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About Café Tacvba


Café Tacuba .mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-smallSpanish pronunciation: ), stylized as Café Tacvba, is a band from Naucalpan de Juárez, State of Mexico. The group gained popularity in the early 1990s. They were founded in 1989, before they had the current lineup of Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega , Emmanuel del Real Díaz , José Alfredo "Joselo" Rangel Arroyo , and Enrique "Quique" Rangel Arroyo , their friend Roberto Silva played the keyboards for a short period of time. Since the Cuatro Caminos World Tour, Luis "El Children" Ledezma has played the drums in every concert but is not considered an official member of the band, as well as Ramiro Del Real Díaz, who joined the band as a support musician playing the guitar since 2015.


Previously known as "Alicia ya no vive aquí" , the band took its final name from a coffee shop located in downtown Mexico City. The café, which opened in 1912 and had its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, was representative of the Pachuco scene at the time, something the band would later acknowledge as an influence. The Café de Tacuba is still in operation as a coffee shop and restaurant on Tacuba Street, in Mexico City's Historic Center. The band changed its name to Café Tacvba to avoid legal issues with the coffee shop.


Singer Rubén Albarran and guitarist José Alfredo Rangel met while studying graphic design at Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. Rangel's brother, Enrique, completed the band's lineup in 1989. The group began playing music in the garage of a house in their neighborhood, Satélite, an upper-middle-class suburban area in the Naucalpan municipality, of the State of Mexico. Café Tacvba was principally influenced by alternative rock bands of the 1980s such as The Cure, The Clash, The Smiths, and Violent Femmes. Despite their English-language influences, the band members wanted to represent their native culture, so they incorporated Mexican influences into their music. The group began singing primarily in Spanish and changed their name to Café Tacvba.


Café Tacvba went from being a garage band to a concert act in 1989, when they joined the scene surrounding El Hijo del Cuervo, a cultural club in Coyoacán featuring writers and musicians. As they performed in various venues around Mexico City, they were discovered by Argentinian music producer Gustavo Santaolalla, who at the time was producing albums for leading bands of the burgeoning Rock en Español movement of the time. Santaolalla arranged a contract for the band with Warner Music Latina , with plans to produce its debut album himself. Café Tacvba in turn proceeded to record their first song for commercial release, "Tamales de Iguanita", which WEA released as part of a Christmas-themed rock en español compilation, Diciembre 25, in 1990.


The group's debut album, Café Tacvba, was released in 1992 and was extremely popular in Mexico. The group experimented with many different musical styles, from punk and ska, to electronica and hip hop, to regional Mexican varieties such norteño, bolero, and ranchera. However, the band was taken aback by the stark difference between the sound on the album and group's "rawer" live sound, likening the recording to "a pasteurized version of ourselves". Café Tacvba released five singles from the album – "Maria", "Rarotonga", "Las Persianas", "La Chica Banda" and "Las Batallas" – with a music video filmed for each, with the exception of the latter. "María", directed by Gustavo Garzón, was nominated for Video of the Year at the Lo Nuestro Awards of 1993.


Two years later the band released a follow-up album, Re, in 1994. The singles "La Ingrata" , "Las Flores" and "El Ciclón" were also commercially successful. On the album, collaborators included Luis Conte and Alejandra Flores, while unconventional rock instrumentation such as jarana, guitarrón, melodeon, and drum machines were employed. The album's mixture of genres such as alternative rock, punk, and metal with traditional Latin American styles helped the group develop a dedicated cult following. During the promotion of the album, the band's attendance at the 1995 New Music Seminar in New York helped garner some media attention in the United States.


This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Café Tacvba", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.

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