More classic music is available than ever before, thanks to the World Wide Web, providing a convenient look at other cultures and contexts. The Brat drummer and founding member Robert Soto contacted me with some music from around 1999, from his band I & I. He explains:
“Right about the summer of 1998 we got together, just started jamming and making some noise. I put an ad in the paper and some people responded to the ad. I’m talking about Mérida, Yucatán Mexico, back in those days in ’98-’99, there was really no Internet. Only the rich people had the Internet way down there in the Yucatán peninsula. A lot of local people were into their regular, Mexican Mariachi music. So what I was looking for back in those days was very unusual. And so I put an ad in the paper, did some auditions, and hooked up with some people. Rasta, Luis, and the other members, are typically, they are from out of town, not from Mérida, they are from Mexico City and Monterrey. So they were more exposed to what was going in in music, in international music, which was the punk and the rock.”
After working with East L.A.’s The Brat in the 80s, Soto exported his brand of punk rock beat making to Mexico, mixing it with Jamaican reggae, sometimes with unexpected results. “We do have a video of our very second presentation, or live gig,” he says. “People would just stand there and stare at us, the young people. They would just stare at us and say what the heck is this, you know? What we doing, we were mixing reggae with punk….we had a very strange mixture from what was going on in Mexico at the time, and we were totally new, and they would look at us strange, like ‘what are these guys doing?’[pullquote]“People would just stand there and stare at us, the young people. They would just stare at us and say what the heck is this, you know? What we doing, we were mixing reggae with punk….we had a very strange mixture from what was going on in Mexico at the time, and we were totally new, and they would look at us strange, like ‘what are these guys doing?’ ” Robert Soto[/pullquote]
“The younger generation would look at us and say ‘this sounds cool,’ and we basically, back in 1999 we started a whole movement in Mexico that is very strong today, From the young kids that saw us play, perform live, they grew up and now they’re musicians, now they’re 20 years old, 22 years old and that’s what they’re playing now, and it’s a very strong music now in Mexico that we started.”
I asked Soto where most of these gigs took place. In bars, in clubs? I was surprised by his answer. Oddly enough, despite one song that seems to promote marijuana (but only as an alternative to even more dangerous substances, according to Soto), I & I was offered work by various state and county governments in Mexico. “What happened,” he explained, “is that our lyrics were positive lyrics, if you listen to our lyrics we basically try to influence the young generation to stay away from drugs, to stay away from violence, so our lyrics were very positive. So a lot of our gigs, a lot of the gigs we had,I’d say 99 percent of the gigs we had, we were hired by the government. Let’s say the school district, the governors, and they would hire us and send us to bunch of small little towns in the area, and also larger towns, and they would pay for transportation, food, hotel, I mean it was luxury man. We had a good time.”
I also asked him about the name of the band and what it meant. “I & I is a Jamaican expression for ‘You and Me and Rastafari’ It’s a religion, I & I is a Jamaican religion, in fact Bob Marley was part of that religion and he was one of the original creators of that in the ’60s and early ‘70s, with Burning Spear, and Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, I can go on with all these Rastafari.”
In addition to the positive lyrics, Soto and the other members of I&I were concerned with the impression they made on stage. “Back in those days, and it’s still happening, you see all these Mexican bands, the Quebraditas and all that, they have all these girls with short, short skirts, and showing their legs…our shows were nothing like that. When we would perform live we would do fun stuff, like run around the stage and jump and laugh, and just have good clean fun.”
Sounds like a good time. And until someone perfects the time machine, the Internet is still the best way to hear classic music from around the world. The members of I & I were: Luis Rasta on vocals, Mario Trejo on guitars, Daniel Lugo on bass, Luis Miranda on keyboards, Olin Landi on percussion, Marce Martin on harmonicas and Robert Soto on drums. According to Soto, the band is still active today in Mexico, though with some variations in membership. The tracks were recorded in 1999, at Digitalia Recording Studio in Mérida, and produced by Soto.
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