Spotlight: Mexican Institute of Sound

“If you close your eyes and listen, you can easily detect the noises [that come] from Mexico City,” Camilo Lara tells me. He would know. As the person behind Mexican Institute of Sound – or Instituto Mexicano del Sonido – Lara’s music is a fundamental part of the contemporary Mexican soundscape. Blending traditional Mexican folk with contemporary beats and electronics, MIS has also been subtly incorporating the sonic delights of Mexican streets for two decades. Today, Lara speaks to me from his studio in La Roma, a neighbourhood within a city defined by the loudspeaker cries of the scrap collector, the knife-sharpener’s pan flute, and the hot camotes (sweet potato) cart, whose steam-powered whistle permeates the evening streets. Given all this, the MIS studio seems remarkably calm.

It hasn’t always been this way. When Lara first moved to La Roma 20 years ago, it was a rough area, and still recovering from the 1985 earthquake. “When I moved to La Roma, they gave me the keys to my house,” Lara remembers. “I went in to look, and when I came out the mirrors from my car had been stolen!” Today though, Lara says, “La Roma is Disneyland,” increasingly gentrified, buzzing with tourists, and all the accompanying implications.

Lara’s situation has changed, too. His studio is a relatively recent acquisition, having moved there from his home around five years ago. “It was pretty painful to have mariachis eating Cheetos in my bedroom,” he laughs, painting a lively picture of the moment he realised he needed more space, as musicians smoked and snacked their way around his house. Lara was working on the soundtrack to Disney animation Coco at the time. The film, with its music, was a critically-acclaimed success: one among many. Lara’s 20-year career has involved further film, including Black Panther; production credits and collaborations with artists from Toots & the Maytals and Graham Coxon to Norah Jones; Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations; and, between a host of other accolades, six studio albums as MIS.

Responses to Lara’s work have changed considerably. When he began DJing, the younger generations rejected the traditional Latin American sounds that Camilo brought to his sets, even when combined with contemporary Anglo music. “It was hard,” he reiterates. “When I was playing cumbia no one liked cumbia, and they were like ‘Oh, you’re not cumbia, you’re doing electronic music.’ And the electronic guys were saying ‘Oh, you’re not doing electronic music, you’re playing cumbia!’ And the rock guys were like ‘Oh no, you’re not doing… you’re doing shit!’” For a long time, incorporating Mexican genres was distinctly uncool, a sentiment Lara believes was rooted in classism: “Cumbia was ‘for poor people’, or mariachi was an ’old’ thing, and corridos [narrative songs, often with a notorious protagonist] were a thing from the north, and for thieves.” Thankfully, Camilo feels such views are finally being overturned by upcoming generations of Mexican musicians, building upon a DIY ethos, and a rejection of mass media. Acceptance and pride in Mexican music is ultimately what Lara has been fighting for, and perhaps reflects wider issues. Music is “the conscious and the inner thoughts of society,” Lara muses. “I think it’s just a companion to what is happening [elsewhere].” Lara is emphatic about music’s ability to unify and create understanding across cultures. He recalls touring with foreign musicians, sharing no languages beyond music, and has declared that “the only democratic place on Earth right now is the dance floor.”

Lara always wanted to be a musician, he tells me, depicting his five-year-old self, who would watch his guitarist brothers rehearsing in the family kitchen, complete with Robert Smith-inspired haircuts. “I wanted to be one of them, and be cool!” Deterred from the guitar by being left-handed, Lara embarked on a sample-based approach, borrowing sounds from the wider world. “I always wanted to be called a musician, and no one called me a musician! They were like ‘oh this guy is a thief!’ And now that people call me a musician, I’m like ‘no, I’m not a musician, keep on calling me [a thief], it’s better,’” he grins.

Lara should be careful what he wishes for! Recently, his gentle ‘thievery’ became the subject of a cease-and-desist letter from representatives of the CDMX scrap collectors. Their ‘lyrics’ – announcements usually broadcast via loudspeaker from a moving truck – were borrowed for MIS track ‘Se Compran’, a hypnotic piece of minimalist electronics and sweetly-delivered vocals, building to a final frenzy. The far-less-melodious scrap collector original is a kind of sonic equaliser, Lara confirms: “Night and day you hear it; it doesn’t matter how rich you are or how poor you are, everywhere in the city!” This amplifies the legal blow: “I never expected that something that has been so annoying in my life [would] continue to be as annoying!”

‘Se Compran’ is an apt example of the inimitable musicianship of MIS, drawing from the streets of CDMX, combining Latin American folk and contemporary Anglo-Western sounds, both embracing and defying tradition. New MIS compilation Algo-Ritmo rightly celebrates this 20-year mark, with music from MIS’ life so far, plus two new tracks. One, ‘Stop!’, sees Lara joining long-time collaborator Ceci Bastida, of punk-rock band Tijuana No!, for a psychedelic cumbión. The second, ‘Bolero’, contrasts, with Bollywood-like samples and smooth pop vocals from Foudeqush and Esteman. The collection continues to offer tastes of almost-limitless genres and influences: from hip-hop to EDM, dub to soul, from cumbia and bolero to guaracha and mariachi. Digital approaches meet analogue sounds, synths and Lara’s collection of laboratory toys. Whether dark and dense or light and dreamy, leaning into contemporary pop or nostalgic flavours of Mexico City-past, MIS feels ever-fresh, dynamic and fuelled by dance-inducing groove.

I ask Lara what he’s most keen to promote in his work. “The Denominación de Origen [Appellation of Origin]: be a good wine,” he declares. “Or, be a delicious mango from Brazil, but be that! I think that’s what’s exciting: to be something unique from where you are, beautiful, and you can’t be copied or replicated!” “Be a good mango,” we laugh, “that’s a good mantra!” It’s one that Camilo Lara is living out to perfection.

This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Songlines today