going to happen.' . . . 'I'm sorry I didn't edit it or anything,'" she recalls. "It was scary when I came here."

Resonating the rhythms of Georgia's Latino community, Latin Beat has music but also news and addresses cultural and social issues.

"I'm not an expert, but I'm willing to take the GPR challenge. I want Latin Beat to be a show that not only entertains people, but also allows them to understand the different cultures of Spanish-speaking America," she said, which are far more diverse than many Anglos realize.

"Latinos in the U.S. have two great things in common. We all speak Spanish, and all of us have chosen the U.S. to be our home."

González, who is 33, plays popular tunes on La Voz, but also tries to provide useful information to unite the Carrollton Hispanic community, many from Mexico and Central America. La Voz gives local news and a calendar and features a psychologist speaking on topics like alcoholism and isolation.

Wanting to expand her musical palette, she created the Sounds of Pangea (pangea refers to the theory that all continents were once connected) featuring international music. "For Sounds of Pangea I had to read and read and read and try to memorize some stuff I didn't know and all of a sudden I'm like 'Oh, I can do this,'" she said.

Latin Beat aims to reach Anglos and Hispanics and is about 65 percent in English. A three-hour program, the first hour features traditional music from the Andes to Cuba, where she might play and discuss, for example, indigenous Honduran music. Then comes news from Latino USA via National Public Radio, and interviews related to Georgia's Latino community. The second hour has an events calendar and more modern sounds like salsa, hip hop and cumbia, while the final hour features boleros, similar to ballads but more poetic and romantic.

González acquired her musical passion as a child from her parents. She especially enjoys listening to guitarists such as Johannes Linstead and percussion, which calms her. "When it's music from Latin America, when I hear it, it's just there in my heart. Music for Latinos, it's within ourselves. You live and dance to it, you enjoy it."

She learns about other cultures through reading and research, and through Latino friends. "I know people from all over Latin America. The way I see it, I always try to learn from them."

In May to coincide with a fund-raiser for Colombian children she interviewed a Brazilian journalist who created a television piece called "Forgotten Children of Colombia." In April members of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, a Cuban family group known as "reigning regents of rumba," Afro-Cuban ritual music, gave her an interview for their Atlanta tour stop. She has done a series on "El Bolero: Love and Poetry through the Ages," talking about the birth of boleros in 1885 in Cuba and their spread across Latin America.

"I think el bolero is the treasure, the jewel in Latin America. We are very proud of el bolero. Through time it will never die," she said. "If you want to fall in love, that's the music you want to listen to."

And she practices what she preaches, hoping to marry one day. "Dating is hard in Carrollton, that's why I told my pastor I'm coming to Christ the King (Cathedral in Atlanta) because they are doing some singles nights," she added.

González, who likes both compliments and constructive criticism, is encouraged by comments like those of Anglos who say they listen to practice their Spanish, or of a couple who say they stay home and dance to the boleros. "These kinds of comments, they feed not my ego. They feed my heart because that allows me to know I'm doing what I'm intended to do."

She hopes Latin Beat will help those reluctant to embrace Hispanics to better understand them and tells those who've been discriminated against "if someone is mistreating you, you don't have to hate them but educate them. We are different, but in that difference we can find the respect and in that respect we can actually communicate."

She hopes to bring more community Hispanic leaders to the show, and for Latin Beat to be picked up by Atlanta's public radio station, WABE-FM.

"We have a number in the Latino community not aware of what's going on around them. They come to work and that's it," she said.

When a teenage girl complained La Voz has too much news, she told her, "You need to be informed. We want our children to be bilingual, not to forget about their language and not to forget about the importance of family values, not to forget where they came from, because if they forget where they came from they don't know where they're going. I tell people, 'You have to get involved.' You can't sit and criticize."

She also volunteers, believing it is the responsibility of the growing Hispanic middle class to help struggling immigrants. Active in her church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Carrollton, she recalled how the late Msgr. Michael Regan as pastor there described Georgia as the Promised Land with its red clay and first welcomed her and her mother there when visiting her brother in Carrollton. "He didn't speak any Spanish but spoke the international language of love. He gave in extreme quantities."

She is involved with Latinos United of Carroll County, a new nonprofit organization created to empower Latinos, to educate them and integrate them into the community, offering programs like on legal issues and mental health. She also helped in the creation of the Multicultural Center, which provides English, GED and other classes for immigrants.

González' mentor Susanna Capelouto, a production manager for GPR who helped get Latin Beat on the air, calls her "extremely self-motivated" and committed, noting how she did radio programs for free for years "just because it needed to be done." She sees Latin Beat as a cultural bridge between Georgia's Hispanic and Anglo communities.

"I think it is a cultural bridge because she's so good in explaining about Latin American culture through her music," she said. "It's a really great show for anybody who likes Latin American programming, probably the best show of its kind in the country, I like to say, probably because of her voice. She has a very exceptional way of delivering bilingual information. From her accent to what she says, it's just beautiful to listen to. She's extremely knowledgeable about the music she plays and has a great way of presenting it in a cultural context."

Capelouto recalls when she first heard her voice on the demo tape. "I only listened like 10 minutes and I knew right then when I heard her voice that she'd be great on the network. Eventually I want to take the show as a national show. It definitely has that potential."

Proud of her heritage, González is glad to bring Georgia the best of Central and South American cultures. She is grateful to her parents who have always supported her and to the Discalced Carmelite nuns who taught her growing up both academics and to serve God by doing her best helping others.

"If you do not believe you can do good for others it's because your faith is weak . . . It's all about what Jesus told us to do. My faith is what gets me strong and taking stands for what is right. Without my faith I'm nothing. I think it's the training, the education in your faith that gives you the strength to change things," she said. "I got involved with the Latino community because I feel it's my duty. I feel sometimes you are called to do things you may not want to, you'd like to be home sleeping . . . but if you wait for somebody else to do things they're not going to be done."

"I love the fact that I've been given the opportunity and, yeah, I finally realized radio is my field," González continued. But "I don't think I'm finished. This is just one step. Who knows, one of these days we may find somebody who says we want to have a 20-hour radio station in Spanish with not only music but also that actually serves as a link for the Latino community and the non-Spanish speaking and natives of this nation (where) we can come together."