Today we’d like to introduce you to Raineir Pesebre.
Raineir, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I come from an immigrant Military family: a product of the Philippine Diaspora. My father escaped the poverty, drugs, and corruption of the Philippines in 1980 at the age of 25 by joining the United States Navy; the only son out of five brothers who successfully made the jump towards a new world of opportunity. My mother was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters and left a happy life in the Philippines against her will to join her family to build a new legacy in San Diego. My parents were from completely opposite parts of the Philippines (my father from Bicol, and my mother from Pangasinan) met at a house party in National City and married shortly after. I was born in 1989 two years after my older sister in San Diego.
At the age of four, I witnessed my father’s father experience the heart attack that killed him at the age of 60. At the age of six, my mother’s father experienced a stroke while on vacation in the Philippines leaving him wheelchair-bound and unable to take care of himself. Financial and family issues not uncommon in my culture lead to an internal breakdown of our family support system. My mother’s brother that brought my mother’s family to the Philippines left voice messages of threats to burn our house down in the wake of my grandfather experiencing a stroke. This very same uncle sexually assaulted me at a party in a public location leaving me confused and unable to come to terms with aspects of emotionality.
I was enrolled in Tae Kwon Do by my father and found a sense of community and applied growth and even reaching the level of honorary black belt. This was cut short when my father received orders to be stationed in Japan. Leaving San Diego at the age of eight to spend two and a half years in Yokosuka Navy Base in Japan and returning back to San Diego in the year 2000 in the wake of the Y2K scare dispelled any notion of a sense of home. Finally settling in a new suburban housing development in Chula Vista spelled a fleeting sense of comfort before my father spent two years away from my mother, my two sisters and I in Italy on a medical ship and then on a submarine, returning him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and pieces of paper thanking him for his service. Culture shock at a very young age unlocked the boundless possibility of expression through the destruction of any sense of permanence.
In spite of this, music and art have been a large part of my life in all respects : from the ravenous karaoke interpretations sung by my mother at home and older relatives belting at family parties growing up in Paradise Hills, to the infectiously memorable hymns recited in Catholic Church, to singing along on the radio to the best Hip Hop and R&B hits of Mariah Carey, Tupac, and Snoop Dogg. Video games with my cousins were the gateway drug to the aggravation, and unhinged expression of attending and participating in hardcore punk shows to escape the boredom and alienation of the suburban upbringing. My cousins introduced me to the video game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. The soundtrack to this album contained a plethora of smoothly aggressive styles of punk and hip-hop music that seemed to speak the inexplicable sense of anger I have felt all my life. Bands with names like Rage Against The Machine, Millencolin, and Bad Religion both frightened and fascinated me with a sense of new discovery. While my cousins entered the world of skateboarding, I involved myself with music.
Being involved in music at the age of 14, I found a sense of home among others looking to escape their own situations of institutional expectation in the form of controlling parents, rigorous academia, or dogmatic religion. I was escaping all three. All throughout high school into completing a bachelor’s degree at San Diego State for Philosophy and Sociology and several years past that into being an educator with San Diego Unified School District, I maintained this search for truth through expression. In college, I started a record label and added thousands of dollars of credit card debt to my mounting student debt in the name of art. I played in over 15 bands with different sounds, and on different instruments, each having a story of their own that would take a whole novel to explain. However, over the years the need to express caved into the need to feel accepted. An unhealthy culture of peer pressure, alcoholism, drug abuse, homophobia, and misogyny overtook what was once my home for over 14 years.
I left former friends without a word and effectively killed any notion of being involved in the scene by donning a suit and tie and adopting an identity in the finance industry selling insurance to family and friends in the multi-level-marketing company called WFG. A promise of financial stability, independence and becoming your own boss while educating people about much needed financial concepts was alluring and sensible to someone coming from the cult-like control of the hardcore scene. Rising up to the level of Marketing Director and running my own team of hungry young professionals ready to solicit investment accounts soon turned to dismay and dissonance as the endless stream of meetings, trainings, conventions and stretching my own bank account in the name of helping others with their own money wore on my conscience and my mental health. I was left in more debt than I was when I first joined the group. The cult-like attitude of alienation and constant surveillance upon my personal time dispelled any sense of healthy boundaries, and I found myself once again disdaining the enclosure and lack of privacy. I left the group with a sense of relief and a commitment to set out to do what I had originally intended to do with music albeit with a new skill set of understanding relentless effort and hard work.
