The Indio International Tamale Festival has been celebrating Coachella Valley culture—including the art of the tamale, of course—for three decades.
Last year, the hometown festival grew significantly when CUSP Agency came on board to produce the event. Former Goldenvoice employee Gopi Sangha and his team brought in popular national musicians, combined them with local bands, and added more modern vendors, roller-skating, wrestling—and more.
This year, the Tamale Festival is back for its 30th anniversary edition—and it has grown even more. The event, newly hosted at Miles Avenue Park, has expanded to four days of programming, featuring a night market on Thursday and Friday dubbed Mercadito de Noche. Bands performing include Banda Machos, La Santa Cecilia, Together Pangea and others, taking the stage along with locals like Israel’s Arcade, Las Tías and Town Troubles. (Full disclosure: I am performing at this year’s event.)
“We were very satisfied with the experience that we sought to produce (last year), and I think it was received fairly well amongst the community,” Sangha said during a recent phone interview. “Everyone tried new things, and everyone responded to new things, so we took that as direction, and refined the things that we thought could have been better, and then reinforced the things that went well. The luchadores we had programmed at Tamale Festival last year were just a huge hit, so we’re coming back with even more wrestlers, and even more matches, and creating a really nice experience for what we call the Chavela Throwdown.”
The Mercadito de Noche is designed to be a “shopping, retail, dining experience” that is family-friendly.
“Rides and attractions will be available, and we have really beautiful festive lighting coming in,” Sangha said. “We have some great entertainment on each of those nights, and then Saturday and Sunday, we go into the full festival, with our two large stages playing music, I think, for almost 20 hours through the weekend. With the extended hours, and it being the 30th anniversary, we have more bands than ever, which gives us the ability to program different sounds and music experiences for multigenerational families. It’s bigger, badder and, I think, funner.
“We are moving to Miles Avenue Park this year due to all the development downtown, but we really think that it’s going to be a bucolic and comfortable experience there with the trees and the grass.”
Last year, the downtown Indio setting proved to be a little cramped with all of the added stages, vendors, rides and, most importantly, people. Organizers hope the move to Miles Avenue Park will solve many of those issues.
“We’re definitely trying a new venue, but luckily, we have great interest from the tamale vendors, which are the core of this experience,” Sangha said. “If anything, I think the public and the residents are going to have a beautiful day in the park. It’s as simple as that. … We’re hoping this is a welcomed direction for the festival as a whole.”
The Tamale Festival’s growth is just one element of the city of Indio’s revitalization efforts. I asked Sangha what he and his team of curators, largely based in Los Angeles and Pomona, see in the city of Indio.
“I think Indio, as a place, is at an interesting sort of nexus in cultural and physical ways,” Sangha said. “It has relationships to metros like Los Angeles and San Diego, but it also has relationships to places like Mexicali and Tijuana, and Yuma and Tucson and Phoenix. Indio, I think, has a lot of commonalities in being this sort of transitory place, and so we try our best to reflect that in this musical curation with Rene Contreras (booker of Viva! Pomona and the Sonora stage at Coachella), who has long been a music curator who collaborates with me. We want to speak to families, mothers, fathers, abuelas and kids. It’s hard to book enough star power to satisfy everyone, but if we sort of dig deep, and think about what makes a fun experience, the answer starts getting clearer to us. We’re wanting to book English- and Spanish-language heroes from the region, and local bands that may not be familiar to the older generations, but their sounds will be. We’re even being mindful of the youngsters and making sure that there are fun things for them, like DJ Lance Rock of Yo Gabba Gabba!, or even Hip Hop Harry, or some really bright, poppy guitar sounds from the Aggrolites. … We’re really happy with how things have come together.”
Sangha said the performers are also happy to be coming to Indio and the Tamale Festival.
“The bands do want to be a part of this, because they genuinely think it sounds fun,” Sangha said. “We’ve gotten great feedback from the bands, and they’re excited to be a part of something that’s for the community that is free admission, and that has a slate of talent that is a one-of-a-kind curation. Bands sort of get pigeonholed into bills and tour packaging and things of that nature, so I think this has been a welcome offer to them to come play at the Tamale Festival.”
While the Tamale Festival has grown and evolved in the last two years, make no mistake: Tamales are still at the event’s center.
Last year, Outside the Masa took home the triple crown of trophies—Best Gourmet, Best Traditional, and Overall Best Tamale—so it makes sense this this year, Outside the Masa co-founder Juan Carlos was asked to be the festival’s culinary director.
Carlos and his family’s business was born at the Tamale Festival in 2017.
