Bicycling home from a Lobero concert one night last fall, I heard the most astonishing music ricocheting around De la Guerra Plaza. A wild, haunting kind of music permeating the night air, it sounded as if it were coming from the now-defunct Tony Ray’s BBQ. Close to midnight, in the restaurant’s courtyard, I found a birthday celebration in full tilt. At the center of the party was a man blowing on an enormous sousaphone, surrounded by other musicians playing three trumpets, two clarinets, two trombones, two alto horns, a bass drum, and a snare, pumping out a frenzied music that was somehow celebratory and melancholy at the same time, like a marching band gone crazy. In one instant, the fleeting dreaminess of Fellini’s Roma and the jubilation of Mexico all came together in the heart of the city.
This, it turned out, was banda music. As a typical gringo, I had no idea how much Mexican and Latin music was being performed in Santa Barbara, let alone anything about the histories and diversity of the music. Banda, I discovered, is a style of Mexican music that developed in the Sinaloa Province in the 1800s, overlapping the influences of marching bands and German polka music and fused together in an exuberant Mexican style. Fellini’s favorite composer, Nino Rota, was influenced by the Italian version of these same sources.
Led by Necxtor Ramirez, Banda La Invasora, the band I saw that night, is the only banda Sinaloense group in Santa Barbara. Most of the band members have day jobs working in banking, construction, and factories. Almost all of them have older family members who grew up playing music in Mexican towns such as Jalisco, Guanajuato, and Oaxaca. Every few months, the group performs at Earl Warren Showground to huge, enthusiastic crowds, and almost every week, they play at all kinds of private events; parties, quinceañeras (the traditional Mexican equivalent of a sweet-16 party but for 15-year-olds), and bodas, or weddings. The only large gatherings where they don’t play are funerals because most of the band members can’t take off work during the weekday. Last February, they famously escorted a bride and groom down State Street, sousaphone, trombones, and all, to their wedding reception party.