“Best Latin Alternative Band -2013” – LA Weekly
“Creative, Socially Conscious, it’s perfect”- NPR
“Urgent, relevant music” – BBC
Born in the streets of Los Angeles, Las Cafeteras are children of immigrants who are remixing roots music and telling modern day stories with what LA Timeshas called a “uniquely Angeleno mishmash of punk, hip-hop, beat music, cumbia and rock … Live, they’re magnetic.”
Las Cafeteras have taken the music scene by storm with their infectious live performances and have crossed-genre and musical borders, playing with bands such as Mexican icons Caifanes, Lila Downs, Colombian superstar Juanes, Los Angeles legends Ozomatli, folk/indie favorites Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, and most recently with Talib Kweli.
The sound of Las Cafeteras is brought to life by the eclectic instrumentation used, which include jarana’s, requinto, a donkey jawbone, a West African bass instrument called the Marimbol, cajón, and a wooden platform called the Tarima used to dance Zapateado.
TO MAKE A LONG STORY LONGER …
Las Cafeteras formed as a band in 2008 with the purpose of documenting the histories of their neighborhoods through music. As musicians, they started as students of the Eastside Café, a Zapatista inspired community space in East Los Angeles where they were influenced by the culture, storytelling, and poetic music of Son Jarocho, a traditional music from Veracruz, Mexico.
Their namesake derives from the organization where they took classes, the Eastside Café. However, to honor women and challenge masculine language, they feminized their group name by calling themselves, Las Cafeteras, rather than Los Cafeteros.