As Hector Flores’ huaraches bounce and skip across a rug in Boyle Heights’ Eastside Rehearsal, his bandmates in Las Cafeteras try to better choreograph performances for their upcoming tour.
“Should I follow you or do you want to follow me?” bassist Moises Baqueiro asks vocalist Denise Carlos. The band works in unison in the dark room on an otherwise hot and sunny day in Boyle Heights.
The Eastside-born band began formally playing shows in 2005, when they were still music students at Eastside Cafe, a community space in El Sereno, to which they derive their name. They’re practicing for an upcoming string of shows across the Southwest and California, including a sold-out show at the Paramount in Boyle Heights, and are excited to finally play songs from their latest record, A Night In Nepantla.
“We’ve been getting messages from friends, allies and homies from across the country sending us messages just how much they’ve enjoyed the album,” Flores said. Carlos agreed, saying how much she enjoys seeing people dance to the new songs.
The band plays a blend of son jarocho, traditional folk music from Veracruz, through a modern, electronic tone, all with a tinge of afro-latino futurism. Elements of punk, cumbia and hip-hop can all be heard in the groups mostly bilingual ballads about love, social justice and identity. Flores calls their unique brand of music “Barrio Folk.”
Members of the group, who have backgrounds in activism, social work and Chicano Studies, hail from places like City Terrace, the San Gabriel Valley, Oxnard, Montebello, Eagle Rock and Veracruz, Mexico. The band members say their unique sound is informed by the expansive spectrum of Latinidad and experiences as Latinos from across the Eastside and beyond.
Over a Margherita pie at Brooklyn Avenue Pizza, the band members joke about influences and past musical obsessions. What they took from music growing up on the Eastside has vastly influenced their musical styles as much as the cultural traditions of many of their immigrant parents.
Las Cafeteras invites listeners and fans to join them on their tour across the West and East Coasts. A full list of upcoming shows can be found here and will be updated by the band.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
BHB: Your album was released in May. How has the community reception been so far?
Denise Carlos: I think the biggest reaction we’ve had has been onstage with the audience seeing it live. Onstage, we get so excited. We’ve been playing these songs in studio for years already. I think part of it is like we invite them to the party. “Cumbia de Mi Barrio” was our first single out, and people just get crazy. And they do the little dance with us. It’s just like inviting them to a big ol’ party. I think we’re all celebrating because it’s been years since we actually put out an album.
Hector Flores: We’ve been getting messages from friends, allies and homies from across the country sending us messages just how much they’ve enjoyed the album.
BHB: What inspired the production and lyric writing process for this new record compared to your past ones?
DC: When we were talking about the lyrics when we were in a studio, we were like, ‘What are we trying to say?’ The three of us had a different kind of relationship with Brownness. What does that mean? Is it really the color of your skin? Is it a lived experience? Is it being Mexican?
Is it being Latinx, Latino, Latine? For us, you’re going against the grain when you love your Brownness. But the Brownness is in their blood, right? The future of Brown is here in the U.S., it’s the seeds that we’re throwing.
HF: Nina Simone has that song, “Black is the Color of my Lover’s Hair” and it’s like this love letter to blackness. I love it, but we don’t really have a lot of songs that are like a love letter to our brownness. As people from the earth, as raza, as the spectrum of Latinidad, and Morena Morena was really trying to tell like a love letter to our brownness and to be proud and in love with oneself. In a place where it’s not always cool to be brown, we’re trying to make it. Brown is a space and it’s beautiful and it’s dope and we want to let people know.
Moises Baqueiro: I think the song inspires the production. I think we decided to start from an aesthetic point of view. What does the song suggest? And that’s where the sound goes and that’s where the stylistic choice comes from. Like our song “Morena Morena”. It’s almost like an unapologetic letter. We’re brown and we love it and how can we enhance that text through traditional Afro-Panamerican music?
BHB: What does your record title mean? What is “Nepantla”?
