And now for a Tiny Desert Concert — that’s when local bands come into the KJZZ studios to play a couple songs for us and talk a bit about the music.
Hear from Las Chollas Peligrosas. The band is very new — less than a year old — but already has a strong following. The group is known for blending different styles of Latin music, as well as American roots styles like blues and folk, and singing songs in both English and Spanish.
The Show spoke with the band’s percussionist Andria Bunnell, and she started by talking about how the band identifies its own sound.
Las Chollas Peligrosas will be playing at La Flor de Calabaza on September 29.
Full conversation
ANDRIA BUNNELL: We definitely are a mix of Latin styles for sure. We didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves. It's kind of a mix, and we like music from all throughout Latin America.
Mari, who's from Venezuela, you know, she has this Afro-Venezuelan sound, which is really beautiful. Tati, although she's from Costa Rica, she kind of has this gypsy style. She's our accordion player, which is really unique and beautiful. Rachel is a singer-songwriter from here in the United States. Anamika is a singer-songwriter who also has done a lot of rock and a lot of soulful music in her past.
I come from a soul background in R&B and blues and jazz and all of that. We're mixing all of those influences, too, even with the Latin basis.
MARK BRODIE: Can you play a song for us?
BUNNELL: Yes, I'd love to. We wanted to feature some of the original songs that the ladies brought to the table today. So one of their songs is written by Melissa Medina, and she has a mariachi background.
She plays flute and guitar … It's a cumbia. It's one of our favorite songs to do because it's a little more high energy and gets the people moving and dancing and so this is what we're already considering kind of a signature song for us.
BRODIE: So I have to ask you about the name of your band Los Chollas Peligrosas, the dangerous cholla. Like, did you get stuck by one or did someone in the band get injured on a walk in the desert or something? Like where did this come from?
BUNNELL: Well, I have, I grew up, grew up between Los Angeles and Tucson, so I definitely had some, you know, jumping cactus days back in the day, you know, on some desert walks.
But no, really what happened is immediately when we got together and we realized that it was kind of a magical thing and when we're creating a band, said, OK, well we need to have a direction.
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What do we want to do? And all of us immediately were on the same page that we wanted to be activists through our music. So we also know that we're very outspoken, all of us are, and we're not afraid to talk about issues maybe that other people don't want to touch upon.
So when we were creating the name, it just seemed like a good fit because the little prickly, little kind of in your face, you know, the cholla cactus, and we wanted an homage to the desert because Arizona is very strongly in all of our hearts. We love Arizona. It's a beautiful place. It's really home for all of us.
The other thing about it though is we're all very silly. So there's a lot, a lot of jokes going around, a lot of puns for sure. And so it's a play on words as well because we feel like a lot of people who don't speak Spanish are going to say the dangerous cholas.
And there's a couple of us that are from LA that were kind of cholas when we were growing up and so …
BRODIE: And what does that mean?
BUNNELL: It's, it's kind of an inner city Latinas who are like a little tough. It's about an attitude. It's a lifestyle. It's a ..
BRODIE: You don't take a lot of people.
BUNNELL: No, definitely not.
BRODIE: So you mentioned your activism and finding your voice as an activist, and I'm wondering about the relationship between finding your voice sort of in the world as somebody who's engaged in what's going on around them, and finding your voice as a musician and with this newfound band.
Is there a connection there?
BUNNELL: Oh, it's absolutely. That was the whole point, was, so we're going to create this music that we can talk about these issues through our music.
Right now we're not so much because we started off doing music that was just individual songs from people that they had already created and brought to the table. But now we're writing and so we knew that we wanted to write songs that were catalytic in nature, you know, to get people involved and talk about important issues.
From the very jump, what we did is we just started talking about that in between songs and we also knew that we wanted to partner up with organizations throughout the city or the state or I mean even bigger than that as we move along, but we knew that there had to be like a symbiotic relationship between the community and ourselves.
BRODIE: Can you play us one more song?
BUNNELL: Yeah, so this one is called “It's Not For My Life.” It's written by Rachel Villa.
It is a beautiful song that's just written about people in the world that are struggling and, and it comes from a heart space of just wanting to look out for everybody and be loving and be kind and be caring, and that's important for us to to put that out onto the world.
If you’re in a band or know of one you’d like to hear on air, send us a note at [email protected].
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