In 2008, when the wave of violence hit the border city of Tijuana, three friends, Moises Horta, Moises Lopez and Reuben Torres began to host their own house parties as the music and dance scene in Tijuana had pretty much disappeared because of the violence in the streets.
At these house parties the three friends came up with what they now call “ritmo-son” and that was the beginning of the musical project Los Macuanos, which has become one of the most important and interesting electronic groups coming out of either side of the border.
Prior to their visit to L.A. for their presentation at “El Baile” presented by Rebull Panamerika and Goldenvoice at the The Echo on Wednesday night, we talked to Moises Horta via phone all the way to Mexico City and here is a little bit of what we talked about.
When I asked about how Los Macuanos came together, Moises responded: “In 2008 I moved to San Diego after having lived in Tijuana my whole life. In San Diego I met Moises and Reuben; who are cousins, and we used to venture to the dance parties in Tijuana, but when the problems with the drug traffickers began, we could no longer go into Tijuana so we began to put together our own house parties and that’s where we began to work together, but we wanted a sound that was truly from Tijuana, because we would see other groups who were influenced by the American and European bands so we began to take on our roots of regional Mexican music and we mixed it with the contemporary influences we had and the project for Los Macuanos began to take place.”
I asked about the name “Macuanos” and Moises replied: “Macuanos was a term that I had never heard, but the families of Moises and Reuben used to say it and it was a term to describe a stereo typical Mexican man with the “sombrero” (hat) and mustache and in a way it is very ironic name for us as we are all about the future and electronic music and we have a very old Mexican name.”
In the music of Los Macuanos there are samplings of 70’s sounds like the legendary Chilean band, Los Angeles Negros and Moises said: “We grew up listening to this type of bands from our parents and other family members, but I always felt that their production style was very futuristic, they were one of the first bands that began to use reverb and other sounds that were somewhat spacey, so those sounds stayed in my head and we decided to use samples of “No Morira Jamas” on our track “Pasado Y Presente”.
Los Macuanos current album, El Origen, can be found on Spotify and iTunes.
