Volcán Indie Orquesta Latina, a popular San Antonio group that foregrounds cumbia in its vibrant and eclectic music, will celebrate 10 years as a band with a special show at Stable Hall on Thursday.
Since 2014, songwriter and bandleader Jaime Mejia, along with a rotating supporting cast that has included as many as 18 players in the live setting, has used Volcán as a vehicle through which to produce lively, sophisticated and all-original music that takes inspiration from the traditional sounds of the Caribbean, Mexico and South America and blends it with elements of Latin pop and rock.
Reflecting on the 10-year milestone, Mejia said that “seeing the San Antonio music scene embrace cumbia in their own way has been a beautiful thing because our mission statement from the beginning has only ever been providing a platform and fresh representation for this genre that I love.”
Mejia’s love for the genre, paired with his sense that it wasn’t being properly regarded in the contemporary music milieu, is what led him to found Volcán in the first place.
“When I went to high school, this music wasn’t being appreciated the way I appreciated it. It wasn’t cool, it wasn’t in … there was really no one doing it that I could see myself in,” he said. “I wanted to give this genre, that I have such a deep relationship with, life in the now.”
Vocalist and frontman Jose Juan Huizar said that the feeling of camaraderie he has with the other band members and the communion that arises from serving Mejia’s vision together is probably his favorite part of the whole endeavor.
“We have sort of grown up around each other, so the most significant part of it to me is the connections with the people who have played in the band,” he said.
Huizar is a founding member along with Mejia and multi-instrumentalists Aaron Salinas and Jacob Rodriguez. Ten years in, the band members mostly meet up to rehearse when they have an upcoming performance.
In terms of the band’s musical mission, Huizar believes Volcán has been successful in showing audiences that “cumbia is not just their parents’ music, you can love cumbia, you can be an original cumbia band now and people will appreciate it.”
Now, new local bands, just starting out and trying to find a sound that fits them, may very well see cumbia as more of an option than they would have 10 years ago, he said. He’s proud to think that Volcán may have played an integral part in showing San Antonio how powerful cumbia can be.
Looking forward, Mejia wants to focus more on recording. As of now, the band has released 13 songs, only a fraction of the music that the band has performed live, and an even smaller fraction of Mejia’s overall songwriting output.
“Volcán is best served live,” Mejia said. “It’s a feeling and a moment that we share with each other and with the audience.”
Though he admits to not being particularly stimulated by the studio environment, Mejia says that the band’s five-year plan from this moment is to focus on properly documenting the last 10 years of music.
“It is important to document everything that I have written that has had so much life poured into it in the live setting, by both the band and the audiences,” he said.
If this means there might soon be fewer opportunities to catch Volcán live, then that’s all the more reason the Stable Hall show is a significant one.
Asked about the importance of showcasing local music, Stable Hall’s Libby Day said that “the opportunity to host Volcán’s 10-year anniversary show is incredibly special to Stable,” noting that she is “personally stoked to celebrate their success and longevity” as “musicians [that] have been putting in the work for over a decade.”
“This is what Stable Hall is made for,” she continued, “showcasing and celebrating artistic visions of every shape and size.”
