Carnaval San Francisco Turns Music, Memory and Resistance Into Celebration

This story was reported for K Onda KQED, a monthly newsletter focused on the Bay Area’s Latinx community. Click here to subscribe.

Fabian Ramirez remembers going to Carnaval San Francisco while growing up in the Mission District. He watched musicians perform throughout the festival and wanted to be just like them.

Ramirez is now the lead singer of Grupo 415, a regional Mexican music quartet that is among the 60 musical artists performing this year at Carnaval.

“Being from San Francisco, being from the Mission, performing at Carnaval means a lot,” the 19-year-old told me. “It’s an honor.”

Personal connections like Ramirez’s illustrate why Carnaval embodies the Bay Area. The concept originated in Latin America, but it has taken on distinctly San Franciscan attributes by showcasing local talent and highlighting the many countries of origin that make up the region’s Latine community, all while building on a global tradition.

That ethos is even more relevant this year as the federal government has targeted and terrorized immigrant communities.

“We’ve been through economic upturns and downturns, gentrification, the pandemic. We’ve gone through these types of anti-immigration policies in the ‘90s in California,” said Rodrigo Durán, executive director of Carnaval San Francisco. “Carnaval was always there, and we’ll still be there to support, to provide a space where people feel protected. And so we’re ready.”

Carnaval draws about 500,000 people to the Mission each Memorial Day weekend for two days of music, food and arts. The festival, slated for 11 a.m.-6 p.m. May 23-24, will take over 17 city blocks and include a parade, five stages, a kid zone, 300 exhibitors and vendors, and a soccer pavilion to celebrate this year’s theme, “La Copa del Pueblo — The People’s Cup” in alignment with the upcoming World Cup.

The festival, now in its 48th year, is a celebration of Latino culture and immigrants who have infused the Bay Area with rich traditions, food and music. It’s the third-largest annual festival in San Francisco, following Pride and Lunar New Year.

This year’s headliner is Su Majestad Mi Banda El Mexicano de Casimiro, a group that popularized the “electrobanda” style of music in the 1990s.

“Selfishly, I’m reliving my childhood memories,” Durán said. “And then there’s this new generation that’s tapping into this vintage music and enjoying that rhythm that’s so energetic and that’s nostalgic at the same time.”

Mi Banda El Mexicano’s music blended various genres into danceable party bangers that I grew up listening to and still hit hard today. Songs include La Bota (The Boot), Feliz, Feliz (Happy, Happy) and Mambo Lupita.

They were avant-garde for challenging social norms of the time and unapologetically pushing risqué dance styles such as “quebradita” and “caballito.” Their biggest hit is No Bailes de Caballito (Don’t Dance to Caballito), which includes the lyrics: “The king commands and orders you to dance the caballito — even if your mom gets mad!”

Banda El Mexicano “will give us a sense of liberty, a sense of freedom to breathe, to reflect, to enjoy, to have joy in a moment when we’re feeling so distressed and so antagonized,” Durán said.

Carnaval’s roots stretch deep into Latin America and Europe. The idea was to throw a big party and use up excess food and energy before Lent, a religious season promoting fasting and spiritual growth preceding Easter.

“In the 1970s, people found themselves realizing that there is this wealth of cultures that share similarities, but that have these distinct ways of expressing their traditions and their cultures,” Durán said.

Lent usually starts in February or March, which can be rainy in San Francisco, so early festival organizers decided Memorial Day weekend would be a better time of year, Durán said.

Jose Carrasco, founder of San Francisco dance and arts organization Loco Bloco, started attending Carnaval as a spectator in the 1980s and organized his first parade performance in 1994. The festival brings back memories from his childhood growing up in Louisiana.

“My parents would take me and my siblings to the Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans,” he said. “Those were really astounding, especially as a child, to see these giant floats and the music that was playing and all the beads being thrown and the colors and the costumes. It left a lasting impression.”

For this year’s Carnaval, Loco Bloco has assembled about 150 dancers and performers, including a 12-piece band, 50 drummers and an elaborate float that will snake through 20 blocks in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Planning for the parade starts almost as soon as the previous parade ends. It takes several months to craft a theme, choreography and music followed by rehearsals.

Carnaval is about “expressing art and expressing joy and bringing community together and bringing together a lot of people, who aren’t necessarily professional artists or musicians or dancers,” Carrasco said. “It’s a community ritual in which everyone can participate or watch.”

Loco Bloco’s parade theme this year is “Uprising,” drawing inspiration from the native people of Hawaii and volcanoes, Carrasco said.

“Uprising also represents what volcanoes do, and the magma exploding and the magma flowing underground is the lifeblood of the planet,” he said. “We’re trying to provide a vehicle to let the steam off as if it’s magma, the heat, the boiling blood. We’re going to channel it and feel joy and move in the street and feel our power, and say something super important while we’re moving our bodies and our hips, legs, hands and our butts.”

For Carrasco, the broader purpose of Carnaval is to preserve cultural identity, fight erasure and empower the community, especially young people.

That is certainly the case for Ramirez of Grupo 415, who started playing music at age 7. He connected with his bandmates via social media after the pandemic, when posting about music served as an outlet.

The group, which plans to release its first album this summer, is performing at Carnaval for the second time this year.

“That was a dream for me: to perform at Carnaval, and then I thought, how am I going to get there?” Ramirez said. “I was like, ‘You know what? Let me reach out to Carnaval and see who I could get in touch with to make this happen,’ because that was always a goal for me and the band to get to perform on a big stage, especially for Carnaval.”