Down in the Groove
‘Turn Off the Radio’ series offers mashed-up, unpretentious underground Latin dance parties
I have a confession to make, another one that puts me in the pocha (a Chicana who doesn’t speak Spanish) category being third-generation Mexican American automatically sets me up for: I have no idea what Latin alternative music is. I thought seeing Ozomatli, Kinky, and Juana Molina live back in 2004 when my dad bought us tickets to A Latin Christmas at the Walt Disney Concert Hall was enough to say I dab into some rock en español y ingles, but I am so not tuned it. Sitting down with Turn off the Radio founders Luz Cortez and Melissa Garnica, who throw festive yet underground Latin alternative dance parties in trendier-than-ever Echo Park with a following sadly labeled “Latino hipsters” (is anyone else sick of this word?), proved I knew very little about a genre pumping inspiration into the veins of young brown folks like myself who dress to impress but act like they don’t.
I stumbled across TOTR on MySpace, the go-to guide for many my age (I’m 28) who are burnt out from partying since middle school, and prefer to get their nightlife and music fix via a dangerously addictive site that more than likely caused their last fight. Theirs is the kind of page featuring a very informative calendar of events with Los Amigos Invisibles, Si*Se, Shiny Toy Guns, and Los Super Elegantes concert dates, a Smiths/Morrissey convention reminder, and top friends who include Toronto-based Crystal Castles, New York-born/L.A.-based Dominicana Chana, and their own in-house dance starter DJ Santi. It makes you wonder why you didn’t get the cool-kid invite to TOTR4, which supposedly drew 900 people to the Echoplex (a question usually followed by a friend request).
I get the girls lost from their Pomona and Long Beach commute to my side of the tracks in industrial outer Chinatown. For being such scenesters, Salvadoran-born/ Inglewood-raised Cortez, 27, who graduated from USC with a degree in economics, and her partner Garnica, 26, of Mexican descent – the bubblier and funkier of the two – are surprisingly unpretentious down-to-earth females. The pair hooked up at a Vans Warped Tour when Garnica was doing promotions for LATV and Cortez was distributing copies of Latin alternative music publication Al Borde, after Warped founder Kevin Lyman gave them a free booth in exchange for advertising. “He was like, ‘Yeah, a lot of these kids at our shows are Latin and they have brown skin, why not?’” Cortez remembers.
Being in the same Latin music scene – Cortez in print and Garnica in TV – the two shared an equal itch to use their knowledge of the hip Latino market to plan events featuring music not being heard on mainstream radio, and give their guests something nice to reminiscence about the next morning. With Garnica’s last gig as a production assistant on the set of MTV tr3s’ Indie 101 – a video-countdown reality show set in Echo Park and hosted by Marthin Chan of Grammy-nominated indie band Volumen Cero – put on hold after MTV began leaning more toward mainstream reggaeton, and Cortez, now an advertising executive at Long Beach’s Press-Telegram, it was only natural to use their contacts toward self-sufficiency. Business partners (and now best friends), the two consider TOTR a necessary creative outlet and seek inspiration in everything they do.
What sets TOTR parties apart from Scarlett Casanova’s just-as-popular Hang the DJs spot at the Echo, Club Transistor Thursdays at the Grand Star, and Obey Giant’s Dance Right, which sadly forced older Mexican men with moustaches out of their favorite La Cita bar, is the emphasis on Latin music. DJ Santi (Martin Santillan), 33, who was born and raised in L.A., has been collecting Spanish albums since he was a kid and doesn’t limit himself to one genre. He does favor the less mainstream culture of music and mashes personal favorites Electrica Miami, Maria Daniela, Plastilina Mosh, and Nortec Collective tracks with more recognizable cuts like U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name,” Morrissey’s “Everyday is Like Sunday,” and soulful sounds of the ’60s and ’70s. The high-waisted jean-wearing crowd is left with no option but to dance the melancholy moment away.
“The mashup is taking an instrumental from one song and mixing it with a cappella from another genre,” Santi says. “I’ll take a popular Spanish track and combine it with something more readily available, like a hip-hop one.” Think: Café Tacuba meets Depeche Mode, the Strokes meet Los Bunkers, and Three 6 Mafia meets La Union.
Serious about giving their guests something to write home about, Cortez and Garnica, along with interior designer Jeanette Villa, stage producer Moises “Vira Lata” Baqueiro, and Cortez’s sister/fashion designer Liza, deck their parties out with quinceañera-esque touches like flower arrangements and recuerdos (keepsakes).
TOTR parties of the past have used pink carpet to cover the Sunset Boulevard sidewalk in front of the Echo, poster-size MySpace comments written by their friends to decorate the walls, a press welcome wall for photographers, and Porto’s Bakery-sponsored munchies. “We went a little overboard with balloons and stuff for the first one and someone said it looked more like a prom,” Cortez laughs.
TOTR parties attract a crowd similar to its mashed-up sounds. Seventy percent of their guests are first-, second-, and third-generation Latinos, whose styles vary drastically. Darker-skinned urbanos, who wear black T-shirts and listen to heavy metal, stand out in a sea of trendier types who favor long bangs over the Mexican mullet. Popular acts like Los Abandoned, the Sounds, Peaches, and Ima Robot mingle in VIP, while the usual multicultural Echo Park hip kid floats around aimlessly. “Mashing makes sense because it represents our generation. We’re ‘living mash-ups,’ who like things from our culture and our friends’ culture,” Cortez says.
Garnica, who’s also studying public relations and Chicano studies at CSUN, says the white hipsters who tend to be more creído (arrogant) attend their parties too. “They like that the songs are in Spanish. I guess they feel like they’re being cultured,” she says.
Their first party, back in the summer of 2006, was intended to be a one-time thing, but soon a union of partygoers formed wanting more. Cortez and Garnica are making plans for TOTR5, which is slated for May, possibly at Crash Mansion in downtown L.A.
With humble attitudes and an unwillingness to get sucked into mainstream club culture largely driven by money, the women behind TOTR are crowd-pleasing party specialists. “My passion is people, specifically 18 to 35-year-olds. I’m amorous of those born in Mexico who come here with their eccentric style and tastes and introduce us to different music. They’ll be like, ‘Hey, you like Coldplay? Listen to this,’ and let us listen to a band from Mexico that sounds the same,” Cortez says.
What’s with the letter “k” being used in place of “c” for their party flyers, and “Eres Kool?” slogans, you ask? “I don’t know what it is, but the kids coming from Mexico and other Latin American countries right now use ‘k’ instead of ‘c’. At first I thought they couldn’t spell, but it’s actually just to be cool,” Cortez smiles. ¡Vive kool!
For more doses of kool, check out MySpace.com/ turnofftheradio.
Published: 02/27/2008
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