Meet QUITAPENAS

Today we’d like to introduce your to the story of QUITAPENAS.

QUITAPENAS, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It’s the summer of 2011. Daniel, Eddie and John were in Vietnam. Mark and Hector had just graduated from University. David was out dancing salsa almost every night. We’d spent the first half of the year crafting songs inspired by champeta, soukous, salsa, son, cumbia, semba y mas. I had spent a lot of time at KUCR, my university radio station, digging heavy into the international music section. I was sharing all this music with the crew and everyone was digging into blogs of diasporic tropical Afro Latin music, checking out different selectors from Listen Recovery, Soundway Records, Canicule Tropicale, Sofrito and Soul Bonanza. When we reunited in the fall we kept working on music and the group continued to evolve. We recorded our first set of singles in 2012 with Lewis Pesacov of Fool’s Gold. In 2013 we rocked our first SXSW and began to make frequent shows in Los Angeles. I got a lot of love for the Los Angeles community of music lovers.

In October 2013, I took a solo trip to Colombia for a festival of the drum at San Basilio de Palenque. I returned inspired and with a. new perspective on drumming. In 2014 the group slowly shrank from 9 to 5 members, creative differences right?. With John’s departure, the band took a different shape. In late 2014, we stepped into the studio with Alberto Lopez of Jungle Fire. In 2015, we dropped our first full-length record and I booked a west coast tour for the band. Our record (and most of our art) is done by our friend Deladeso! The run was a success and we had a good time. One of the better shows was at the Sol Collective in Sacramento. They invited us to their 2015 SXSW official showcase. When we returned, I added a second drummer to the group, local musician Ivan McCormick. In the summer of 2016 half the crew headed to Colombia. This time my plan was we go to Cali for Festival de Petronio Alvarez where we danced to the beautiful sounds of cununo y marimba.

My other agenda was to study on the drum. I set up a lesson with Tomas of Las Alegres Ambulancias, met one of our musical heroes, Abelardo Carbono and danced salsa at the infamous Troja night club. When we returned from this trip, completely inspired we did a mid-west and east coast run. In 2017, we made it to Coachella. Rene Contreras is the mastermind behind the new Sonora Stage, where we rocked a 1pm show to 700 happy dancers. It was epic. We dropped some singles with Names You Can Trust record label, shout out to Nati Conrazon for that link! In early 2018, we signed with our management, Counter Culture. They’re rad! Recently we dropped a new record, entitled Tigrada. The album was lyrically driven by Daniel Gomez, guitarist and songwriter. The music was all collaboration inspired by champeta, soukous, son and several other rhythms, So here we are, enjoying the ride, continuing to record music!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Being in a working band is a huge effort. We all work a day job, have relationships, some of us are raising children, several of us have other musical projects, we are all multi layered complex lil creatives who still make time, to practice, learn, listen and rehearse – on top of everything else. It’s not easy, it is a struggle but it is a beautiful struggle. There are a lot of struggles in this world, all our parents immigrated to the US from Guatemala and Mexico. We are all first generation and we grew up in those communities. Our families were and are mechanics, day laborers, warehouse workers, teachers, constructions workers and all the hustles. Lots of struggles and being a musician is a beautiful struggle.

Can you give our readers some background on your music?
QUITAPENAS, one word – all caps, four syllables – all claps, gives you a taste of their rhythmic contagion. This tropical Afro-Latin combo was born under the warm California sun. They borrow aesthetics from the radical 60s, 70s and 80s. Each song echoes a remix of history and invites one to engage in the liberating evenings of Angola, Peru, Colombia, Brazil and beyond. The name means “to remove worries.” We are inspired by música tropical y bailable. Some love salsa dura, others soukous. We all love Cumbia, especially from Andres Landero. We currently incorporate drums by the name of Bougarabou (Senegal), Primero (Garifuna Belize), bongo (Cuba), Caja and Cununo (Colombia). Personally I also love the ritualistic music found within the diaspora. We all found love in fusing the love for these rhythms and having fun with it. So you’ll hear rhythms that feel like salsa, champeta, funana, plena and semba but we flip them to out flavor. Some artist that inspire our sound are Abelardo Carbonó, Nidia Góngora, Ebo Taylor, Jovens do Prenda and Fruko y sus Tesos.

We like to make dance music. Here are a few career highlights!

2019 – Perfmored at Los Dells Fest alongside Ozuna, Cafe Tacvba, and Natalia Lafourcade. Released album “Tigrada.” Music video for single “Tranquilidad” featured in LA Times. Playlisted on Spotify’s “Trotamundos” and “Global Funk.”
2018 – Performed at Night on Broadway Festival, Cafe Bustelo’s pop-up and Grand Park’s 4th of July Block Party in Los Angeles. Headlined La Batalla Festival in Santa Ana, CA. Opened for Las Cafeteras/Making Movies on their Carnaval Tour. Announced new vinyl release for “Tranquilidad“ on KCRW.
2017 – Released debut vinyl with Names You Can Trust. Performed at Coachella Music and Art Festival, Warren Morrow Latin Music Festival (headline) in Iowa, and at Levitt Pavillion (Spaceland Presents). “Campensino” used in “Magic Mushrooms” episode of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia on Vice.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We are continuing to record music. Most recently stepping into the studio with Jonny Bell at Jazzcat Studios in Long Beach. We got a few collabs in the work with Sumo Hair. All of this you can expect in 2020

Contact Info:

• Website: quitapenasmusic.com
• Email: quitapenas@counterculturegroup.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/quitapenasmusic
• Facebook: facebook.com/quitapenasmusic
• Twitter: twitter.com/quitapenasmusic

Image Credit:
Carolina Sanchez

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