Hello everyone! In anticipation of Mosh For Youth 7 happening Saturday May 10th, 2025 in Pomona, CA, we share a quick conversation we had with Victor Campos. He is one of the founders of Mosh For Youth as well as vocalist for Barrio Slam!
ECZ: What’s your name and what do you do?
VICTOR: My name is Victor Campos, I’m the vocalist for Barrio Slam and I am one of the founders of Mosh For Youth
ECZ: How did Mosh For Youth start? What can we do as a community to further contribute to a great cause?
VICTOR: Well the idea started back in 2021 when I was a high school teacher in East LA. It was the school year where my advisory was going to graduate. I mentored this group of students for 4 years and really just grew into the East LA community. So I wanted to kind of do something to help a little bit more for when they graduated. I combined my two passions: Hardcore and Education. That’s where the idea of creating a scholarship foundation came to be.
Honestly just sharing, donating. I get a lot of people asking how they can help and that’s a tough question because I don’t know. It’s a very new thing that we’re building. I have some people that send me grants that we might be able to apply for. Things like that work
ECZ: What’s your overall long term goal for Mosh For Youth?
VICTOR: Societal goal is to close the college attainment gap between communities that are rich and those that aren’t. We’re building these scholarships to help students that want to go to college but choose not to because they don’t want student loans. We want to be able to take care of a significant chunk of tuition for as many students as possible every year
ECZ: What’s the creative process like for Barrio Slam? What inspires your music?
VICTOR: Barrio Slam has gone through a ton of changes creatively honestly. I feel like we have a killer lineup and we all have different styles of hardcore, punk, and metal that influence us individually and we bring all that together. So when we come together, we all just come with ideas and try to make it work. One of my favorite songs, You Aint That Guy was started by our drummer Abe humming a beat. Mau made it happen and then we all added our own thing into it. That’s essentially the vibe now. On what inspires us: life, experiences, anger. We have some political songs with shit that we see in our communities, faults in our society, and we have some songs that have very personal stories
ECZ: On a cultural aspect, how do Chicano values/aesthetics factor in the music you make and listen to?
VICTOR: We’re all extremely proud to be brown. That’s just a genuine thing, it’s not a schtick you know. We all had very similar experiences with our culture growing up in Pomona. Sunday soccer leagues, growing up catholic, family fighting for terrenos, I think we all learned spanish before english, we didn’t take a Chicano experience book and try to implement it, we live it. Our music is about our lives and being brown, being Chicanos, that is almost at the center of it. Throw in being from Pomona as well, that’s pretty much what Barrio Slam is.
In terms of how it plays in what we listen to. We love cumbias, we all love rock en Espanol. We have a fucking corrido that I’m sure we all shared with our families for the year that we had it before we released it. We listen to what our parents listened to and that shits tight
ECZ: What’s your favorite Mexican dish and favorite beverage to pair it with?
VICTOR: 100% Menudo no questions asked. If we’re being specific there’s a menudo spot called La Guera in Guadalajara next to Estadio Jalisco. I legit go back home to GDL just to eat that menudo. Mexican coke in the bottle. Always. Maybe a Cidral to pair
ECZ: Any future plans/projects with Mosh for Youth and Barrio Slam? Where can we find you at?
VICTOR: Barrio Slam got some cool stuff coming up. We got a weekender coming up with our friends in Sanity Slip and Auditory Anguish in July. We got a fest in Arizona with Weekend Nachos headlining. We’re playing with Cold As Life and the homies in Desmadre at the Harley Davidson in San Diego. And we’re planning a 10 day run in November.
MFY is already working on the next fest lol. Never stopping
Instagram is always best bet
@barrioslamhc
@moshforyouth
moshforyouth.org
Victor Campos
CEO and Founder
Thank you again for your time, Victor! Please click on the link below for tickets and info for the fest and see you there!
Photo credit: Oscar Rodriguez, please go support and check out their work!
*Disclaimer: All text copyright El Corazón Zine 2025. Do not duplicate without expressed permission and fair use*