| | |  Entertainment 
Chikita Violenta: Mexican Band, Canadian Label, Chicago Show
 Nolan Feeney - northbynorthwestern.com
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October 04, 2010
| | Chikita Violenta plays an 18-plus show at Chicago's Metro Tuesday. (Canvas Media) | |
It sounds like Chikita Violenta is just happy if you show up.
The Mexico City indie rockers, who play the Metro this Tuesday, have been performing in their home country for over a decade. Now, as a support act for Ra Ra Riot, they’re on their most extensive tour yet. And that means they’re still getting used to a few luxuries of touring the U.S. — like having a regular audience.
“It’s so crazy,” said bassist and keyboard player Armando David Ortigosa by phone from Providence, R.I. “There’s a crowd in every town you go to. It’s something quite new. We’re very honored.”
Veterans in their own right, the guys of Chikita Violenta released their debut album in 2003, before Ra Ra Riot formed in 2006. But having done only a handful of west coast shows in the U.S., the band is approaching the tour with as much enthusiasm as kids headed off to summer camp.
“Having the chance to play 15 times for the next 15 days really excites us,” said Ortigosa. “Just being able to play every single day, we really enjoy that. You start feeling way more confident and you begin enjoying it a lot more, too.”
Even though the long-time friends have been playing together at least twice a week for the past 10 years, Mexico hasn’t made it easy for the band to take its show on the road. Geographically, major cities are far apart, making it difficult to tour beyond the country’s central metropolitan areas. But Ortigosa said the biggest obstacle for bands on the Mexican indie scene is the lack of support for alternative music in general.
“We have a lot of different genres that dominate the scene that aren’t rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “Popular music has five or six main groups and rock isn’t one of the first two or three. It’s harder than the U.S. The infrastructure is quite different. The crowd isn’t used to going to a gig on a Monday or Tuesday.”
There’s even a language bias against the band’s language of choice.
“We’re very proud of our own rock ‘n’ roll in Spanish and people don’t instantly see with good eyes that a band is just trying to sing in English,” said Ortigosa. “But we’ve always liked rock in English. We’ve tried to do it in Spanish and we feel it doesn’t sound natural.”
There isn’t much of the band’s sound that gives away its country of origin. “All I Need’s a Little More” and “Tired,” the two songs released in advance of the upcoming album, TRE3S, due in late January, are dynamic, lo-fi sing-alongs with guitars and drums spastically cutting in and out.
And even though the band still calls Mexico City its home base, musically, Chikita Violenta is slowly but surely becoming a member of the Canadian scene. They just signed an international deal with Arts & Crafts – the Toronto-based record label home to artists such as Feist and Stars – and have gone back and forth over the years to record their past two albums with producer David Newfeld, known for his work with Broken Social Scene and Los Campesinos!
But despite the band’s international promise, Chikita Violenta isn’t planning on relocating from Mexico anytime soon.
“As a Mexican, having the opportunity to record up in Canada and meeting all these people, it always go through your mind, ‘It’d be great to come live here,’” said Ortigosa. “You just accept that [Mexico City] is where we’re based and hopefully we’ll learn to be a part of the Canadian scene and still be based in Mexico City. Even though we always complain about it, the truth is, we all like it. It’s a cool place.”
Chikita Violenta opens for Ra Ra Riot with We Barbarians at the Metro on Tuesday. |
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