Fast forward to the present, I, along with my best friend and creative partner Pam Sanchez, who has stuck with me throughout the years within the punk scene as well as the finance group, have been untiringly committed to creating an environment of artistic and musical expression through intentional action of empathetic persistence , assertive positivity, and rapid example through the platform of our collective called Lux Et Vitae (which translates to Light and Life), outlining the untold histories of a generation seemingly lost in the American mire of economic burden and social injustice. Lux Et Vitae is a production company, record label and collective group of passionate musicians, artists, and craftspeople from all parts of San Diego, Baja California, and the Inland Empire with various tastes, skills, inclinations, and understandings with the goal of pure expression and community built from the ground up.
Understanding that change must willfully originate from inner transformation and self-improvement, LEV seeks to provide art and music that can hopefully provide an emotional and intellectual education for generations and groups often ignored and at times silenced by the homogenous consumer culture that attempts to oversimplify the multitude of our experiences. With the hope to share experience and understanding in a way that is fun and uniquely from this smooth and stylish side of Southern California, a genuine smile can communicate the notion that in spite of the darkest of our experiences, we can glean a sense of wisdom that can instill a sense of confidence unto others that need help the most.
Has it been a smooth road?
Building LEV has certainly been a road as difficult as it has been rewarding. Logistical and financial challenge, emotional and health challenges, personal and family problems have marked the entirety of the total three years of building this brand and collective.
Although in the infant stages of the group, the rapidity of enacting a five-year plan that has taken two years to meticulously develop, and ten months thus far to execute the will of course face any natural challenge. But to grow from one to two people, to five, to over twenty artists that all work together to create, produce, and promote each others’ work is truly a blessing to experience in the sense of the internal reward and the tangible results of those efforts. We are all very close personal friends that like to laugh, discuss, play, and learn from each other.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the LUX ET VITAE story. Tell us more about the business.
I am the organizational facilitator and founder of Lux Et Vitae, a record label and collective primarily based in San Diego, California, with presence in the Inland Empire city of Lake Elsinore, as well as Tijuana, Baja California. Within the label I play guitar in the band [CON•TACT], am the songwriter and singer for yujin13, and drummer for the Temple Dogs, producer and recording engineer for the studio we operate out of called The Library and contributor of graphic design and direction of the conceptual and energetic vision of the label.
With an appreciation for various sounds, styles and a distinct branding aesthetic of bold lines and solid color that we deem the LuxTouch, LEV takes the pure work ethic and aggression of punk, the refinement and smoothness of jazz, and the history of our various origins to weave a cohesive picture of culture and community that deconstructs the outside perception of Southern California often covered by the glitz of the Military presence, biotech, and tourism/service industries that constitute the economic function of the city.
The goal of LEV is to add value unto the rapidly growing artistic presence in the Southern California region and validate art and music as viable elements to the contribution of culture and community by building and fostering an economy and communicative network of craftspeople and creatives concerned with servicing those in less fortunate positions. I am proud that we all work hard with a smile on our faces, and that we know how to handle our ramen and liquor.
Where do you see your industry going over the next 5-10 years? Any big shifts, changes, trends, etc?
In the next 5-10 years, I see the perception of the value of art and music in Southern California exist to the public not only in Los Angeles, but in San Diego, Inland Empire and Imperial Valley like Riverside, Lake Elsinore, Murrietta, and El Centro, and Tijuana. I see an embrace of different styles and more inclusive, less exclusionary attitudes often pushed in various musical subcultures that attempt to exact ideological control through dress, thought process, or peer pressure.
I see an embrace of marginalized peoples, people of color, LGBTQIA, and subjective experiences as valuable pieces of dialogue to the paradigm of the conversation in American culture and the forward movement of this society. I see more of a collaboration between different independents businesses that hope to pay respect to the ecosystem and create a holistic understanding of mental and emotional health apart from consumer industries that manufacture need and ignore well-being in the name of profit. I see more communities sparking that I wish I had growing up. It all starts with thought, example, and creating the conversation.
Pricing:
- Every LEV music release will never be over $10.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://luxetvitae.bandcamp.com
- Phone: 6195478751
- Email: luxetvitaesd@gmail.com
- Instagram: @luxetvitae
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/luxetvitae
- Other: https://luxtouch.bigcartel.com
Image Credit:
Megan O’Flaherty, Rain Pesebre, Isaiah Meza
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