Around this great music nation there is a revitalization of honest-to-goodness Latin music brewing on the underground, spearheaded by young bands, like Ozomatli on the West Coast and Spanish Harlem Orchestra to the East, bringing a fresh approach to traditional Latin sounds.
But right here in Austin, there is a similar community bubbling up - in case you haven't noticed - with salsa-stars Grupo Fantasma leading the way, and youngsters Maneja Beto and the nine-member Ghandaia, perhaps the most diverse of the three, carving their own niche in this creative and compelling new music scene.
Led by the trio of Alex Marrero, Pablo Larios and Brazialian-born Frederico Geib, Ghandaia (pronounced: gahn-die-ah) released their 12 track debut "Uno" earlier this year. Marrero, Larios and the dreadlocked Geib met while in high school in Mexico City. Three years ago, the founding three relocated to Austin and began sculpting their vision for Ghandaia.
"We put the band together as Ghandaia in 1999, and it's grown exponentially ever since," singer and guitarist Marrero said. "But it hasn't been easy to find the right people to play with in this town, or any place really," second-singer and every-instrumentalist Geib added.
Though Ghandaia has received a mildly welcoming response from the Austin music community, like any other intelligent band, these guys' sights are certainly set to places beyond Austin's city limits. Earlier this fall, Ghandaia took their show on the road for a brief tour of the Southwest and West Coast, including a surprisingly successful gig at the San Jose Jazz Festival, where the band received an "amazing reception."
The hard-to-pin-down sounds of "Uno" float from Brazilian rhythms to Cuban sounds, rock en español to reggae and horn-driven groove theory. Larios, who plays bass, said that the inspiration for all these sounds is a result of "growing up in one of the biggest cities in the world. The diversity and array of different things you hear - it gets in your DNA, and it just comes out."
It is particularly the more unconventionally "Latin" sounds, those that are traditionally found in Brazil and Cuba, that seem to get lost on their audiences, especially the local crowd that seems most comfortable with Latin bands along the lines of Grupo Fantasma with their salsa-meets-cumbia sound.
"I guess what we do isn't necessarily that common," Marrero said.
"A lot of times in Texas when people say 'Latino' or 'Latina,' they're meaning 'Mexican,'" Geib said. "Latin music," Geib continued, tends to refer to bands that "fuse rock with some elements of Latin music - there are several bands that call themselves Latin music that don't even sing in Spanish." For the record, Geib and Marrero's vocals are in Spanish.
"When people in Austin hear there's a 'Latin' band playing," Geib said, "They immediately think it might be a salsa band or a Tejano band." Though elements of salsa are prevalent in Ghandaia's sound, the band more truly embraces the all-encompassing title of "world music," not limiting themselves to any particular style.
Outside Austin - and particularly in the growing scene of bands generally referred to as "jam bands" - Ghandaia has found an audience that tends not to care about cumbersome genre tags. And like others in the jam band scene, the highly talented musicians in Ghandaia allow their songs to stretch-out and take on a new life once they're on stage.
"A lot of Cuban and Brazilian music is very jazz influenced," guitarist Greg Jones said. "There are a lot of open solos, so it's kind of set up for [jamming]."
"It seems as though [jam band crowds] don't care about the label," Marrero added. "They go [to shows], they listen, and if they like it, they groove. At the end of the day, that's all you really want."
Ghandia will perform at Flamingo Cantina on Saturday with Unified Feel Theory.
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