Summer in the Global Village: Bi-Coastal Banda

El Gavachillo (Los Angeles): “Banda is the music of Los Angeles right now.”

A few weeks ago I caught El Gavachillo y Banda Viento de Oro at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival. They were the opening act for Colombia’s Ondatropica and played the brass-laden, polka-heavy, irrepressibly bouncy music from Mexico.

El Gavachillo is the alter-ego of Wil “Wil-Dog” Abers, who’s best known as the bass player for Angeleno Latin-alternative rock band Ozomatli. I interviewed him last year for PBS’s Quick Hits, where we talked about their US State Department-sponsored tours and the band’s 15th anniversary. At Lincoln Center Abers’ Gavachillo persona had machismo to spare. I was especially intrigued when he mentioned in the middle of the set that, “Banda is the music of Los Angeles right now.”

After the show he told me more about what he meant by that statement: “If you go to the working class neighborhoods, this is the music that you hear.

All the albums are being made in LA, all the best musicians are in LA, it’s like the new Hollywood for banda music is LA. The particular style that people want to hear it’s Sinaloaense, which is from Sinaloa, but it’s changing. These kids grew up listening to Tupac, and they play banda. So there’s a feel in there that’s different.”

He wasn’t always a fan of the banda sound, but a high school girlfriend made a convert out of him.

“I hated it prior to that,” says Abers. “So I went to a show and saw a banda do it, and I was so inspired. You know it takes a whole community to create this sound. Tonight I only had 11 [players]… but when I’m in LA I play with 17.”

According to Abers, even though he’s been into banda since high school, performing it was completely unplanned. Ozomatli had hired a banda to back them at a Hollywood Bowl gig. During a rehearsal, Abers started singing some banda standards, “I would sing them and these guys were tripping out that I knew all these songs. At the after party to the show the banda shows up and they’re like ‘We want to play,’ but I’m like ‘Who’s going to sing?’ and they’re like ‘You have to sing!’… So I sang a 45 minute set at this after party and it just started snowballing from there.”

Oscar Noriega of Banda de Los Muertos (New York): “When I left home I thought I’d never hear this music anymore.”

Banda is beginning to make a splash in New York as well. I spoke with brass players Jacob Garchik and Oscar Noriega of Banda de los Muertos. Garchik grew up in San Francisco and Noriega grew up in Tucson, both cities with vibrant and established Mexican communities. New York hasn’t historically had a strong Mexican-American presence, but that’s changing. Even though Garchik says it’s still challenging to find a good burrito in the Big Apple, in recent years Mexican-Americans have accounted for the metropolis’ fastest growing ethnic group.

A Mexican neighborhood (Sunset Park) has popped up next to long-gentrified Park Slope, a hamlet infamous for its stroller wars and a controversial food coop.

Similar to Abers, Noriega recalled an earlier dislike of banda, as well as a subsequent redemption.

“I grew up listening to it, my father played it all the time. When I was younger I didn’t like the music … when he would play it in the car I would roll the window up and sink down in my chair so my friends wouldn’t see me. When I left home I thought I’d never hear this music anymore, but when I was playing with Slavic Soul Party, Jacob brought in a banda tune … It was exciting to be playing this music with my friends.”

When Garchik and Noriega formed Banda de los Muertos, there weren’t any bandas in New York. They’ve since turned the experiment into a monthly Saturday night party at Park Slope club Barbes. As Noriega explains, their fan base continues to expand, “There are more and more Mexicans coming. It’s a good feeling that they’re coming out to hear banda and are exited about it along with the people from Park Slope.”

Even audience members who have no idea what they’re hearing can’t help but get swept up in the excitement, says Noriega, “Sometimes we’ll get people coming up to us asking ‘What is this music? What country is it from?’ but they just finished dancing to it, jumping up and down, swinging each other around. It’s a good feeling because it just goes across the board.”