Later with...Los De Abajo
Mexico's underground rock-ska legends on Jools Holland show
So who exactly are Los De Abajo?
Well, the band began back in 1992. Carlos, Liber, guitarist Vladimir Garnica and drummer Yocu Arellano met at high school, determined to “make music that was 100% danceable and cathartic, take it beyond our country’s borders, and with it a message about the political and social situation we are living through in Mexico”. Musically, they set out to mix “mestizo (half-breed) rock” with other influences from salsa to reggae and Mexican styles. According to Liber, “we’ve always had an itch to mix the local with the global”.
They broke onto the international market with the help of David Byrne, who signed them to his Luaka Bop label, and suggested that their music should be called ‘punk salsa’. The band preferred the term ‘tropipunk’ (“because of the fusion of tropical rhythms”, said Liber), though he described their first album, released in 1998, as “practically a record of political songs, with a punk attitude in the lyrics, inspired by The Clash”. Since then, the band have matured as musicians, and continued to break down barriers as they popularised their music around the world, and – a harder task, amazingly enough – within Mexico itself. According to Liber “the national Mexican market was more hostile to musical fusion”.
They will be appearing on Later, on Friday 28th Oct along with:
Arctic Monkeys
Mylo
Miss Dynamite
Joseph Arthur
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