CONCERT REVIEW

By Steve Williams

Some concerts invite you to sit quietly, close your eyes, and absorb the aural mood of the space. (Think John Moreland or Aoife O’Donovan on a dimly lit stage with a lifetime of sad stories to tell.) Saturday night’s Ogden Amphitheater performance by the eclectic East Los Angeles electro-folk band Las Cafeteras was not that kind of concert. This show, tagged Hasta La Muerte (“Loyal through Death”), expressed the authenticity and intimacy of real relationships fueled by stories of loss, grief, and hope but with the energy of a Mexican fiesta.

Although the show began gently with a soulful and poetic tribute to the ancestors in honor of the Mexican celebration Día de los Muertos—more like a sacred approach to the altar with ofrendas for the dead than a dance party–it soon became a genre-bending, hip-hop fueled celebration of family love, immigrant solidarity, and pure joy. Abuelas and their nietos led the pilgrimage to the stage front but were soon joined by a larger crowd of enthusiastic audience members who two-stepped and clapped their way through the rest of the show, dancing and shouting Que Viva! and la tierra es mia/la tierra es tuya as acrobatic frontman Hector Flores led the band through a series of Afro pop and traditional songs, interspersed with several vigorous zapateados on a wooden platform at center stage. Even the local dead would have been roused from their October slumber. Sigue Bailando!

Thank you to Michelle Tanner, Reba Nissen, and all members and partners of Ogden Friends of Acoustic Music (OFOAM) for bringing high-caliber live music and opportunities for cross-cultural learning to Ogden.

Las Cafeteras, Dia de Los Muertos en Ogden, Ogden Amphitheater, Oct. 12, 2024. Photos by Deann Armes / The Ogdenite

Steve is a retired English teacher and part-time musician with the Salt Lake-based band The Third Class Relics. He works for Spy Hop Productions, a media arts non-profit that provides after school programs for teens. He splits time between Salt Lake and Ogden and loves hiking, mountain biking, writing music, and reading. He also dreams of being Mary Chapin-Carpenter’s piano player.