Las Cafeteras Defy Tradition

For more, read "Las Cafeteras on the Strict Rules of Son Jarocho Music."

PHOTO BY BRANDON SHOWERS

Las Cafeteras at Eastside Cafe

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Salon De La Plaza

1866 E. First St.
Los Angeles, CA 90033

Category: Restaurant >

Region: East L.A.

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More About

• La Bamba
• Denise Carlos
• Hector Flores
• Food and Cooking
• Eating Out

Outside the Eastside Café on Huntington Drive in El Sereno, the late-evening traffic mutes the staccato sounds of nylon-stringed guitar and the stomping of hard-soled shoes.

Inside, under the glare of bare white walls and fluorescent lights, the seven members of the Café's namesake band, Las Cafeteras, are rehearsing for a summer evening show at MacArthur Park's Levitt Pavilion. Teeming with energy, the attractive members of the Eastside ensemble — each in his or her late 20s or early 30s — fall along the spectrum from hipster to hippie. And though they play Son Jarocho, a centuries-old form of Mexican music from the eastern state of Veracruz, they are staunchly nontraditional.

In L.A., that's a fine line to walk. As relative newcomers to the music — none of the members traces his heritage to Veracruz — the band first incorporated miniature eight-string jarana guitars a little more than five years ago. A mainstay of Son Jarocho music, the jarana has the higher pitch of a ukulele but, because it has twice the number of strings, it has a fuller sound.

Popularized in 1958 by L.A. native Ritchie Valens' rock & roll adaptation of the traditional classic "La Bamba," Son Jarocho has a syncopated, toe-tapping, bright and cheerful air. And since the early 1980s, it has steadily developed a dedicated following in Latino hubs around the United States, including L.A.

The Cafeteras have applied a punk-rock philosophy to the genre; for one thing, they don't believe you need years of dedicated training to perform it. As soon as they learn the basic tenets of a new song, they'll play the hell out of it for hours, making up new lyrics and even freestyle rapping over it.

To some local longtime Son Jarocho musicians, this style is just too bold. But their ability to meld timeless stories with modern, danceable beats? The hundreds of sweaty fans at Cafeteras shows can't get enough.

The ensemble learned to strum jaranas and dance the traditional zapateado steps as 20-somethings here at Eastside Café, a politically driven "space," as they call it, for community organizing. Denise Carlos and fellow band member Jose Cano founded the spot with a group of activists nine years ago.

Contrary to what its name suggests, Eastside Café isn't a restaurant but rather a gathering place for neighborhood residents, furnished with lumpy recliners, plastic folding tables and a whiteboard. Since the center's launch, members of Las Cafeteras have helped program a weekly schedule of English classes, activist group meetings, Son Jarocho classes and the occasional baby shower.

Angela Flores was an early Son Jarocho instructor at Eastside Café. After a couple of years of weekly lessons, workshops with visiting experts from Mexico and late-night jams (called fandangos), Flores and students Carlos, Cano, Leah Gallegos, Annette Torres, Daniel French, brothers David and Hector Flores and now–former member Cristina Torres started booking gigs as a band.

The members of Las Cafeteras are community organizers and nonprofit workers who set aside $100 of their band's earnings every month to pay a portion of Eastside Café's rent. Their activism also seeps into their songwriting, in which they put a political spin on traditional lyrics, which they sing in Spanish, English and Spanglish. Two Cafeteras originals, "Ya Me Voy" and "Trabajador/a," are stories of the migrant worker experience that hit close to home for many of the band's members.

But make no mistake: If you go to a Las Cafeteras show, you will seriously get down to their political folk music.

Take their early August concert at Levitt Pavilion. As the sun sets and the heat breaks, the group performs its songs for some 1,300 people. Daniel French and Hector Flores feverishly strum jaranas while Cano, seated, smacks the front face of the box drum between his legs. Gallegos' voice is simultaneously sweet and severe as she flicks a stick up and down a dried-out jawbone.

To close things out, French invites Jarocho players from the crowd to come up, and the stage is quickly packed. The crowd pushes in, and everyone's bouncing and singing along to "La Bamba."

After countless verses — some standard, some invented on the spot — they conclude "La Bamba" with revolutionary-style fists in the air, singing several rounds of their favorite verse: "Yo no creo en fronteras/Yo no creo en fronteras/Yo cruzaré, yo cruzaré."

I don't believe in borders. I don't believe in borders, I will cross, I will cross.

There's no direct translation of that famous song's title, though "bambollero" describes someone who likes to toot his own horn. For many in L.A.'s small Son Jarocho community — which is maybe 10 bands deep — this is precisely where Las Cafeteras have crossed the line.

Quetzal Flores, of the Mexican-American fusion band Quetzal, says performing Son Jarocho onstage goes against tradition. "The Cafeteras represent a growing problem in communities both here and in Mexico," he says. That is, "people learning the Son Jarocho through the fandango ... and in turn undermining the movement by taking the music out of the context of community practice and onto the stage as authorities."