Unique sound marks holiday
Miguel Ramirez, the percussionist for La Santa Cecilia, remembers his family’s Dia de los Muertos celebrations as quiet affairs, befitting a day set aside for remembrance of relatives and friends who have died.
But the holiday has another meaning for the Los Angeles resident, one a bit more cheerful: In 2007, at a Dia de los Muertos celebration at L.A.’s Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the collection of musicians who would go on to be La Santa Cecilia played its first “official” set.
“One of our friends made an altar to a bunch of musicians who had passed away and built a little stage, and we performed on it,” Ramirez says. “We actually drew a little bit of a crowd, even though we were nowhere near the main stage.”
Nine years later, the band has a Grammy Award on its mantel and stamps from around the world in its passport. But the holiday still has a special place in the members’ hearts as La Santa Cecilia prepares for two performances on Saturday, Nov. 5, at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall.
“It’s a celebration of life and celebrating the fact that we’re here, and we can dance and we can sing and eat and be overcome by our passions,” Ramirez says.
It’s a unique combination of those passions that helped develop the sound of La Santa Cecilia. As children growing up with a bicultural heritage, they heard tremendously different music at home depending on who was picking the soundtrack. For Ramirez, that meant equal parts Latin pop star Juan Gabriel and American soul music, or a shot of bolero singer Javier Solis chased by Led Zeppelin or Bob Marley.
That vast range of musical influence has helped create a discography that ignores genre boundaries. On the band’s 2016 album “Buenaventura,” the first single, “I Won’t Cry for You,” is a bluesy boot-stomper, and “Here We Go Again” sounds like the music from the best little roadhouse in Texas. Album closer “Sucede” borrows the offbeat rhythm of ska for its backbone, and “Nunca Más” owes as much to cumbia as it does to No Doubt (the chorus is underpinned by a rhythm that could have come from the latter’s “Tragic Kingdom” album).
At a time when more and more people are raised with a greater awareness of multiple cultures, La Santa Cecilia has found itself able to perform in any environment. The band has taken the stage at jamband-friendly festival giant Bonnaroo in Tennessee and the more traditional New Orleans Jazz Festival, and won a Grammy for best Latin rock, urban or alternative album (for its 2013 debut “Treinta Días”) and is nominated for best pop/rock album at this year’s Latin Grammy Awards.
For a long time, though, the band couldn’t enjoy its success outside the United States’ borders, and even planning trips to festivals like South by Southwest in Austin was fraught with complications. Accordion and requinto player Pepe Carlos moved to the U.S. with his parents at a young age, but was an undocumented immigrant. La Santa Cecilia had to bring a substitute on any trips south of the border, and plan long, circuitous road trips to avoid immigration checkpoints. It wasn’t until 2014, the same year as the band’s Grammy win, that Carlos secured a work permit.
“It had been 25 or 26 years since he had been to Mexico, period,” Ramirez says. “So when we got to go back (to Mexico), he was eating everything in sight.”
Now the band is wrapping up a tour of Mexico, playing a Dia de los Muertos show in the Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square, and preparing for similar celebrations at shows stateside.
“It’s creating more and more excitement for us to bring back to the states,” Ramirez says.