Tropa Magica is something different, a genre in its own right. We sat down with brothers David and Renee Pacheco as they gave us an insight into who they are and the journey they took to becoming Tropa Magica. Watch the new film below.
“It’s a culmination of a band David and I put together that finally morphed into one, you know, like the butterfly of everything else we have done before. We are just two kids from East LA who grew up with a mixture of Mexican and American Music, and we found our way back, starting from Western Music to Mexican Music, and we evolved into Tropa Magica.”
Though these two brothers from East LA grew up listening to cumbia music, they didn’t really pay much attention to it until they were older. It wasn’t until they became musicians that they came back to it. They eventually found a new appreciation for the cumbia music they grew up listening to. With that also came a whole new way of seeing it.
We dissected it and managed to morph it with what we had already been doing.
With their unique psychedelic cumbia sound, they have never been considered “cumbia” by others, but they have never let that bother them. They have taken on a heavier sound, distorting guitars, heavier drums instead of percussion, combining harder classic rock styles with the music they grew up on.
We had to put that name on ourselves first before others considered us a cumbia band.
It took some time, but the Pacheco brothers finally found what worked for them. Once they stopped catering to others, started to stay authentic to who they are, and stuck with it, they discovered what Tropa could be.
As they said, “It’s always easier to want to explore and reinvent yourself and stuff. We tried to focus and hone in on reinforcing what we were good at and just polishing that off and working and growing that, rather than creating a bunch of different synthesis of ourselves. So, our challenge was that, remaining consistent with what we were doing and also remaining independent band.”
The brothers produce their own albums, press them, design their own merch, and do all their management themselves, all in the spirit of not catering to others.
We know what we are good at. We are focusing on our psychedelic cumbia sounds rather than trying to become a pop band or something.
