As thousands of concertgoers pour into Southern California’s desert this weekend for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the all-star lineup will include Ocho Ojos, a homegrown band from the Eastern Coachella Valley that has long been a part of the region’s own underground music scene.
Although the band played the festival in 2017 as a last-minute fill-in, they're now officially part of the event alongside world-famous acts like Ariana Grande and Bad Bunny.
But locals have known and loved the guys behind Ocho Ojos for years. On a warm Friday night, hundreds filled a local bar to see the band headline a live cumbia dance party called ‘Baile Trankis.’
“We’re desert people. We like the night time. When it's fresh, we all come out and play,” partygoer Max Lopez tells me while waiting for the band to start.
The festival's name may be ubiquitous, but many Californians don’t realize that the Coachella Valley is an actual place people call home, not just a world-famous music event near Palm Springs with long lines and expensive ticket prices.
The band behind the party is steeped in local vibes. Born and raised in the Eastern Coachella Valley, guitarist Cesar Flores and synth player Danny Torres started off as a duo in 2016 performing at community centers and house shows. They named themselves Ocho Ojos, Spanish for eight eyes, to jokingly reference the thick black glasses they both wear.
Three years later, the band expanded to a four-piece and is busy keeping up with the numerous requests to play shows throughout the Coachella Valley.
Like many traditional Mexican bands, Ocho Ojos wear matching outfits, and their signature style includes white patent leather shoes, like the kind chambelanes wear for a quinceanera.
“If you look good, you feel good. And if you feel good, you play good,” explains Torres, about their rasquatche style.
The Chicano aesthetic of rasquatche is all about making do and repurposing what you have, so when Flores found a rack of white dress shoes at a local Goodwill, the look came together.
As the four members of Ocho Ojos take the stage and welcome the crowd, shouting “Are ya’ll feeling trankis (chill)? ” the audience responds with a collective roar of yeses and whistles.
Nancy Osegueda, wearing bell-bottom jeans and platformed boots, executes spins and fancy footwork to the music. Osegueda says she's a "devout follower" because Ocho Ojos shows are a “nice break” from the usual nightlife that caters to Palm Spring tourists.
Gritty bass lines and hard hitting drums from their track “Tlaloc” compel the crowd -- myself included -- to sway our bodies in sync. It’s as if we are listening to a futuristic rainstorm pour down from Tlaloc, the Mexica (Aztec) deity of water.
Ocho Ojos’s trippy hybrid sound created with a wah pedal, synthesizer, and a Rollan SP 404 sets them apart from their peers in Coachella’s alternative music scene, where indie rock, desert rock and punk thrive.
“I'm a psychedelic vato you know with a cumbia background. I was like [I’ll] give this [music] a try. And I loved it!" -Max Lopez
Concertgoer Max Lopez is a hardcore rocker type wearing all black and a t-shirt that features a local death metal band. While he's more into metal, he says he can rock out to Ocho Ojos because of their psychedelic sound.
“I'm a psychedelic vato, you know, with a cumbia background. I was like, I’ll give this music a try. And I loved it,” says Lopez. “I really felt that I flowed with it.”
Ocho Ojos gets their psychedelic sound from Chicha, a style of cumbia that originated in the Peruvian Amazon in the late 1960s and 1970s. Chichi evolved into a soundtrack of empowerment for indigenous migrants who moved to Peru’s urban cities during the oil boom.
“[Ocho Ojos] brings a little bit of a flashback. Our parents used to play cumbia so now it's our turn to listen to cumbia, but in our style.” - Chris Villalta.
While upper and middle class Peruvians have historically dismissed the working class Chicha scene, today this music, rooted in migration, is inspiring a new wave of young Latinx bands across Southern California.
“[Ocho Ojos] brings a little bit of a flashback. Our parents used to play cumbia, now it's our turn to listen to cumbia, but in our style,” says Christopher Villalta, a local photographer and fan.
Like Peru’s Chicha musicians who write about working-class struggle and triumph mixed with hometown pride, so too do Coachella’s Ocho Ojos. Their song “Avenida 52” references the main drag that goes from La Quinta all the way to the city of Coachella, a street their admirers know so well.
Fans like Antonio Duran say they can hear their own family’s story in Ocho Ojos' psychedelic cumbia.
“Our parents have worked hard for us to be where we are: to be musicians, to be artists, to be whatever the heck we want to be,” exclaims Duran. “And that is the most important part of being from Coachella: that your parents paved the way.”
Making something out of nothing is a lesson the band and their fans didn't just learn from Coachella Valley’s D.I.Y. music scene, but from their parents’ hustle, born out of necessity.
“Our ancestors did survive. And they keep surviving,” says drummer Rafael Rodriguez. “Like they say in Spanish, No hay de otra. There's no other way. We just have to keep on going.”
“Our parents have worked hard for us to be where we are: to be musicians, to be artists, to be whatever the heck we want to be. And that is the most important part of being from Coachella, is that your parents paved the way.” - Antonio Duran
It’s an ethos that not only speaks to millennials but to older generations in the community as well.
“A few times on our social media, people have tagged us and they'll comment ‘Look my mom is dancing to your cumbia while she's cleaning!‘ That feels good. ” says Torres.
But tonight, no one in this twenty and thirty something crowd is Instagramming the moment. No one has their phones out. All attention is to the stage.
When I ask a number of people in this crowd how they feel about the Coachella Music Festival sharing the same name as their city, many tell me it’s pretty “sweet” to hear world-famous musicians practically play in their backyard... but more should be done to benefit the residents who live nearby.
“The city of Coachella is the namesake, but we do not get as much recognition as the city of Indio. They get all the hotels and the commerce,” says crowd member Duran.
Others also expressed a desire for Goldenvoice, which operates Coachella, to invest in infrastructure beyond Indio's polo grounds (where the festival takes place) and to spotlight more Latinx musicians from the Eastern Coachella Valley, not just the affluent Palm Springs area.
"Every time I go out of town, people ask me where I'm from.. They're like 'Oh what? I didn't know the Coachella Valley is a real place.' They think it's just a festival. " - Christopher Villalta
With Ocho Ojos representing their hometown on the big festival stage this year, festival-goers will get a chance to hear from the 'real' Coachella music scene, not just imported talent.
“They're listening to us, that’s the beautiful part about it!” says Lopez about the band.
Ocho Ojos close their set with a crowd favorite “Cumbia De Este Valle.” It’s an ode to the desert back roads, agricultural fields, and the Salton Sea, the fertile grounds that have shaped this psychedelic cumbia band into who they are today.
To learn more about how we use your information, please read our privacy policy.