The soft strumming of guitar strings plays while Matthew Jacquez, 29, and Dominick Maldonado, 27, introduce themselves during a phone interview.
The sound is reminiscent of classical or traditional guitars but with a distinct rhythm. “This is more like the pick-and-finger style, the requinto,” Jacquez says describing his instrument – a higher-pitched guitar.
The duo makes up the founding members of Los Caramelos, a band playing homage to trios who perform bolero music. The pair met a year ago this month at Eclectic Studio, a music studio and art space in Boyle Heights’ Mariachi Plaza.
Maldonado, a dentist from East L.A., and Jacquez, a firefighter from Commerce, kept in touch through social media. Maldonado noticed Jacquez posting Instagram videos singing boleros, a genre of music with Cuban origins known for its passionate declarations of love and heartbreak.
They started playing a few boleros they knew “for fun” at Mariachi Plaza and on Olvera Street, and had their first official public performance last December at the same Boyle Heights studio where the pair had met.
Since then, the band – which until now only performs cover songs – has added fellow musicians Miguel Balàn on the maracas and Larry Millard Harvey II on percussion and bongos.
Now, Los Caramelos is set to open for Los Panchos, the iconic trio that popularized the bolero style in the 1960s. The 8th Annual “Boleros De Noche” at The Ford on Saturday, Oct. 12 and Sunday, Oct. 13 will highlight the decorated and new generation of bolero musicians.
Ahead of their show, we spoke to the founding members of Los Caramelos about their musical influences and why it’s important to keep boleros alive.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
BHB: What are your earliest memories of listening to trios and boleros Was it at home or someone specific who shared it with you? And did you understand it?
Jacquez: I have some roots attached to it. I remember being young, and my dad would drive around and have CDs on deck. He would give us the lyrics and then he would pause the song and ask us ‘Okay, what do you think they meant by that?’
That really stood out to me– the times that he would explain the lyrics and dissect the poetry. The way he made it apparent to us that this is very romantic music. It opened it up to me to really listen hard and go on my own endeavor and journey through it and then I just became attached to it on my own accord.
Maldonado: To be honest, I didn’t really grow up listening to trio music. I mean everybody in their Mexican household hears Los Panchos — they’re the classics, and you could say, the godfathers of the genre. I remember I really liked them, but that was the only trio music that I was introduced to as a young man, and as a boy… I lived in Mexico for about six years and that introduced me more to Latin music… I had to live in Europe for a bit and in that time, I got really nostalgic. I actually missed Mexico at that point more than the U.S. and I started listening to a lot of music in Spanish, romantic music, boleros, not even trio music.
BHB: Classic boleros are about romantic love and heartbreak. Is that why you think this music survives?
Maldonado: Oh yeah, because some of these songs were written in the 1940s–some of them even earlier… and all that stuff you could relate to today. Right before we play a song, we kind of just say what the song’s about and sometimes people laugh and sometimes people are like, ‘Woah, you’re going to play a really sad one right now?’
BHB: Recently, a new wave of artists have reimagined the bolero and refreshed the sound. How would you describe that evolution of contemporary vs traditional and do you consider yourself part of that wave?
Jacquez: Well, my personal opinion about the contemporary stuff: I think it’s just great. It’s adding, doing what the groups that we admire did to the genre in its original form and they kind of threw a spin on it. History tells us that it wasn’t always widely accepted. A lot of people critiqued the music just because of the dissonance of a lot of jazz chords. The artists that I’m exposed to today add elements from the genre of Bolero that stand out cleanly, and they do justice to the genre. As for what we’re doing and where I feel like we stand, I’m not sure yet. I think we’re still pretty early in our musical journey through these boleros, and we’re just learning the standards and playing them.
BHB: In a world of ever-changing music trends some young people may not be familiar with this sound or even music. Why do you think it’s important to keep this sound alive?
Jacquez: Surprisingly, there are people who are younger than us doing these very traditional boleros. For example, there’s a group in Mexico City, called Trio Los Pretendientes, and they’re doing it, I think, better than us.
Maldonado: For me, it’s just as simple as I like it, and I want to play it. I’m pretty sure when Matthew and I started playing, if they had told us that in a year we were going to play for Los Panchos, we would’ve even believed them. We just like listening to the songs and studying them and it’s not really about, ‘Oh, we’re trying to keep it alive.’ I would say, it’s also the fact that we have our jobs, and in a way, sometimes it’s an escape to an artistic and romantic thing. It’s more like an organic love that we have for it and I guess that’s what draws people in.
BHB: Who are some of the artists that have inspired you that we should be listening to? Classic or contemporary or any Spotify lists you recommend?
Jacquez: We do have a playlist that we like to add so people can become familiar with the stuff that we like. I think to name some groups of course, Los 3 Aces which, in English, translates to The Three Aces, Los Tres Caballeros, Trio Las Sombras, and the fourth group that I’ll add in, they’re a cuarteto, and they’re called Los Cuatro Soles. They are very underrated but super talented.
Los Caramelos will perform at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 12 and 13 at the 8th Annual “Boleros De Noche” at The Ford. Tickets are available here.
