Indio, United States--In their ruffled tuxedo shirts, the Los Angeles musicians Chicano Batman sport a retro look that evokes decades past of performers in the working-class Latino neighborhoods of their hometown.
But with influences that range from psychedelia to tropicalia to funk, Chicano Batman offers a glimpse at a future direction of Latin music as the band builds off the diversity of traditions in the multicultural metropolis.
After performing for years in the city's Latin indie scene, Chicano Batman has recently won a broader following. The band opened this year on a tour of rocker Jack White and played at Coachella, the influential music festival in the California desert that closed on Sunday.
The band members welcome the growing audience but bristle at being pigeon-holed as a Latin band.
"We're doing this on our own merits. It's not like this weird affirmative action type thing," frontman Bardo Martinez said of playing Coachella.
"I feel that we play very tight and we provide a solid and very defined aesthetic, which not a lot of artists do," he told AFP at the festival.
Chicano Batman's sound, for all of the diversity of influences, is consistent and identifiable. Working off an energetic but even-paced rhythm section, keyboards conjure up psychedelic rock while the extended guitar stretches bring to mind jam bands.
The lyricism, both in Spanish and English, is similarly evocative with a focus on sensory imagery. The song "Itotiani" is a reference to an Aztec dancer and the music, and words, cast a smooth, calm atmosphere.
"Her heart is beating fast / Feeling the soul reborn," Martinez sings in Spanish.
"She has an air of Teotihuacan," he sings of the ancient Mexican city, and, in reference to the peanut-based sweet: "Her skin has the color of mazapan."
AFP
