Sarah Mahmoodi
Brothers David and Rene Pacheco are East LA’s beloved cumbia punks. Their band Tropa Magica, formerly known as Thee Commons, can only be described as a chaotic tropical psychedelic dance party. From guitar flipping to crowd surfing to transforming mosh pits into cumbia-fueled dance floors, the band brings an unmistakable energy.
With David on vocals and guitar, Rene on drums and vocals, and Christian Vasquez on bass, the band has taken their show to festivals like Coachella, Desert Daze, and Tropicália, as well as headlining tours across North America, with their largest show taking place at the Zócalo in Mexico City for a crowd of 50,000. Their music has even reached audiences beyond the live music circuit, appearing in collaborations with Disney, comedian Felipe Esparza, and Foos Gone Wild. Not bad for a band that once played generator shows in parking lots outside of venues just to be heard.
(Photo: Sid Rodriguez)
Known for their fusion of cumbia and psychedelic surf rock, they’re now taking their music in a new direction with their fifth studio album, Baile Tus Tristezas. Recorded at SpaceChip Studios in Riverside, the record is bittersweet, balancing upbeat rhythms with a melancholic undercurrent and classic cumbia sound. It explores life beyond Los Angeles, existentialism, love, and sorrow, with songs that move between introspection and carefree abandon. We spoke with the Pacheco brothers about the band’s origins, evolution, and new direction.
LA Weekly: How did you start your path as artists?
David Pacheco: Our story starts like most kids, just playing in the garage, you know? Our uncle has a Norteño group, and he had a lot of equipment for us to jam on. He didn’t happily let us use the instruments at first, but we jammed anyway. That opened us up to writing, rocking out — doing what teenagers do: playing their favorite band songs and messing them up. As we got older, we started going to DIY shows in Echo Park and Downtown — The Smell, specifically. It opened up our minds to see cool artists put out their work. That was a huge influence on us. It inspired us to record our own music. We started burning CDs and doing our own thing from then on. It’s always been about doing it ourselves up to this point, where we still self-release and finance most of what we put out. It’s something we’re very proud of because we’re doing it our way.
How did you develop your sound?
David: A big point for us was our introduction to Chicha music when The Roots of Chicha Volume 2 came out. [Note- Chicha is a style of cumbia from Peru that emerged in the 1960s. It combines Colombian cumbia rhythms, traditional Andean huayno melodies, Cuban guaracha, and 60s psychedelic rock.] We were really enamored with those Peruvian cumbia bands and their guitar work. Once Rene learned those rhythms, we just started fucking up the cumbia genre. Like, really badly, to the point where people would just stare at us. But we were okay with it. The clash of those two worlds, of going to punk shows at DIY spaces and discovering Chicha music, was the catalyst to Thee Commons and ultimately Tropa Magica.
How is your new album different from your previous work?
Rene: When we set out to write it, we knew we wanted something more traditional. That was pretty much it. We wanted songs that we could add to the stratosphere of cumbia. We wanted our own cumbia originals. We revisited songs we’ve written years before and really slowed them down. Some are more upbeat, like quebraditas, and some we slowed down a bit, like cumbias rebajadas.
David: Our intention was to write a cumbia album that isn’t necessarily really fast, loud, or aggressive. The idea was to make an album more accessible for your everyday non-cumbia listener.
Rene: It’s a cumbia album on Melatonin pills! But even though we call it Baila Tus Tristezas, I don’t think we realized we were writing a sad album.
(Photo: Shanice Hernandez)
David: We were just sad.
Rene: Yeah, we’ve just been sad. About a lot of things.
David: Now that I live in Santa Fe, I have a lot of time to reflect and compare life here to life in LA — the dichotomy of both worlds. I also feel introspective about getting older. We’re not in our twenties anymore. We’ve definitely changed. We’re sober now. We’re older. My feet hurt nowadays; I have to wear Dr. Scholl’s in my shoes. So all of that is reflected on this album. It’s a moment in time.
Rene: I think it just dawned on us recently when we were talking to one of the players from Son Rompe Pera. He said, “I love the new album. I love sad cumbia.” And we were like, “Oh yeah, I guess you’re right.” These are sad. It’s because we’re such happy, jovial people that we’re like, we’re going to write about that shit!
David: I mixed this album so many times and listened to these songs so much that I actually got depressed. So I’m not listening to this album anymore. Haha.
Rene: As a drummer, I’m also trying to learn how to dance to better understand the music writing aspect of it. I learned that dance within itself can be very healing. You feel depressed, you start moving, and you release a lot of shit, you know? Stress, ex-boyfriends, girlfriends — whatever.
David: That’s what it’s about. Baila Tus Tristezas means dance your sorrows. It’s about dealing with sorrow and grief through dance — through movement. This album was for sure planned to be our cumbia album. It’s our cumbia tristes, you know? Sad cumbias. And I think we did an alright job.
Tropa Magica’s new album Baile Tus Tristezas is out tomorrow, Nov. 13, on Greenway Records. Their album release party is at La Cita in DTLA also on Nov. 13, at 9 p.m. Tickets are available at the door.
For more details, follow Tropa Magica at tropamagica.com, tropamagica.bandcamp.com, and on Instagram @tropamagica.
The new album