I'm here to convince you that cumbia is just like techno
A while ago I found on Youtube a video from 2011 in which Camilo Lara from the Mexican Institute of Sound (MIS) visited Casa de América in Spain to give a talk about cumbia in a presentation called “Mundo-Cumbia” (Cumbia-World).
In this talk he explained how, despite spending his teenage years listening to English speaking groups such as The Cure or My Bloody Valentine, his musical DNA was irremediably marked by cumbia sonidera ("sound system” cumbia from Mexico) which he encountered by accident in his daily activities. This would be when he was riding on the bus or heard the maid’s radio when he entered to the kitchen. He uses all of this to explain why he does the music he does with the MIS, which has a lot to do with bringing Mexican popular culture to Europe’s and U.S.’s markets.
Although is fascinating to listen to these stories, what’s more remarkable of the whole session is a precise phrase he throws at the audience at the beginning of the session:
“I’m here to convince you that cumbia is just like techno”.
When I listened to that my eyes went wide open, for he had hid the mark on a pending topic that music history has with cumbia sonidera. That is, to be recognized as a valid electronic music, with its own culture and with a narrative that could be as important and as influent such as styles such as techno or house
Camilo’s phrase was followed by two arguments that prepared a provoking debate. On one side, he mentioned that the bass in cumbia is very similar to the ones crafted by artists from the French Touch scene such as Etienne de Crecy o Daft Punk. On the other side, he said that surely there had been a couple of Latinos involved in the early stages of techno, which made it intuitive that techno should share some of cumbia’s Latin DNA.
However, he moved onward with the rest of the presentation without giving more examples on them, which made the energy of the talk switch to how exciting it can be to listen to Camilo tell the story of how he found the sound that made him famous.
However, that statement deserved a whole lot more attention, because if we get into its details it can be a useful concept to understand cumbia sonidera and post-sonidera from a new point of view. One that is natively electronic and full of futurism.
This is the reason why in the following paragraphs I’m going to try to go back to those arguments from Camilo Lara’ presentation and share with you a couple of ideas that could have explored to try to convince the audience at Casa de América that cumbia is just like techno.
Sonidera cumbia was already electronic before the media boom around ZZK’s Record’s “digital cumbia”
To start to understand if “the bass in cumbia are the same as Etienne de Crecy’s or Daft Punk’s ones” we can go straight to Spotify or Youtube and go back and forwards between tracks of any of them and some of your go-to sonidera cumbia artists. Which in my case would be Los Daddys de Chinantla, Grupo Soñador or maybe Grupo Maravilla. Probably you’ll have the same reaction as myself. After a few minutes you’ll find that it’s a bit hard to find many common ground between both types of bass lines, other than they both sound really cool.
You might say that that French bass has a lot more to do with funk and disco, while the Mexican one is always linked to cumbia’s triad. The sound is also different. For Etienne and Daft Punk the bass can develop into many types of sounds, sometimes using distorsion and other synthesized effects, while the ones coming from sonidera culture feel a lot closer to dub aesthetics. So in a very straightforward approach, we might say that the cumbia bass isn’t like the ones coming out from French Touch.
However, both styles do have an important meeting point. That is, that both can be considered electronic music whose creation is focused on the producer on top of a live band type of arrangement.
By the time Camilo gave his talk in 2011, the interaction between cumbia and electronic music wasn’t anything new. By 2006 ZZK had already managed to create a lot of interest within several international media outlets such as about a scene happening in Argentina where digital cumbia was being created. It was indeed a very influent moment for the development of Latin electronic music that produced an artist such as Chancha Vía Circuito, who is a key figure to understand the current organic downtempo scene around the world. Also, ZZK’s parties influenced people like Oro 11 , who went back to the U.S. to create Bersa Discos alongside renowned journalist Shawn Reynaldo (the label in which Toy Selecta edited some of its first solo digital cumbia bootlegs), or artists such as Dengue Dengue Dengue!, who took those parties as an inspiration to start the initially cumbia driven project that gave them so much success.
