Posted: June 14th, 2005

Chávez Ravine was a Mexican neighborhood in Los Angeles that was demolished in the 1950’s to make way for Dodger Stadium. And Ry Cooder’s “Chávez Ravine” (Nonesuch) - a time-warped, kaleidoscopic, deep-grooved reimagining of a community arbitrarily destroyed - must be the first concept album about so-called urban renewal. But its seriousness never makes it earthbound. Mr. Cooder brings to it all he has learned from a career delving into odd corners of American and world music, including projects like “Buena Vista Social Club” and collaborations with musicians from Mali to Okinawa.

“Chávez Ravine” plunges into a remembered 1950’s: a time of fear-mongering over Communists and U.F.O.’s, of hard-bop jazz and Latin dance crazes and burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll, of overweening city planners, casual racism and close-knit neighborhoods. The album mixes new songs and revived ones from the late 1940’s and early 50’s, in Spanish and English, and it’s full of character studies, from Mexican hipsters circa 1949 to a bulldozer operator just doing his job.

Mr. Cooder’s guests include an elder generation of Mexican-American musicians. But “Chávez Ravine” isn’t a time-capsule album. Straightforward Mexican-American styles, like the accordion polka of “Ejercito Militar” (”Military Army”), and the bolero “Barrio Viejo” (”Old Neighborhood”) - dramatically sung by the renowned Mexican songwriter Lalo Guerrero, who had hits in the 1950’s - sit alongside the ethereal “El U.F.O. Cayó” (”The U.F.O. Fell”), sung by Juliette Commagere in a haze of synthetic tones, and “In My Town,” a thoughtful ballad (with the jazz pianist Jacky Terrasson) that turns out to be narrated by a ruthless real-estate developer.

“Don’t Call Me Red,” about a public-housing visionary who was red-baited, merges a hazy bolero, briskly angular jazz and sound bites from “Dragnet”; “Muy Fifi” comes up with bluesy, 1950’s-flavored rock akin to Los Lobos. The loping, syncopated twang of Mr. Cooder’s guitar is all over the album.

While Mr. Cooder is sure who his heroes and villains are, he lets them all have their say. “Chávez Ravine” isn’t a sanctimonious protest or an attempt at re-creation; it’s a modern daydream about a place as vanished as Atlantis.