Son Rompe Pera: “It is a huge wooden monster!”

The Gama brothers, Mongo and Kacho, hail from Naucalpan, just west of Mexico City. They learned to play marimba from their father, Batuco. “Near where we lived there was a place where you could hire marimbas. My dad went to one of them and learned,” remembers Mongo. Then when they were barely teenagers, he brought a marimba to the house. “We didn’t know what it was,” laughs Kacho. “Was it a table? Later, we went out on the streets with him and that’s where we learned to play [it].” In their late teenage years the brothers rebelled, joining punk and rockabilly bands, but after their father passed away they formed Son Rompe Pera in 2017, becoming unlikely marimba ambassadors, infusing cumbia and other tropical rhythms with a little of that punk energy. 

“We play a four-octave marimba,” says Mongo, who shares marimba duties with his brother. Specifically, they play a chromatic marimba, a modern variation developed in Chiapas (Mexico’s marimba heartland), that has two keyboards with 12 notes per octave, as per a piano. Theirs, though, has a variation: “It has one more key [an extra black key on the lower register] with one more resonator, that vibrates a lot. The more serious you play, the more the keys vibrate,” says Kacho. These resonators are hollow pipes that amplify the notes, and in Latin America they are usually made of wood, as opposed to metal used elsewhere. Mongo adds that it is the resonators that give the marimba its “rich sound,” especially with a pigskin membrane. “If you don’t have it,” says Mongo, “then it sounds hollow. You could say it is the soul of the marimba.”

In 2017 the brothers were invited to Chile by Chico Trujillo, where they learned a lot about mixing cumbia with other styles, as well as their instrument. Kacho says, “it was in Chile when the keys began to break, and we had to find a substitute for the wood, because the wood of the marimba that we use is called hormiguillo, a dark wood that grows in the jungle between Chiapas and Guatemala. It is very hard but it is very light. We found a substitute called jacaranda, another black wood. We learned that by experimenting with different types of wood, you can get different sounds. It helped me learn how the marimba is made.” Travelling has also taught them a great deal. They tell me that the first time they took a flight was when they only had their dad’s marimba, and taking it meant having to pay for an extra person to board. These days they have a marimba that can be disassembled into three parts. 

“In Mexico each marimba is different,” says Kacho, explaining that it is down to the thickness of the wood, the height of the keyboard, the drumsticks, the resonators, even the time of the day when it was made. During the pandemic they visited the Museo de la Marimba in Chiapas and saw some of these differences. “There were marimbas that were held up and played by two people, there were circular marimbas, there is a marimba called the ‘mother marimba’ that measures about six or seven metres, it is a huge wooden monster.” They say that in Chiapas it’s still possible to see people playing the marimba, but in Mexico City young people are not interested. “We want to take this instrument to all ages with what we are doing,” says Mongo. “Our mission is that it is not lost, that something different can be explored with the marimba,” says Kacho. “The important thing,” Mongo adds, “is that our dad taught us to play and now he is gone. So, it’s a part of us, playing the marimba is magical.”   

This interview originally appeared in the December 2022 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today