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| Rámirez, Carlos, Hernandez, Bendaña. Photo courtesy of Criteria Entertainment |
by Susan Kepecs
Saint Cecilia, venerated in the Roman Catholic
church since the fourth century AD, was said to summon angels through song. For
that reason she became the patron saint of musicians. Plaza Garibaldi[1],
in mammoth Mexico City, is mariachi heartland, and every November 22, at the
stroke of midnight, hundreds of mariachis gather there to serenade their
guardian angel. Turning the tables, on Friday, October 6, at Overture’s Capitol
Theater, Madison gets serenaded by La Santa Cecilia – a sizzling grammy-winning
band out of East LA.
The core group is Alex Bendaña on
bass, José “Pepe” Carlos on acordion and requinto, Miguel “Oso” Ramírez on
percussion, and song sorceress Marisol (“la Marisoul”) Hernandez. The band’s
been around for about a decade; its third album, Treinta Días, was the one that got the Grammy, for “best Latin rock /
alt / urban,” in 2014. That made-up category doesn’t begin to describe La Santa
Cecilia. Let’s try “So-Cal mexicanidad-plus, un poco jazzeado” instead.
On Treinta Días – a sophisticated, inventive album—there’s a cumbia
called “La Negra” that features Marisol scatting like Ella Fitzgerald. And a heartbreaking
song titled “ICE el hielo” about the uncertainties of “undocumented” life in
the face of our famously heavy-handed federal immigration and customs enforcers.
It’s a story song – a corrido – with rhythmic, melodic, and social
consciousness echoes of those great old tunes by Panamanian
singer/songwriter/activist Rubén Blades y Seis del Solar. “ICE” comes with a
gem of a music video, directed by award-winning indie filmmaker Alex Rivera,
which should be be subtitled in English and decreed required daily viewing in
the White House.
Even better than Treinta Días is the band’s latest
offering, Amar y Vivir. Recorded live
in Mexico City early this year, this album – essentially La Santa Cecilia’s
rendering of some of the greatest
Mexican standards – is mind-bogglingly lush. The set list – 11 covers plus one original
that rings absolutely true to the theme – is killer. The title track is a classic ‘40s bolero written by
Consuelo Velázquez. You don’t hear this song a lot in gringolandia, but eveyone
in the world knows Velázquez’ most famous composition, “Besame Mucho.” Also on Amar y Vivir is “Amor Eterno,” done as a
lament for its composer, el Divo de Juárez Juan Gabriel, who died just a year
ago and left all of Mexico heartbroken. In the video – filmed at night, in
Plaza Garibaldi – a tear rolls down Marisol’s cheek, and you can tell it’s for
real. Plus there’s José Alfredo Jímenez’ irresistable “En en último trago,” a
hard-drinking ranchera covered by some of the greatest artists to ever sing a
mariachi song, like Lila Downs, Concha Buika (with Chucho Valdés on piano), Lola
Beltrán, and the legendary Chavela Vargas.
La Santa Cecilia’s reverent
compilation of archetypal Mexican songs is tempered lightly with complimentary
flavors, including a nod to Tex-Mex and a bow to the king of Motown, Smokey
Robinson, because you got soul if you come from LA. You can check it all out on
La Santa Cecilia’s YouTube channel – the stunning videos of these songs, shot
at a series of iconic Mexico City locations, add a supersized load of sabor.
A few weeks ago I had the good
fortune to interview bass player Bendaña over the phone. Here’s how our
conversation went:
CulturalOyster:
Have you been with La Santa Cecilia since the beginning?
Bendaña: I came in
a couple of months after they started the band. Marisol and Pepe grew grew up together, learning to play traditional music.
They would go out and play on Placita Olvera [a market street in the heart
of old LA, established in 1930 as a shrine to the city’s Mexican history]. Then
they met Miguel, the percussionist. I was playing in Afro-Latin ensembles at
Cal State LA at the time. I came into the picture a couple of months after they
started playing together as La Santa Cecilia. I had an instant connection with
them. We all had this urgency to play – we’d all been in different bands before
we got together, and we all wanted to write our own songs.
CulturalOyster:
What made you pick the bass as your instrument?
Bendaña: In
junior high I had a friend who was already a musician. He invited me to his
house one day. He had a bass and keyboards – he was already in a norteño band. He
showed me the bass, he said “hey man, you wanna learn how to play this
instrument?” I said sure, so he let me take it home for a week. I didn’t know I
could actually play an instrument and once I started I realized it’s a form of
expression. It helped guide me to where I needed to be – it helped me stay out
of trouble. I started playing in reggae bands and I was playing norteño at
weddings and quinceañeras and then I went to college and learned Afro-Cuban
jazz and Brazilian.
CulturalOyster: So
you switched from norteño to reggae and Afro-Cuban, and now you’re playing
mostly Mexican music again.
Bendaña:
Thanks to my friends I grew up with the roots, las raíces. They were playing
Juan Gabriel, they were playing José José, and lots of cumbias. I didn’t
realize till later how enriched my childhood was in music. When we’re kids we
think oh man, my friends’ music, you know, what their parents are into, is so
boring, and then when you get older you realize oh man, this music is such
beautiful stuff – I fell in love with it.
CulturalOyster: I
wasn’t aware of La Santa Cecilia before Treinta
Días won the Grammy. They called the category something like Latin
alt-rock, and the media described the band “cumbia, reggae, soul, tango...” I’m
a purist – I’d never have been drawn to that description, which sounds like so
many dime-a-dozen Latin fusion bands on the world music circuit these days. But
Treinta Días is so much better, so
much more sophisticated than that description. So – my question is, since I
really don’t know – what was La Santa Cecilia like before that album?
