Hardcore music saved Isaac Canales’ life the day he got elbowed in the face in a pit at a Turnstile show.
Speaking to a captive audience of dozens at the headquarters of Gente Organizada in Pomona, the young man from East L.A. shared his personal story of how a newfound love for hardcore led him to Mosh For Youth. The nonprofit organization provided him with a scholarship to attend the University of California Riverside where he is majoring in history and hopes to one day become an educator, much like Victor Campos, his mentor and the founder of MFY.
The occasion allowing for Canales’ public vulnerability in a room full of strangers was a community screening of “Xicano Hardcore: A Mosh For Youth Documentary,” by director Magdalena Aparicio. The 12-minute documentary short is a snapshot of Pomona's local hardcore scene and features Campos explaining his impetus for launching MFY.
The documentary highlights how Campos, with help from his band mates in Barrio Slam, combined their love of hardcore music, education, and community into a nonprofit that supports all three. He has also expanded the nonprofit to assist youth in other cities, with San Bernardino the most recent addition to the roster. He hopes to have a fundraiser show in the Inland Empire soon.
“We just added the city of San Bernardino because, since the beginning of Mosh For Youth in 2021, the kids there, they're the ones that show up to our shows,” explains Campos. “They support us more than any place in the Inland Empire. So we decided, ‘let's give something back to them.’ So we use this music [and] throw these shows to raise scholarship money for those students.”
Campos launched MFY in 2021 with nothing but a tweet (remember those?!) and a dream sent out into the universe. Since then, the nonprofit has raised over $25,000 for college-bound youth through hardcore shows that double as fundraisers, including over $9,000 raised in 2025 thus far.
This past summer, MFY partnered with SOS Booking, 5.7 Booking, and The Hood Santa to raise money for the Local Hearts Foundation to support families affected by ICE raids.
“It’s for students that are committed to a four-year university and that are from those areas,” Campos continues. “We don't look at things like GPA. We don't look at things like immigration status. We just want to help them get to college. That's the main goal.”
Aparicio, the filmmaker behind the documentary, first learned of MFY through a band she followed. She saw them perform at a fundraiser and also caught Barrio Slam at the event. Their song, “Xicano Hardcore,” caught her attention “because it was the first time I’ve heard hardcore that was specifically about being Latino.”
Though not originally from Pomona, Aparicio quickly fell in with the hardcore scene there. Years later, she approached Campos with the idea of creating a documentary about the band, the nonprofit, and community built around Pomona’s hardcore scene. She and cinematographer Nicole Pasto spent seven weeks, from pre-production to editing the final cut, on the project over the summer.
“I just wanted people to take away that this community really is beautiful, even though it might not look it, especially right now with Latinos being so policed,” says Aparicio. “I think it's really important right now to show Hispanic people being aggressive, being themselves, and I think it's very healing.”
The healing aggression of hardcore music is a topic that came up frequently in the film, during a Q&A session at the community screening and in my separate conversations with Campos and Aparicio. Both saw the aggression in hardcore music as an emotional outlet that can lead to positive changes on both individual and communal levels.
“A lot of people think hardcore is aggression for the sake of aggression,” Campos says in the film. “But it’s aggression that’s built up through outside factors. A lot of people in Pomona know somebody that has been killed or seen violence up close because of the lack of resources here. There needs to be a way out. Not necessarily out of Pomona, but out of poverty.”
Aparicio spoke of the days after the Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade when she was a sophomore in high school. She attended an all-ages punk show afterwards where the bands that performed that night passed the mic around to the audience and, as she fondly recalls, gave the many teenage girls in attendance the chance to scream “fuck the Supreme Court” at the top of their lungs.
“Someone once told me [that] whatever's happening in the world, you can probably see it on a t-shirt at a hardcore show,” says Aparicio. “Sometimes, I'm at school and it feels like no one's paying attention to the ICE raids. It feels like it's all me and my brain and, like, my Instagram feed. And that when I go to a hardcore show, that it feels whatever it is that I'm caring about always seems to be at the forefront of that show.
“And so it makes me just feel very seen, at least in terms of the live music aspect of it,” she continues. “I think hardcore shows hold a mirror to whatever's going on.”
"Xicano Hardcore: A Mosh For Youth Documentary" is available for viewing online on YouTube.
Barrio Slam will perform this weekend on Nov. 9 at the Fox Theater in Pomona for the "Unidos Por Siempre" immigrant rights benefit fundraiser show.
