Punk-rock band Bronca is one of the hottest bands in the desert—for all sorts of very good reasons.
Featuring Eric Freeman on drums, Jairo Bravo on guitar, Josaphat Sical on vocals, Mario Estrada on bass, and Leopoldo Juan Treviño on guitar and vocals, Bronca performs energetic live shows with raucous stage energy, and frontman Sical almost always hops into the crowd to sing the band’s action-charged lyrics to the crowd.
On Tuesday, Oct. 29, Bronca will release debut EP totlanawatil, featuring 10 straight minutes of fast riffs and cultural commentary. Every song mixes English and Spanish to deal with topics of oppression, code-switching and culture wars.
I chatted with most of the Bronca crew recently at Del Taco.
“There’s a lot of identity-crisis stuff on it, about being challenged from the outside world to change, and the struggles of that shit,” Treviño said; he is the founder of the band and the primary songwriter. “I wanted to broaden it a little bit so that everybody could relate to it, as opposed to just it being my own point of view.”
Treviño made sure each member was on board with the band’s outspoken nature before joining the band. The other musicians related to the topics and feelings Treviño wanted Bronca to express.
“We’re minorities, so I feel like (Treviño’s) lyrics are a mindset,” Sical said. “He has a way of getting a message across, but still keeping it understandable.”
Totlanawatil is a word in the Nahuatl language (spoken by Mexicans, Aztecs and Nahuas) meaning “our history.” Treviño explained that the album name stems from his life-changing discovery of the origins of the language.
“All of us here, regardless of speaking Spanish or not, we all get challenged because of how we look and where we come from,” Treviño said. “At home, we’re told this is who we are … but as soon as you start to venture out, which you have to as a growing adolescent, you go to school, and you get told you don’t look how you’re supposed to look. I’m a history major, and I’ve studied history for so long, but I already knew that my people aren’t native Spanish-speakers, and my people aren’t also native English-speakers, and here I am, having to try to fit the mold of a Spanish person, a Spanish-speaker, learning English. I was an English learner my entire life, and once you’re an English learner, you’re labeled for the rest of your life regardless of how well you speak it. I went from that perspective of not speaking English well enough, to then speaking English too well, and not Spanish speaking well enough, and now speaking Spanish better. I realized I was being torn between two languages that really shouldn’t even be mine anyways. I don’t even know that much Nahuatl, and I’m trying really, really hard to learn a lot of it, which is why I added a lot of that stuff in there.”
The EP’s final track, “El Guardia,” ends with a Nahuatl poem.
“I included the poem in ‘El Guardia,’ ‘the guardian,’ because we have a responsibility to preserve our history, or else we lose ourselves,” Treviño said. “That’s the whole point of that story, and that’s why I made that whole song in Spanish. It is tailored toward the Spanish-speaking crowd, but the message is the same: If your history is erased, you are erased.”
Other moments in totlanawatil deal with the struggles faced by Mexicans in America. Treviño explained why he kept a “wrong” lyric in a song on purpose.
“The beginning of one of the lyrics was supposed to be the word ‘arremedar,’ which is, ‘You’re mocking me,’” he said. “I know that’s the word, but I grew up saying the word ‘remiden,’ and it’s not even a real word, but it’s a very SoCal Mexican-American thing to do, which is you say words that are not even Spanish or English. I grew up saying that word, because it was something my mom would do a lot. She would just make up stupid words in not even Spanish or English. That’s part of that identity crisis, too—just accepting that you’re never going to be able to make everybody happy, especially when they have some fucking twisted version of who you’re supposed to be.”
Bronca’s shows always attract a crowd, thanks to the tenacious, fiery music, and their audience-engaging stage presence. As the band releases the EP, they hope people will see beyond the mosh pit and understand the true message of the band.
“I feel like once this is out, then they’ll understand the meaning, and then those who can reference that hopefully will sing along to our music,” Bravo said. “It’s cool to see what they’re doing right now … but I hope that once this is out, they will see what the meaning is.”
Some audience members have already caught on, thanks to the empowering ad libs from Treviño and Sical, and the always-present United Farm Workers of America flag placed on an amp.
“It’s a pretty good mix,” Freeman said. “You can see who’s just feeling the music, and then there are a few people on the side who are actually stopping and listening to what (Sical) is saying.”
Treviño makes a point to uplift and inspire a certain group of people at every gig—the “no sabo kids.” “No sabo” is an incorrect translation of “I don’t know,” and the term “no sabo kid” has been used to represent Latinos who aren’t fluent in Spanish.
“I’ve been talking a lot about that at shows, and people really relate to that and will be like, ‘Dude, that’s sick; thank you for saying that,’” Treviño said. “Maybe once the album comes out, we might have some people misinterpreting certain things, like the crazy Republicans who love Rage Against the Machine. …. In the recordings, you can hear what he (Josaphat) is saying. We worked really hard to make sure.”
While Bronca may be too loud and crazy for some, and too politically charged for others, the band hopes people can leave their live shows changed.
“I would hope that people leave with a new mindset, or a new point of view,” said Sical. “I want them to leave empowered—like, ‘Hey, bro, stand up for our culture; don’t let them remove it. Don’t just be a pawn.’ I also want people to have a good time.”
Learn more at instagram.com/broncacvhc.