Bendaña: It
was really diverse. Marisol and Pepe had been playing rancheras and boleros –
traditional Mexican; Miguel was playing in funk and soul bands, and when I met
them I was playing jazz and Afro-Latin. The great thing was we all had different
inputs. It was kind of chaotic at first. We’d be playing different rhythms and
Marisol would come in and sing like a mariachi or do rock because she really
loved stuff from the ‘60s, like Janis Joplin. It was creative and chaotic and
like cooking. Everybody would put in their different ingredients and sometimes
it’d be flavorful and sometimes it was like “hmm, I don’t know about that.” But
it led us to create our own identity. We all grew up so much with Treinta Días. That album really defined
us as a bicultural band – we’re all bilingual kids of immigrant parents and
we’re all rich from the diversity of having grown up in LA.
CulturalOyster: I like Treinta
Días a lot, but Amar y Vivir is a
whole other story. Anybody who can put José Alfredo Jiménez, Juan Gabriel, and
Smokey Robinson on the same album is my friend for life. But more than that –
this album is the real thing, and it’s everything this band is – mexicano,
chicano, angelino – without being fusion at all. Smokey’s “You Really Got a
Hold on Me” is done so honestly – and it’s exactly what Poncho Sanchez does,
playing Cal Tjader and James Brown in the same set. How did the set list for
the album get picked?
Bendaña: Marisol and Pepe grew up playing those songs – “Amar y
Vivir,” “Nuestro Juramento” – that’s what they started with on Calle Olvera. They’d
pass the bucket and people would request them. And all of us were playing those
songs for weddings and funerals long before La Santa Cecilia, so they’ve been
ingrained in the repertoire from the start. Our foundation is really
traditional music. So when we decided to do this album it was really easy to
choose.
We
added a few others, like Café Tacvba’s “Ingrata” – we love that band, it’s a
big influence on us. They fuse a lot of styles and their version of “Ingrata”
is punky, but to us it really sounds like a ranchera so we wanted to strip it
down and sing it like José Alfredo Jiménez would want to sing it. And Marisol
singing it makes it even cooler.[2]
CulturalOyster: Is
your stop in Madison essentially part of the Amar y Vivir tour? Will you mostly be doing the songs off that
album? Given what’s going on politically you kind of have to do “ICE El Hielo,”
right?
Bendaña: We
hope that one day we don’t sing that song, but – it depends. We do play it most
of the time, and we definitely talk about the issue and what’s going on around
us. But we play a little from all our albums onstage – our shows are a mix, but
there’s a section where we do Amar y
Vivir so we can share those traditional songs. They have a message, too.
The topic of immigration important, but we also need to remember where we come
from. The more we remember our roots, the more confidence and pride we have in
who we are. We want the next generations to know where the music comes from and
how much power it has – how it’s our identity, and the identity of the place we
come from.
CulturalOyster: The
publicity for Amar y Vivir calls it a
“visual album.” Obviously the YouTube channel fills that role, but is the album
itself a double – CD / DVD?
Bendaña: There’s
a version in Mexico that was released with a documentary that shows how the
songs were recorded. In the States so far there’s just a vinyl record. Since we
were going back to the old songs we wanted a traditional album, with an A side
and a B side.
Making
it was an amazing experience – being in Mexico City and being able to record
live so we could see the vibrancy of the city and really feel its vibe while
the recording was going on. It’s completely live – we only did two or three
takes of any song. The imperfections are what make this album perfect.
CulturalOyster: The
band often performs with other featured artists. Is just the core group coming
to Madison?
Bendaña: It’s
the core group plus we always have a guest guitarist and drummer, so you’ll get
the full experience of La Santa Cecilia. And we love our music. Our shows
always make people dance and cry, we make people feel any emotion you can
imagine.
CulturalOyster: One
last question. What’s next for La Santa Cecilia?
Bendaña: We’ve
been doing so many beautiful things – so many opportunities have been given to
us to play our music – but one cool thing is that we’re going to play the
Hollywood Bowl! That’s a big thing for us ‘cause we’re an LA band. We’re super
excited – you go there to see Smokey Robinsin or a mariachi group and then one
day you’re playing there! We’re going with Café Tacvba and Mon Laferte. We’re
also going back to Mexico for a couple of festivals – that’s really important
to us because Mexico has really opened its arms to La Santa Cecilia. We’ve got
a couple of shows in Ireland and we just did a couple in Canada. We’ve only
just begun – we want to get to Europe, and to South America. We’re so excited
to be sharing our music all the time.
[1] I’m looking at a map of damages from the 7.1
earthquake that rocked Mexico City on Sept. 19 – it’s posted on AristeguiNoticias.com, one of the best
news sources in Mexico. Although the central city is covered in markers
indicating collapsed buildings, gas leaks, and more, no damages have been
reported in the immediate vicinity of Plaza Garibaldi – Santa Cecilia at work.
[2] The lyrics to this song of love
and rejection, written from the point of view of a man, contain a threat of gun
violence to the woman. This wouldn’t be surprising in an old ranchera, and Café
Tacvba was a young band when it wrote the song. Social consciousness of the
problem of femicide in Mexico has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years,
and Café Tacvba stopped playing the tune. La Santa Cecilia has worked miracles on this song, and on Amar y Vivir it’s sung as a duet by Marisol and sultry Chilean
songstress Mon Laferte (who now lives in Mexico City), which shifts its
implications into new territory.
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