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Earlier this year, fans arriving early to dates on Jack White's Lazaretto tour were met with a sight few were prepared for—four brown dudes in ruffled tuxedo shirts, jamming out a psychedelic melange of Latin rhythms and, most outlandishly, singing in Spanish. To make things stranger, the band called itself Chicano Batman.
It was too much for some to process. The Austin Chronicle snickered at the musicians' "laughable haircuts" and dismissed their set as something out of a "bad high school dance." Others just couldn't get past the language barrier. "Their musical talent was decent, but the fact that the majority of their songs are Spanish really turned me off," wrote one blogger.
Bassist Eduardo Arenas didn't register the confused faces in White's audience—he doesn't wear his glasses onstage—and says the reaction, overall, was positive. But if a portion of the crowd was rankled by the presence of him and his bandmates, he thinks he knows why.
"In any society, it's hard to see the inferior class come up on a level where white people are dominating," he says. "If people have a bad reaction to it or anything, it's nothing to do with the music at all. It's everything to do with the way we look, the language we speak, our drummer's mullet. These are very shallow things, and they reflect the state of a certain class and a certain people—the abrasiveness of accepting."
Arenas, though, acknowledges an alternative theory: Perhaps the band is just too idiosyncratic for its own good. Formed in Los Angeles in 2008, the music of Chicano Batman is an unabashed reflection of the city that raised it. Playing Afro-Colombian grooves with a soulful smoothness absorbed via L.A. legend Art Laboe's classic oldies radio show and dosing it with the surreal culture-jamming of the Brazilian Tropicália movement of the 1960s, it's a band that could have only happened in L.A.—and it's possible that L.A. is the only place where it'll be fully understood.
But then, infiltrating spaces where it wouldn't normally be invited is the crux of the Chicano Batman concept. Singer Bardo Martinez came up with the idea while going to high school near Orange County, where he was one of a few Latinos in a mostly white, middle-class area. Though not explicitly political, the band understands that it's playing for people much like Martinez, who are growing up feeling powerless. While the '70s prom outfits it wears onstage are an homage to Latin American pop groups of the era, the logo it splashes across its shirts—giving the United Farm Workers' iconic Aztec eagle symbol the Dark Knight treatment—is worthy of a superhero's chest. "It's a mechanism for empowerment," Arenas says.
That sense of empowerment has followed the band to the stage, and itâs starting to pay off: In addition to the Jack White gigs, the band played Coachella in April, and is opening shows for Alabama Shakes this month. But Arenas doesnât need those career markers to know things are going well. For him, the proof is in the performance. And a few negative reviews arenât going to rattle his confidence. âI donât need anyone to tell me I had fun,â he says.
SEE IT: Chicano Batman plays Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., with DoveDriver and Trujillo, on Thursday, Aug. 6. 9 pm. $12 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
WWeek 2015