“Grupo Fantasma” doesn’t really fit into any genre but its own.
The nine-piece orchestra plays Latin dance music, like salsa and cumbia, but also incorporates soul and funk sounds; in 2015, they won a Grammy Award in the “Best Latin Rock, Alternative or Urban Album” category for “El Existential.” And their latest album, from 2019, is called “American Music: Vol. VII,” a reference to the multicultural identity of the group’s members who grew up on the border between Mexico and Texas.
“We're very often described as a ‘Latin funk orchestra,’ … but it's a big mix of stuff,” founding member Beto Martinez said in a Zoom interview this week. And that means “it’s big, it’s loud — it’s a lot of fun.”
The band will bring its vibrant sound to The Arts Campus at Willits (TACAW) for a concert on Friday night, when they’ll explore themes of identity and belonging through their music.
“We grew up kind of between cultures, but more recently kind of felt compelled to express that the music that we're making, and the identity that we're putting forth, is really of this place,” Martinez said.
The sound of the group is “universal,” Martinez said, “regardless of what sort of cultural or national lens that you view it in.”
“The music speaks across those borders,” he said. “And it definitely speaks to people that have that shared identity, whether they are immigrants that came here more recently or they were born here.”
Grupo Fantasma takes the stage at TACAW at 8 p.m. Friday. Day-of tickets are $25 at tacaw.org.
