What are you listening to right now?

Stirred by photographer Don Normark's recent book, "Chávez Ravine, 1949" - a striking black-and-white portrait of the predominantly Mexican-American community shortly before its erasure - Ry Cooder scores a sordid saga. The CD is a flight of historical imagination that evokes the feel of the hilltop Mexican American neighborhood that L.A.'s city fathers bulldozed in the early 1950s in the name of urban renewal, clearing the way for the Dodgers baseball club to build a new stadium in its place.

A less likely point of musical departure is hard to imagine, but Chávez Ravine - a conceptual project reflecting Cooder's astute political contrariness, his dogged L.A. street-corner and archival research, and eclectic musical inspiration - is the most idiosyncratic effort of a most singular career. Each of its 15 songs is a distinct musical vignette in the foretold destruction of a poor barrio the city's booster class summarily condemned as a nagging impediment to civic progress.

Chávez Ravine evolved organically out of Cooder's abiding interest in the city's hidden social history, in its older and more textured cultural contours. Far more than a superb musical creation, it reflects Cooder's tendency to think cinematically (his moody scoring of the Paris, Texas soundtrack comes to mind), and his calling to the musical path less traveled. Chávez Ravine is warm-blooded, polyvocal testimony to the power of memory, expressive culture, human sociability and creative resolve in the face of treacherous and unforgiving odds.

The Blind Boys of Alabama are amazing. They tour quite a bit - take advantage of any opportunity to catch them in performance.