Bronca is a hardcore band out of the Coachella Valley of California with a unique concept behind it. "Back in 2009 or so, while doing vocals for another band, I had the idea of starting a faster punk/Youth Crew-style band so that I could get back into playing guitar for a band," explains guitarist Leopoldo Juan Treviño.
"I married the idea of making my heritage and expierences of a first generation Mexican-American the focal point of this hypothetical band with the idea of bootlegging the theme/logo for what was my first favorite musical artist when I was like 2 or 3 years old, the regional Mexican band Bronco. This also mainly sprang from the Spanish slang word 'bronca' which means having 'beef/problems' with someone or something."
Leopoldo continues the Bronca back story: "Fast forward to 2015, I’m now a tenured public school teacher with less stress and more personal free time on my hands and having sat on a ton of material for almost 5 years, I finally hit up my homie and former band mate Jairo Bravo who I knew would appreciate the sound I was going for. I challenged him to do what I had been way too lazy to do, which was to look for other people to form the rest of the band.
"He immediately began looking for band members so that we could learn the songs and jam, finding Eric Freeman to join on drums after his band at the time just called it quits. After a ton of setbacks and lineup changes, in 2022 we finally began playing live shows with the current lineup we have now: Eric Freeman on drums, Jairo Bravo on guitar, Mario Estrada on bass, Josaphat Sical on vocals, and myself on guitar and backing vocals."
"Some of our musical influences would be Allegiance, Get the Most, Mindset, Carry On, The First Step, Internal Affairs, and early Comeback Kid," Leopoldo tells No Echo.
Bronca recently released a 4-track EP called totlanawatil:
Here's some insight on the lyrics featured on the new Bronca EP: "The songs deal with the identity crisis of being a 'second class citizen' in the United States and what our response should be to that ever present sense of losing yourself and your identity to assimilation. The word 'totlanawatil' is a Nahuatl word meaning 'our history' and the major theme for the EP is that the only way to ensure we do not lose ourselves is to help preserve our history so that it never gets erased. Which is often the case with the native peoples of the Americas and those of African descent.
"We often cannot trace our linage past a few generations and have effectively had our culture erased. People like me often desperately look for things to cling to in our culture and I have found out that many of the things I actually connect to, in regards to being Mexican, have nothing to do with speaking Spanish or being Catholic but everything to do with the food, symbolism, cultural celebrations, social structures, art, and music which all come from the indigenous peoples of that area.
"All the things that Mexicans are proud of are things that have been too deeply engrained in our culture that we mistakenly believe were brought over by Spanish colonizers or Catholic Spanish priests (look into the real story of La Virgen Maria for instance). It all predates the arrival of the Spanish language. Hell, even the very fact that Día De Muertos is such an important staple of our current culture speaks volumes of how much of our actual past has survived assimilation and colonization, which is why I chose November 1st to be our release show date. To me, 'totlanawatil' encompasses all of that and this EP is hopefully my way of staving off the constant attempts to erase my people from this land."
Leopoldo also wants to show some love to his hometown: "If you want to get a good picture of what’s actually happening in the Coachella Valley (and not just who plays the Coachella or Stage Coach festivals) start off by checking out Face Facts, Killfloor, Destroy Nothing, Lazuli Bones, Tourists, Layer:0, MxMxM, Oceans Apart, Kalmala and Giselle Woo & the Night Owls. CVHC!"
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Bronca on social media: Instagram
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