“All I know is I hate the man who says that’s not American.” Raye Zaragoza, the Los Angeles singer-songwriter whose music has long taken on questions of identity and belonging, wrote that line as a challenge. On September 16 in Nashville, it becomes the starting point for an actual conversation about who gets to determine what is and who is American or not.
Salt Lick Incubator announced its AMERICANAFEST 2026 Songs of U.S. panel, featuring three artists from the ongoing series, Swamp Dogg, Zaragoza, and Farayi. At the heart of the panel is the question of what happens once a song leaves the stage and turns into something people rally around.
The panel will be held at 2 PM CST on September 16 at the Embassy Suites in the Meadow A&B room, moderated by Salt Lick Incubator founder Roger Brown, alongside the organization’s Director of Programming and Media, Nicole Izzo Mlynczak. The three artists are expected to speak about leading with their own values, reaching audiences who don’t agree on much else, and why it all starts with the song itself before it becomes anything bigger.
Zaragoza is a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter who released her latest album, Hold That Spirit, working exclusively with other female artists and producers. She has also written songs for Netflix’s Spirit Rangers and wrapped a national tour with the reimagined Broadway production of Peter Pan, work tied to a broader goal of putting Indigenous artists in view.
The same goal runs straight through her Songs of U.S. session, filmed at Gold-Diggers Sound in Los Angeles on April 30. Zaragoza reinterpreted Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin'” and Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” then paired both with her own song “Who Says That’s Not American?” The three tracks, side by side, build a case for who gets to claim the word American, coming from an artist raised in a one-room apartment above a New York City firehouse by a mother who immigrated from Japan and a father who is Akimel O’odham and Mexican.
On the Dylan cover, Zaragoza pointed to how uncomfortable it is that a song built to outlast its moment has done exactly that. “It’s beautiful and also sad that these are timeless things that he was singing about that we continue to sing about now,” she said in her interview for the series. “Protest music is not a thing of the past. It’s truly something that we still carry with us today.” She also singled out the song’s final verse, calling it “a metaphor for so many different things in life,” a reminder that whoever holds power now might not hold it later, and that the shift runs in both directions.
Her choice of “American Girl” was just as deliberate. Tom Petty’s song tends to land on the same playlists as Fourth of July anthems, and Zaragoza wanted her own voice to be part of that picture. “I feel like I am an all-American girl, even if I’m not the usual ideal or what someone would expect an American woman or American girl to be,” she said. She tied the song’s restlessness, its longing for something more, to her mother’s journey to the United States on a stateless passport, the same pull toward a better life that has always drawn people to this country.
The same thread carries into “Who Says That’s Not American?,” the original song she performed alongside the two covers, and the source of the line that opens this piece. Zaragoza called it a point of pride, explaining that both verses hold up the good and the bad her grandparents lived through, the immigrant struggle and the Indigenous struggle, as part of the same American story, even as the people who lived it are so often told they don’t belong. “We are, actually, a country built on immigration,” she said. “So if we’re not going to acknowledge those things, good and bad, is what it means to be American, then we’re not seeing the full picture.”
Zaragoza’s session joins a growing Songs of U.S. lineup that already includes Joy Oladokun, MARIS, and Swamp Dogg, with Brandy Clark’s performances rolling out starting August 26. Variety has called the project a rare “thoughtful and perhaps meaningfully patriotic approach” to the country’s 250th anniversary, built less on flag-waving than on reckoning with the whole story.
Full Songs of U.S. programming, along with updates on the panel, is available through Salt Lick Sessions’ YouTube channel and Salt Lick Incubator’s website.
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