However, just as Moses Iten points out in “The Roots of Digital Cumbia in Sound System Culture”, the media outlets that were covering all of this excitement around digital cumbia had a tendency to treat this genre as a tropical or “exotic” version of electronic music coming from Europe. In some way, this approach suggested that ZZK artists and their peer were giving cumbia a new sort of sophistication that it hadn’t been able to achieve beforehand because it hadn’t been in contact with electronic music. Yet, what those media outlets weren’t considering is that cumbia had already been “digitalized” several years before. And actually, it was from that electronic heritage where the cumbia villera songs from Damas Gratis were coming from, the type of tracks that were being mashuped against Modeselektor beats at ZZK parties to create this new “digital cumbia” sound.
Following on the words of Iten, we can see that sonidera cumbia had a strong process of digitalization at the end of the 90’s and beginning of the 2000’s with groups such as Grupo Kual in Mexico City, or Grupo Soñador in Puebla. What they did was to grab the traditional cumbia sonidera songs that you would hear from bands such as Super Grupo Colombia and replace the brass sections by synth lines. Also, because the producers behind these projects were primarily the Dj’s that hosted the local sound systems, the music production of this music switched from having a live band nature to the same type of solo-producer approach that is very common in other types of electronic music.
One of the best examples of this moment in music history is probably “El Paso del Gigante” de Grupo Soñador, a track that can be recognized instantly because of its intro in which four solitary Korg synth lines travel from one speaker to the other. It’s a song in which all of the acoustic instruments are replaced by synths, the drum set is exchanged by a guacharaca loop that pushes forward with a machine - like groove and a set of lyrics that talks about an “iron giant”, a concept that will likely make anyone listening picture a giant robot in its head. With these elements, cumbia wasn’t only being digitalized, but it was also developing certain futuristic vibes that became a key inspiration for many musicians, who took it as a blueprint to create their own vision of the future’s music.
One of this cases came from the Argentinean Dj Yankee, who was in contact with all of the cumbia sonidera coming from Puebla to the U.S. at the end of the 90’s. As Cristian Alarcón mentions in his article “Feliz, Feliz” for “Cumbia”: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre”, when Dj Yankee returned to Argentina in 1997, he became one of the main sources of sonidera cumbia within Buenos Aires. A music style whose machine - like guacharaca loops and its wacky synth presets would inspire Dj Taz to create its own style of electronic cumbias called Danzas. Being these Danzas some of the first blueprints for the early wave of cumbia villera that gave rise to bands such as Damas Gratis, SupermerK2 o Pibes Chorros.
Cumbia sonidera and post-sonidera can be just as futuristic as techno
Let’s go back to the other argument presented by Camilo to justify that cumbia is just like techno. In that presentation he mentioned that there must be some sort of connexion between both styles because it is very possible that in the early stages of techno there were some Latin artists involved.
This is completely right and we can easily see it in one of its most iconic hits, “Knights of The Jaguar” from Aztec Mystic, released under Mike Banks’ label and crew, Underground Resistance. Just as Camilo Lara guesses, behind this track there is a Dj with Mexican heritage, Dj Rolando. However, besides using a shaker that almost has a cumbia pattern, the most interesting connection between cumbia and techno in this track is using Mexican references as a source of inspiration.
According to a quote from Mike Banks in Laurent Garnier’s “Electrochoc”, “Knights of The Jaguar” came up from watching the Aztec inspired paintings at a Mexican restaurant in Detroit. When watching these images, Rolando and Mike thought about the mystic surrounding the Aztek civilization to imagine how would the melodies from that empire might have sounded, and from that they started building their techno track.