DC: In the last few years, we’ve done a lot of appreciating the intersections of where identities meet. Like as a mujer, as a Mexican from a poor neighborhood, how all those things mixed up have created my own experience and who I am. I think like we are everything. When you think of Nepantla it’s kind of like the sky. We’re those stars in the sky and it’s a beautiful thing that we’re not all the same thing.
HF: The space in between. It’s either a place where you go to die, or it’s a place that gives you birth. For us, it’s like, the space in between is a place where all these sounds, experiences and people meet. We live there. We’re not one thing, as raza, we’re mixed peoples. It’s like the ocean, you don’t even know what’s under there until you go in and embrace it and explore it. Sonically, we live in “the between” and in the middle of many cultures and sounds, and we’re trying to invite people there to also have them explore their in between.
MB: This Nepantla topic was very strong during the making of this album and the writing of it. We embrace both our Mexican roots and the environment that we live in. It was basically manifesting this idea of: This is who we are, and we don’t care whether you like it or not.
BHB: Why is it important for you guys to incorporate bilingualism into your lyrics?
DC: It’s like, this is how we speak and this is how we communicate. So it’s always been the most natural. It’s been the least natural to keep it to one language.
HF: Spanish just feels more fun. It swings better. It’s more emotional and it’s more romantic, just in general. It lends itself to a lot more poetry. But with English I use double entendres, I use words that don’t exist, I’ll connect things. And who’s to tell me it’s right or wrong? But I still have fun with it.
BHB: What can your fans expect from the average show?
MB: They can cry while dancing. It’s a very Latino and Hispanic thing. There’s a lot of idiosyncrasy with every song that we do. I feel like there’s a highly charged intention of like, what is this song supposed to do? Denise loves to say, ‘Do you want to cry or do you want to dance?’ And the conclusion is that we want to cry while dancing.
BHB: Why do you feel like it’s important to incorporate activist charged lyrics in your songs?
HF: Our song, “La Sirena,” is about falling in love with a mermaid. But it’s really about falling in love with somebody from another world. It’s almost like forbidden love. We actually created a video where it’s about falling in love with a drag queen. These are two people from different worlds. And in the video, we incorporated trans folks, queer folks, dancers, and performers. For us, every story lends itself to the possibility of elevating, like, hidden narratives. Denise wrote “Vivas Nos Queremos” which is a call to action to protect women at a time where there’s a femicide. “Carvana” is an immigrant anthem. Everybody’s talking s— about people coming up. But that’s our parents. That’s us, that’s some of our members. Let’s write a song about how beautiful it is to fight and humanize these people.
BHB: You use places like Hollenbeck Park as backdrops for music videos. How do the communities of Boyle Heights or East LA influence your art?
DC: It’s the place that raised us. We want to widen the lens of L.A. to the world. What people know of L.A. is like Hollywood, Santa Monica, the Walk of Fame. That’s the background, but that’s not the city I know. It can feel a little bit gritty but it’s still home. These are the streets that we walked, going to school. I think that’s a beautiful thing that we come from these places and this is what we know.
HF: Before becoming a band, we played in every venue, every coffee shop, every backyard for years. Even though we come from different places, it was the politics and the movement of the Eastside that birthed the band. If we’re going to do a video or image, it should represent the places that we like to go to or be a part of. It’s very different from the mainstream images of what L.A. is, and, in many ways, it’s way more beautiful. Because it’s much more authentic.
BHB: What’s next for the band?
DC: I just actually watched an interview that Jose did, about prosperity and about what it feels like to achieve and to be prosperous. We’re lucky that we’re able to work and have people that support our work and connect with our music. But at the end of the day, if it’s not giving anything back to you at a certain point, then how prosperous are you? Whatever keeps making us feel good and feel right. I think this is bigger than the music.
HF: It’s about being present. Tomorrow is not promised. Today we have an album, we have a sold out show in our backyard. And we’re so grateful for that. We have East Coast and West Coast tours until the end of the year and we’re grateful for that. What happens next year, we leave to the stars.
MB: For artists, criticality is never silent. You always have something to say. This band will just continue to create and we’ll continue to do this labor of love.