(Today’s article is by regular contributor Luke Frazier)
This weekend my neighborhood thrived in an atmosphere of cross-cultural understanding, unity of spirit, and joyous expression—all due to a band called Son Rompe Pera. They are the genre busting musical group that took the city by storm this weekend throughout the Big Ears Festival.
I was able to see them perform at four different venues, starting at Barley’s for their appearance Friday at noon on the Big Plate Special on WDVX. I had already heard the buzz that resulted from their surprise show there Wednesday, and I was eager to see what Cumbia-Punk meant. I found out it means a lot of things, including the folly of categorization in general and the uselessness of borders specifically when it comes to the high country of the musical mind.
In my mind, marimba music is the pleasant background sound of a thousand south of the border dreams, colonial or otherwise. Brittanica says the marimba is the national instrument of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Mexico. And Naucalpan, just outside Mexico City, is where Son Rompe Pera (SRP) hails from. Where they are going is an entirely different question, because the mixture of punk rock energy applied to the marimba, folky tonal interludes, rip-roaring guitar leads, propulsive rhythm and well-timed screaming is not a path that has been tread before. I’d say the sky was the limit but I think they are already orbiting in a realm of magic and mystery—the kind you find when you are in the middle of the Mill & Mine after midnight on Saturday and it’s hard to discern the difference between the sound and yourself as separate from the sound. Borders dissipate and halleluiah ensues.
The band is made up of the three Gama brothers, Mongo, Kacho, and Kilos. Mongo plays marimba and electric guitar, Kacho is the lead marimba master, and Kilos plays percussion and leads the crowd in some high energy call & response. Raul Albarran plays bass and takes the lead vocal on a ZZ Top-esque rocker, and Richi Lopez is on the drums.
The SRP origin story is fitting in its amalgamation of emotion and energy. Their father Jose “Batuco” Gama was a percussionist who learned to play marimba on the street in Naucalpan. He taught his sons Kacho and Mongo to play and brought them along as kids to his wedding and party gigs. As sons will do, they resisted dad’s traditional leanings and ventured into other forms of music, including punk, psychobilly, and rock. The name Son Rompe Pera is a mixture of Batuco’s nod to Cuban music and references affection for his wife Esperanza (Pera).
A chance encounter with their future manager led to a connection with Chilean cumbia heavyweights Chico Trujillo and the realization that marimba music can be anything they want it to be. Batuco’s unfortunate death in 2017 was tough for his sons, but it led to their decision to reinvent SRP and honor their musical legacy. In an interview for the Richmond Folk Festival, Kacho put it this way:
“We decided to carry the marimba with us and create this musical project from our own roots, mixing in rhythms which we thought would never be musical brothers…the sound of our barrios and our everyday lives.”
My everyday life was transported for the weekend by this talented crew. After the Barley’s show at noon I caught just a few minutes of their appearance at Jackson Terminal Friday evening. It just primed the pump for Saturday’s big midnight show.
I had a chance to watch people arriving at the Mill & Mine and the mood was uncontained—giggly and buzzy. There was a sense of fortunate anticipation, the knowledge that we were all in for a treat, and how glad we all were for it. Big Ears produces such feelings throughout its run, but I hadn’t felt this level of excitement myself. I happened to be out on Depot Ave before the show and saw the band arrive, hauling their marimba with them. I shouted my standard celebratory Spanish greeting that I’ve used for years, “Vaya con Dios mi amigos!” and got a fist pump from Kacho and a shout from Mongo. Yea, I was grinning stupidly for minutes after.
Son Rompe Pera, Big Ears Festival, Boyd’s Jig and Reel, Knoxville, March 2024 (Photo by Luke Frazier)
The show itself exceeded expectations. As I referenced earlier, the membrane between sound, space, individual, crowd and band got very fluid at certain points and it just was all about that moment. SRP went from blurring the boundaries of traditional Mexican folk music to doing their best Clash imitation and beyond. The lyrics of one song declared “Cumbia is the new Punk” while marimba melodies underpinned rock & roll chugging in another. People pogo-ed and a mosh pit formed at one point. Kacho took a solo turn and played some soft meanderings before turning the mallets back to maximum force. Richi Lopez did this twirling thing with his drumsticks that defied gravity, but we were all in the marimba-sphere by then anyway.
I finished the weekend by catching most of their show at Boyd’s Jig and Reel Sunday night. A much tighter space compressed the energy like the heart of a well-tended fire. That’s an apt way to get at SRP: they are blazing forge of family tradition, individual passion, and supreme musicianship. It seems fitting that their mother’s name, Esperanza, means hope in English. Because it is a kind of hope that Son Rompe Pera brings to this sometimes contentious world–hope that music can point to a different way of relating to different cultures based on common humanity and cumbia dance steps.