As we saw a couple of paragraphs before, this capacity to inspire the creation of music for the future is also present in cumbia sonidera. Besides what we mentioned regarding Dj Yankee, Dj Taz and the cumbia villera scene, we can also see another example with the Super Cumbia Futurista crew of Mexico City. Created at the first half of the 2000’s, it was a collective that gathered artists such as Afrodita, Amantes del Futuro, Sonido Changorama, Sonido Desconocido II y Lasser Moderna, who took cumbia as an inspiration to create futuristic music. For this group of artists cumbia sonidera was a key influence. We can see it clearly in a track such as Sonido Changorama’s “Cumbia del Informe”, which is full of “saludos” (shoutouts) in the same fashion a sonidero Dj would do, and has a machine - type guacharaca loop pushing the song forward that could have been easily sampled from one of Grupo Maravilla’s songs. Added to this, in several interviews, artists from the collective such as Ima Felini from Afrodita and Amantes del Futuro as well as Emilio Acevedo from Lasser Moderna (who’s also part of Mexican electronic scene acts Titán and Maria Daniela y Su Sonido Laser projects) have mentioned that “El Paso del Gigante” from Grupo Soñador has always been a big influence for the development of their electronic cumbia explorations, pointing out to how fascinating it is to them that is cumbia that is 100% digitalized.
However, despite sharing a futuristic approach to music that is supported on Mexican culture, there is a big difference from the one of Aztec Mystic and the one of groups like Sonido Changorama. In the case of Knights of The Jaguar, Dj Rolando grabs inspiration from an idealized version of Aztek culture, one that follows the fantasy paintings that you would expect at some of the Mexican restaurants in the U.S. On the other side, as Iten mentions, in cumbia sonidera culture precariousness isn’t hidden, and that is the reason why the sort of futurism that these type of artists transmits doesn’t support itself on the “hi-fi” sounds or the same stylized visual soport that pop culture is used to when talking about futurism.
In other words, while techno or dubstep might feel like a go-to resource for movies such as Matrix or Blade Runner, cumbia sonidera has a lot more to do with the some of the pictures that the movie Elysium portrays. Ones that make the bus terminal at Mexico City’s outskirts in Pantitlan the picture of how the city of Los Angeles would look like in the year 2154
This difference is probably one of the factor why cumbia sonidera and post- sonidera normally isn’t recognized as something futuristic by alternative music media outlets. However, its search for futurism has kept evolving and currently there is a wave of cumbia post-sonidera called “Kumbia Obscura” that is making this quality more evident. Especially in the way it pays more attention to “darker” elements and how it celebrates the use of technology in its creations.
Kumbia Obscura - cumbia soundtrack for a dystopian movie
Kumbia Obscura is a concept that received this name by the Kumbia Obscura (K.O.) collective founded in 2019. This is a group of or artists that included names such asAmantes del Futuro, Arrabalero, Bigote, Dj Ato05, Cifikzer, Grupo Jejeje, Orihuela MSS, Mextape, Plastic Toy Sound, Satánico Dr Trvza, Turbo Sonidero, Talacha, Spsce Primo and whose name is an adaptation of the letters K.I., which work as a homage to the membership some of its members had in a previous cumbias editadas collective “Kumbiamberos Internacionales”. According to the declaration of identity and manifesto of the collective’s official website, the objective of the crew was to promote "cumbia sonidera that is emotional, athmospheric and dark”, which focuses on the mestizo and anti- mainstream essence of cumbia sonidera.
On broad terms, we could describe Kumbia Obscura as a type of music that joins the heritage of cumbia sonidera from Puebla and cumbias editadas (or cumbias wepa) with internet’s culture. To this mix, they then apply all sorts of dark and agressive electronic sounds in order to create a type of cumbia that brings some of techno’s and rave’s brutality to the core of a sonidero soundsystem.
Although Kumbia Obscura (K.O) had a quick dissolution in 2021, its appearance was enough to keep the “Kumbia Obscura” sound moving forward, which is still being developed by the projects that detach from that split. One of them is the collective Kumbianet, that gathers many of the artists originally at K.O. From its catalogue “Toda la Banda” de Cifikzer stands out as a great example of what Kumbia Obscura sounds like. This song’s sound is marked by some Joey Beltram’s “Metasm” type of synths, which clash against the trademark digital guacharaca loops of cumbia editada.
Another one of my favorite examples comes from the latest compilation of this label titled “Kumbianet V.2”. “Cuídate y Adiós” by Orihuela MSS is a track that feels as a dark cumbia version of Daft Punk’s “Digital Love”. In this excercise, Orihuela grabs the sonidero romaticism that you could find in the music of Grupo Ensamble or Raymix and gives it a push of digital aggressiveness by using once more “Mentasm” type of synths and a harsh mix of vocoder and bitcrusher effects on the vocals.
