Mexican Cumbia Saturday night in the Plaza with magic mushroom bands
It was a cumbia Saturday for me. Since going to Coachella was a bit beyond my commute limit, not to mention getting through the border which apparently some bands could not do, I feasted on two outstanding cumbia bands in the Ajijic Plaza. Both bands were free and were inspired by magic mushrooms.
First a word about cumbia and music in Mexican culture (I’ll let you research magic mushrooms on your own).
Cumbia is hot, particularly in the United States. Artists like Los Ángeles Azul have millions of monthly Spotify listeners. Their hits, such as “Como Te Voy a Olvidar” (317 million streams) and “El Listón de Tu Pelo” (273 million streams), have gained traction in Mexico, the US, and Latin America. Other bands like Peru’s Los Mirlos have introduced psychedelic cumbia, part of a “cumbia renaissance. It seems everyone is adapting cumbia into cumbia sonidera and cumbia villera, delivering viral hits like Ke Personajes’ “Un Finde” reaching nearly 340 million Spotify streams and appearing in over 700,000 TikTok posts.
So I was ready for cumbia, along with apparently the rest of the world, especially Mexico, especially here in Jalisco state. Unlike the US, the Mexican government loves music and shows that love with money. The Ministry of Culture in Jalisco is pending $245 million USD to put music classrooms and instruments into public schools. What a concept! More to the point it pays for bands –grants to local municipalities to bring in bands for free public concerts. It also provides money to bands and supports tours, which is where I was Saturday night at a free concert by the psychedelic cumbia band, Los Curanderos del Sabor. And they were rocking. And so was the Chapala Director of Culture who paid for it out of his budget.
Los Curanderos del Sabor is five very talented guys in white-framed sunglasses who combined traditional cumbia rhythms with modern tropical influences, congas, cowbells, electronics into what they call psychotropical cumbia – hence the hallucinogenic mushrooms in their logo – and weird pre-recorded sound effects and trippy pre-recorded vocals. Everyone loved it and did what people do with cumbia, they danced. Everyone from the old abuelas to the young children and even a couple of dogs were up dancing in the plaza. No mushrooms, but fun.
I especially loved the “tropical” in psychotropical. The drummer, who was working a full drum kit and a large conga, wove the tropical, Cuban-like sounds into the dance beat and then hit you in the gut with cowbells (never enough cowbells). It was dance ‘till you drop music.
They packed up at a very un-Mexican 8:30 pm (kids here go to bed at 11 p.m. or later and parties go until 3 or am) so we moved across the plaza to The Ajijic Spot, and indoor-outdoor venue for a wide range of music. The outdoor tables were full, but we managed to snag one in front of the adjacent churro shop run by one of my neighbors.
The band was a sax-led semitropical (with a great conga player) cumbia band, Los Ninos Santos de Maria Sabina (“The Holly Children of Maria Sabina”). Maria Sabina was Mazatec healer and shaman originally from the state of Oaxaca who pioneered the use of magic mushrooms in healing. She called them her “Holy Children” , the origin of the band’s name. And they (the band, not mushrooms) were good, although no one seemed to be hallucinating. A sax-led cumbia band blends a little bit of jazz into the beat giving it a sophisticated feel, as they musicians moved along. And the crowd sitting at tables in front of the restaurant, the crowd sitting on benches across from the ban, and even mom’s holding babies were bouncing to the beat.
Both bands were local; you won’t find them online except Facebook. Los Curanderos del Sabor has a couple of YouTube videos up, but not Los Ninos Santos de Maria Sabina, which is too bad because their music is so good. But given the rise of cumbia, it may not be long. And there will always be mushrooms.
Banner: Maria Sabrina and her psilocybin “children”. Photo: NUUVA
Patrick O’Heffernan
