Brian Slattery Photo
Albarrán.
From the stage at College Street Music Hall on Sunday evening, lead vocalist Rubén Albarrán of Cafe Tacuba called for a feminine future. He called out to all countries in Latin America, one by one, and people from the stage answered. He called for no divisions, for the freedom to live how you want to live, to be who you want to be. He gave thanks for the immigrants of the world. And he gave thanks to the audience, for our strength and energy, for the gift of coming together in one room and seeing each other eye to eye, dancing and singing together songs of “love, peace, and harmony.” He was like a flower child, if the flower was made of razors.
Earlier in the day, Albarrán had visited immigrant Nelson Pinos Gonzalez, still living in sanctuary in First & Summerfield United Methodist Church after 297 days. He had taken part in a panel discussion about music and social justice in Mexico. At College Street, he was as loquacious as ever. But for the most part, the music did the talking, and it had a lot to say.
Since its founding in 1989, Cafe Tacuba — Albarrán, Emmanuel Del Real (vocals, keyboards, and guitar), and brothers Joselo Rangel Arroyo (guitar) and Enrique Rangel Arroyo (bass) — has reveled in creating music that’s a genre-bending mix of rock, punk, hip hop, ska, and various Latin American styles of music, particularly music from their native Mexico, that never devolves into world-music stew. Instead, every song feels sharp and crisp, muscular and keen-eyed. By turns sweet and raucous, hilarious and wistful, bitter and hopeful, it’s music that appeals to the heart and the head. But more the heart. And the feet. The musicians’ approach to music has made them famous. They fill stadiums in Latin America and win Grammys here. They have also managed to reinvent themselves a few times over, sometimes in the space of the same album. And now, with a catalog almost 30 years deep, it means they can put on one heck of a live show.
The crowd in New Haven that packed the floor of College Street Music Hall to see Cafe Tacuba was one of the most diverse this reporter has seen in New Haven in a long time, a snapshot of the city, encompassing all races and ages, from elementary school-age kids to graying (and thrilled) adults. Albarrán proved a lethally effective frontman, seemingly finding a way to smile individually at every person there. Cafe Tacuba has its share of slower, sweeter songs in their eclectic catalog, but the band — a sextet on tour — didn’t play very many of those. Instead, they tore through their most energetic stuff with obvious glee. Everyone in the crowd who knew the songs sang at the tops of their lungs.
After one relentless hour, Albarrán announced that the time had come for the concert to end. The crowd was having none of that. People began calling out for their favorite songs that the band hadn’t played yet, even singing some of the choruses in unison. Riffing on his calls for political unity, Albarrán said that it had to be “one voice, one heart” to bring the band back onstage. The audience managed it with ease, and the band returned for a short set of songs. Then left the stage again.
This was when Albarrán — returning in a tank top that read “General Strike” with an alarmed cat as graphic — gave his most impassioned speech, bordering on a sermon, a prayer, a benediction. The audience loved it, but wanted more music, too. Fully a third of the crowd called out for “Eres,” a sweeter song sung by Del Real, and got their wish as Del Real took center stage to start the second encore.
By the third encore, Albarrán only had to raise his hands in the air to get the audience to clap along. At the end of that set of songs, the band members lingered on stage to shake hands with the people closest to the stage’s edge. Albarrán and Del Real shook hand after hand, even borrowing people’s phones to hold them up and take selfies with the crowd behind them, a souvenir of the show.
That seemed like it had to be the end, but the audience demanded a fourth encore, which the band delivered. At last the stage was empty and the house music came up. Still no one left. The calls for one more song only subsided when the stage crew arrived to unplug the microphones.