The Maldita Vecindad is a phenomenon that many know about but that no one can explain, not even Roco, one of the founding members of this band from Mexico City.
This is one of the longest-running and most revered Spanish-language rock bands on the music scene, continuing to draw crowds to stages in the United States despite the fact that, after a series of highly successful albums in the 1980s and 1990s, it has not produced an album or songs as well-known as those that made this group famous.
Roco, the band’s vocalist, cannot offer an explanation for the latent and constant success of Maldita in this country, a band that was born in 1985 in Mexico and that at the time was rejected and marginalized due to the appearance of its members and the rebellious and irreverent content of its lyrics.
“Rock in Spanish stopped being censored and banned and ended up being what it is today,” the singer said in a recent video chat. “Now it is popular music for an entire generation.”
And La Maldita is one of the surviving bands of that movement that began in the eighties and continues to this day in a more moderate way.
One of the reasons why the band no longer visits the United States as often—it will be in Los Angeles after an absence of more than a year—according to the vocalist, is the lack of spaces, which has to do with a change in the country’s cultural system.
Now, the places that were reserved exclusively for alternative bands are taken by the reggaeton movement, he said.
“That’s why we’re not doing things the way we used to,” he said.
In 2022, the group released “Música guerrera” a single that speaks of the resurgence of ancestral culture and respect for indigenous peoples. After that, the musical drought continued with Maldita.
In addition, of the six original members, only three remain, and to that must be added the death of Sax, the band’s saxophonist, in 2021 due to Covid.
“Whenever we made an album it was because we were all really convinced to make that album,” said Roco. “That is why each album is a ‘disco novel’, they are stories that we are talking about; the last few years have been full of changes, organization and opening up spaces; for us, the fact of remaking a complete album has not happened.”
In detail:
That: concert by Maldita Vecindad and Molotov
When: Today Thursday 8 pm
Where: Shrine Auditorium, 665 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles
As: Ticket $93; information axs.com