“I sing because I feel free”: Las Cafeteras led Kalamazoo on a musical journey of solidarity and joy

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Curtain Call — your front-row seat to the unique, lively, and memorable performances shaping Kalamazoo’s arts scene. Supported by the I.S. Gilmore Foundation, this series highlights the creativity and community that make each show something special. All photos were taken by Fran Dwight.

On a Sunday afternoon in the Comstock Community Auditorium, Las Cafeteras took us from Veracruz, Mexico, to East LA, to Columbia; from the folk music of 400 years ago to the rock ‘n’ roll of the ’50s to the hip hop of today.

“Now we’re going to a quinceañera in the barrio,” leader Hector Flores says, “and it’s after 2 A.M.!”

They then played a Mexican-American ruckus that would wake the dead, melt the ICE, get both Spanish-speakers and English-only Michiganders to do the two-step like they had drunk a number of Dos Equis.

Las Cafeteras should’ve played on a Saturday night, at a venue with a large dance floor, I thought after the show. But though it was a Sunday afternoon, March 29, in Comstock, they still got people out of their seats.

Connecting Chords connecting with El Concilio

The ensemble’s appearance was a collaboration with Connecting Chords Music Festival and El Concilio. 

Connecting Chords used to be the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music, Dr. Elizabeth Start, Executive Director, explains before the show. The name changed out of the thought, going back to when they were Sacred, that “there’s a lot that’s sacred” in musical performance. In addition to “faith traditions,” there’s also “cultural heritage and preservation, human dignity, the environment, freedom of expression,” Start says.

The Festival itself runs during the fall. Last year, Connecting Chords brought to Kalamazoo Indian Carnatic music, Italian folk, Afro-spirit jazz, Django Reinhardt’s ’30s European jazz, Native American Pueblo flute, and many other sounds and cultures.

Start has had her eye on Las Cafeteras for around ten years, she says, thanks to Irving Quintero-Gervacio, Chief Operating Officer of El Concilio. While collaborating with El Concilio on another event about a decade ago, “he said, you know, if you can ever bring Las Cafeteras to town….”

Last August, she found that the band would be playing in Illinois in March, “and I started bothering their agent.” This would be their one chance to bring Las Cafeteras to town, “so we wanted to jump on it.”

Quintero-Gervacio says he’d managed to catch one of their rare Michigan shows in Detroit, and enjoyed their mix of activism and a party-like performance that “everyone can enjoy.”

“It’s music that’s upbeat. It does tell a story, it does get you to wonder about things,” he says.

“Vamonos pa’ allá” 

It’s simply an act of defiance, during this time of the anti-immigrant swing some powers-that-be have taken in this country of immigrants, to perform your culture openly, joyously — and so infectiously that people who’ve never held a Dos Equis at a quinceañera will stand and dance.

The seven-person touring band, led by founders Flores and Denise Carlos, brought out the requinto jarocho (a small guitar-like instrument originating from Veracruz, Mexico), the wooden box on which they dance the percussive zapateado, other traditional instruments, as well as the basic keyboard, drum-set, and electric guitar and bass.

They needed all the tools, but Flores’ enthusiasm brought out the party. He was determined that this wasn’t to be a polite, sitting, Midwestern audience. 

“Yo, Kalamazoo, we came all the way from East LA, y’all!… You see, when our parents came to this country, they were undocumented. They worked hard, they raised kids. Their kids went to college,” he says to the audience. 

“We got any immigrant families in the house?”

People cheered proudly. Flores reminds those who may not be immigrants that “at one point, your family said life may be better over there,” inside the US border.

Singing “Vamonos pa’ allá,” Carlos and Flores got even the non-Spanish-knowing in the audience to sing along to a song of migration. He says, “We are on the same side. So we’re going to fight. We’re going to protect one another. We got to fight for one another. And we got to sing together!”

He says, “You know, I don’t sing because I think I’m the best singer,” — his isn’t a pretty voice; it is raw, braying, but proud — “I sing because I feel free when I sing! And I think a lot of you will, too.”

He then went to the Afro-Columbia culture for the infectious beat of the cumbia, and had the audience stand to do “a little two-step.” 

The crowd was up, moving side-to-side. This was early in the concert. Las Cafeteras had reached grand-finale energy after a couple of songs. 

Where could they go next? 

They went back centuries to old Mexican folk with expert jarocho-picking by Pok’ok Mijangos, to sweet romance in the style of this century with their “Luna Lovers.” Flores did a bit of hip-hop style Spanglish rap; there were some chants of “ICE go home!” and a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” that included the names of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. 

It was a set full of joy, party, protest. But it was inclusive, not confrontational. How could it be confrontational when Flores confessed that when he “was a little Chicano kid in East LA,” his migrant father filled their home with Motown, doo-wop, and oldies, his dad singing along to the records “with that deep Mexican accent.” 

With that, their guitarist Alih Jey sang the sweet “Donna” by Ritchie Valens. And of course they did that old Mexican folk song, also made famous in the ’50s rock world by Valens (and later by Los Lobos), “La Bamba.” 

Las Cafeteras finally reached their finale, and with a driving two-step mercilessly made the audience move, to add a little more energy to their footwork, “Echale un poco! ¡Uno, dos, tres, cuatro!” 

Not “exotic,” American

In the interview before the concert, Quintero-Gervacio says he and El Concilio are thankful that Connecting Cords helped to bring in a cultural happening for the local Latino community. 

When Start had asked him about Las Cafeteras long ago, that felt supportive, he says.

“It does feel like, sometimes, you know, we can get lost in the day-to-day things,”  Quintero-Gervacio says, so that kind of “reaching out, of seeing your neighbor and recognizing us — we are thankful.”

He adds that the concert will bring together people, “and I’m hoping that whoever goes to this event, that they come out happy, which I’m pretty sure they will. And that is just the way that we build community.”

Sometimes Connecting Chords brings unfamiliar sounds to town, but not really this time, Start points out.

“Presenting these things, it’s a way for us to say look, this is part of us, this is, you know — they’re out of LA, it’s not like we’re bringing in some exotic thing from a foreign land,” Start says. “This is who we are.”

A Chicano band, merging traditions from their families who once crossed the border? That sounds pretty American.