“What was supposed to be a just-for-fun kind of booth, just to showcase my dad’s birria, ended up turning into this huge monster of an endeavor that we took on as a family kind of affair,” Carlos said during a recent phone interview. “Last year, because it was post-COVID, we really didn’t know what to expect. We definitely didn’t expect to take the triple crown of the trophies, either. To take all three trophies was insane, but at the same time, it was so exciting. It was like validation for my parents’ cooking and everything that we had done since our beginning in the Tamale Festival.”
While Outside the Masa had been a festival vendor since 2017, 2021 was the first year in which the Carlos family participated in the competition aspect. Previously, tamales had to be stored and judged later; last year, the competition changed to a live tasting.
“We call them the ‘inside out tamale,’ which was the way that our tamale was constructed—hence the name Outside the Masa,” Carlos said. “We bring all of the ingredients together and assemble the tamale in front of the customers. For that reason, we didn’t really care about participating (in the competition before the format change), because we knew that our particular tamale was not fit for that.
“Last year, a panel of six people were going booth to booth, asking if we wanted to participate in the contest. At that point, we were like, ‘OK, you’re here. We could give you the tamale, and you can taste it instantly.’ A few hours later—that’s when they came in with the trophy for Overall Best Tamale. My dad was there; my brothers were there, (with) my mom and everybody. It was such an amazing moment. A bit surreal in a way, but at the same time, we really did deserve it. When we started this project, it was always about the quality and the tradition, and keeping it as real as possible. Everything that we had worked for paid off.”
Carlos said his journey with Outside the Masa is helping him as the festival’s new culinary director.
“I think Indio, as a place, is at an interesting sort of nexus in cultural and physical ways. It has relationships to metros like Los Angeles and San Diego, but it also has relationships to places like Mexicali and Tijuana, and Yuma and Tucson and Phoenix.”
Gopi Sangha, Tamale Festival organizer
“Seeing those other pop-ups kind of struggling at certain events or street fairs—I was there at one point, so for me, helping my colleagues and my fellow foodies has been a passion of mine,” Carlos said. “It’s the opportunity for me to connect with all these local vendors and outside vendors and guide them through the process, because I’ve been there.
“Right now, my role is to try to scout some of the local vendors, and some of the previous vendors as well, and reach out to them, and tell them about the program. The Tamale Festival is definitely going through some changes—so many new good changes—so I talk to them about what’s going on, and about why participating is somehow cool and important if you’re going to be part of this food industry. (I also talk about) how they helped me, and maybe will potentially help them, grow as a business. We started from a pop-up and then a food truck, and now we’re looking into getting a brick-and-mortar. My role is to … look for those families who always wanted to participate, but they’re a little bit intimidated by the process. Sometimes there’s also a language barrier in between, so that’s my role in being the culinary director.”
While the growth of the Tamale Festival has been well-received overall, some longtime tamale vendors became intimidated and didn’t return in 2021.
“The balance is trying to balance the traditional part of the festival that has been happening for the last 29 years, before CUSP Agency took over, and adapting the newer and more modern approach to the festival,” Carlos said. “Only time will tell where these changes are going, but I personally believe it’s really for the good… but, yeah, it is intimidating. It’s something that we have to work with.
“The tamales are still popular—as popular as before. I think the pandemic also helped a lot of people to start selling tamales. I see my Facebook and Instagram, and see everybody selling tamales … because now they have the time, and now they realize that they could do that as a business. I’m scouting those families and looking at those posts to see who’s doing the tamales, and talk to them about participating in the Tamale Festival.”
Carlos is also working with CUSP Agency on a new “tamale consignment program,” through which locals will be able to sell their tamales without being full-fledged vendors.
“This is a way for the families who are doing small batches of tamales … or that old-school tia or abuelita who everybody knows of that has those delicious tamales that she’s been selling for years, (to participate),” Carlos said. “It’s a program where they could participate at the Tamale Festival without having to fully participate with having a booth and having a big infrastructure and the investment to do it. … During the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, we can sell and showcase those tamales to the public.
“It’s a very smart and a very new program, so again, the challenge has been making them understand what the program is about, and how they could participate without really investing so much money into a full booth. It’s been challenging, because sometimes they don’t get it. They’re like, ‘OK, so why am I making these tamales? And why are they taking a cut? And why are they doing this?’ But at the same time, I think it’s very cool to allow them to participate. We’re also going to (share with attendees) a little story—a little history of the vendors participating, where they from, what their names are, and what they specialize in, so the community and the attendees will know where the tamales are from. I think that’s such a cool experience for families just to be out there, and have their name out there.”
The Indio International Tamale Festival will take place from 5 to 10 p.m., Thursday and Friday, Dec. 1 and 2; 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 3; and noon to 8 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 4, at Miles Avenue Park, 82524 Miles Ave., in Indio. Admission is free; passes for rides and attractions are $16.95 to $49. For more information, visit www.indiotamalefestival.com.
