Caf Tacvba's Re

(Paperback)

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This book is about unveiling and exploring the many layered gestures of Re.

Re, the 1994 album by the Mexican group Caf Tacvba, is a spectacularly unique musical object that adopts and adapts myriad musical genres with the pulse, the attitude, and the energy of punk and rock. Mambo and ska, samba and salsa, punk and industrial, disco and Mexican banda, are but a few of the genres in this musical trip.

But Re is not appropriation, but rather transformation: 20 original tracks of music that think through the music created and consumed in Latin America. The lyrics add layer after layer of either nuance or shock, as they play with the cultural and musical expectations of the many genres included in the album. Re, in a very real way, displays the post-punk origins of the bandloud, thoughtful, nerdy and quirky, irreverentand it does so by creating songs that represent the historical, cultural, musical and political complexity of Mexico and Latin America. The general reaction of Re in the Anglo world is that this is Caf Tacvbas White Album, but the album far exceeds that simplistic comparison.

Author Bio

Carmelo Esterrich is Professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies at Columbia College Chicago, USA where he teaches interdisciplinary humanities and Latin American studies. He is author of Concrete and Countryside: The Urban and the Rural in 1950s Puerto Rican Culture (2018) and Star Wars Multiverse (2021), part of the Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture series.