Discos Resaca Collective & Mariposas Del Alma: 'Cumbiafornia'

The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.

Bay Area-based Discos Resaca Collective, a kind of supergroup of local cumbia artists, felt they struck alchemy when writing “Cumbiafornia.”

“It came up very organically,” said Marina Meza, of the all-sisters group Mariposas Del Alma, which fronts Discos Resaca along with MC Deuce Eclipse. “We kind of composed the song in the span of a rehearsal, like two hours.”

The idea for “Cumbiafornia” started when the members wanted to pay homage to the Bay Area and California at large through the fuel of cumbia — a style of Latin music known for its iconic and approachable rhythm that often lends itself to dance floors.

At the peak of the song, all three voices — the Mariposas’ and Deuce Eclipse’s — join together in a chant: “cumbia, Colombiana, Mexicana, El Salvador, Area de la Bahía, Los Angeles.”

“It’s like, hey, we’re all representing these countries, but we’re here in the Bay Area and in Los Angeles and everywhere in between in California,” said Ivan Flores, the collective’s accordion player and band director. “That’s the beauty of California. We have a whole world’s worth of culture in one place.”

Earlier this year, Discos Resaca Collective was able to share this musical love letter to California beyond state — and even country — lines. In a surreal, pinch-me moment, they performed “Cumbiafornia” at the birthplace of cumbia itself: in San Jacinto Bolivar, Colombia, during Cumbia Festival.

“It was very special to perform it [there]. To be embraced in a place with so much cultura for cumbia… it’s very honorable of them to be open and not closed off,” Deuce Eclipse said. “We are ‘Cumbiafornia,’ we do come from all these places, but we honor the tradition of the music as well as try to give it a new voice.”