CULTURAL BRIDGE
Band from El Paso and Juárez focuses on brighter side of life along the Mexican border
The Chamanas, made up of members from El Paso and Juárez, want to show that life on the border is not all about cartels, sicarios and drugs, but rather about culture, music, art and hospitality.
“You know, El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States,” said keyboardist, bassist and producer Manuel Calderon. “You go downtown, it’s clean and it’s quiet. And Juárez, you know, yeah it had its rough times a couple years ago, but now it’s getting better. There’s still some narco activity happening, but that’s kind of underground; it doesn’t really mess with the civilians. People are actually really nice. I think people in Juárez are going through a renaissance where they want to redeem themselves. You know, they want to show people how the hospitality of being in Juárez is. You go to a business, and people are trying to treat you nice. People, like, whenever you’re in town visiting, they try to show you how the people in Juárez are, the hospitality. So I think that kind of reflects in what we do.”
Until now, The Chamanas released only songs written in Spanish. Its latest release “NEA II” features three songs in English and two in Spanish.
“We felt like with what’s going on, ever since Trump got elected and all the immigration controversy that’s been happening in the U.S., and all the racist tension that has been happening, we felt like maybe it’s time to try it out,” Calderon said. “We weren’t sure; we wanted to just try it out and see how it felt, and we wrote a couple songs in English and we really liked how it sounded. And it’s also like a way to push people who are immigrants, not necessarily Latinos, but people from other countries in the world that come to the U.S. so they can learn English and then speak it with their accent and not feel self-conscious about it but feel proud about learning a new language in a country that has given them an opportunity. And that’s what we are too — we are immigrants from Mexico, and we appreciate that we are able to do this in the United States.”
Whether singing in English or Spanish, the band maintains its smooth influences of Mexican and other Latin pop of the 1970s.
“We get a lot of messages on Facebook and Instagram from people telling us, like, how our music came in a very important point of their lives,” Calderon said. “So that makes us happy; that motivates us to make even more music. We want people to relate to the tracks that we (wrote when we) were in a critical point of our lives, too, and we love making music. Hopefully, we can reach more and more people as we go.”