Talking beyond Kumbianet, its worth to mention the work of El Keamo and his track Kumbia Beef. This song uses the same combination of the machine - type guacharaca loop from cumbia sonidera and rave synths that I mentioned from Cifikzer. Yet, in this case El Keamo uses a slower tempo and an agressive kick to create a slowed down cumbia that has some hardstyle flavor to it.
Within this community of artists another relevant stop is with Grupo Jejeje. They stand out because additionally to their releases with K.O., in 2019 they released a Kumbia Obscura for Discos Rolas that was reviewed at Resident Advisor. In the text their music is compared to “Fatima Al Qadiri, Nguzunguzu or Elysia Crampton” due to the use of its particular synth lines. We can imagine that their appearance on Resident Advisor has a lot to do with Max Pearl’s journalistic curiosity on everything happening in Latin America (he has done previous scene reports on the cumbia sonidera scene and interviewed artists such as Chancha Vía Circuito for the same site), yet, we can still take this as sample on how right from the start the futuristic and darker references from Kumbia Obscura have been able to open a dialogue between cumbia sonidera culture and some editorial spaces where techno is normally covered.
The final stop of this story is at the video of the song “Adiós” by Banana Leaf Boy & G-Flux. In this song they use the toolkit from Kumbia Obscura to take the sound of broken heart songs from the “Movimiento Grupero” of the 80’s, of artists such as Bronco or Los Bukis to a dismal future. Even if the song is great by itself, the most important thing happening with it has to do with its video, which manages to create a scene in which Kumbia Obscura is the soundtrack to a series of images that makes us remember dystopian movies such as Blade Runner 2049. This is achieved by the use of locations with a certain retro-atemporal vibe and an illumination that is supported in a lot of red and yellow tones, as well as a great deal of darkness. By joining these visual refferences with the Kumbia Obscura sounds at the back of it, Banana Leaf Boy & G-Flux create a strong argument for this type of futuristic cumbia sonidera and cumbia post-sonidera to be accepted as a soundtrack for this type of movies as an alternative to the go-to tecno, dubstep or IDM.
Conclusion. Cumbia can be like techno, although they aren’t the same thing
The main purpose of all this story is to leave you with the impression that cumbia sonidera and post-sonidera can be as electronic and futuristic as any other style of electronic music - such as techno, house or dubstep.
The other purpose of all of this, is also to you leave with the idea that this type of electronic music can have its own narrative within electronic music history. Which should be running on a parallel lane and with the same amount of importance as that one from any other electronic music genre. By this time in history, there are several types of Latin electronic music genres whose amount of creolization is so high that they shouldn’t be understood as an exotic version of other types of music that might come from Europe or the U.S. Instead, they should be recognized as a set of local styles, with their own circuit, culture and values. This is a key element to understand, so that local artists can pay the right amount of attention to their own ecosystem and support it in the healthiest way possible. It is within this realm of Latin electronic music styles that cumbia sonidera, cumbia post-sonider and Kumbia Obscura reside, alongside styles such as Tribal, Guaracha Electrónica and Baile Funk.
Now, even if the purpose of this text is to bring techno and cumbia closer together, this doesn’t mean that I’m expecting that a future Boiler Room session will host a night in which Cifikzer or Grupo Maravilla will play alongside Brutalism 3000, or that Tomorrowland will install a new stage for cumbia sonidera. It’s important to understand that although both styles have a meeting point in their electronic and futuristic qualities, there are tons of differences that set them apart. For instance, throughout the years techno has been used by LGBTQ+ communities to create an inclusive space on the dancefloor. Normally, we can’t say the same about cumbia sonidera, whose role tends be closer related with a statement of identity and resistance from low income sectors of the Latin society against their richer and foreign counterparts. Paying attention to these differences as much as we did to trying to bring them together is very important, as it will certainly open a whole box of ideas to continue discussing when analyzing the history of Latin electronic music.