While the recording process took its time, it was an essential period of evolution for a group conceptualised while Jose, the charming Cordobes group head, worked on the soundtrack to a B-movie some years ago. “When I first thought about forming the band I thought of the best of rumba in the 70s; El Chacho, Peret, part Catalan and also flamenco. I wanted to vindicate these figures and mix their music with our own rock backgrounds.”

Once the band started playing live, they needed a name for this new type of music. “We don’t play classical Rumba and so people always asked us what kind of music we did play. So I came up with ‘neocalorrismo’ – this ‘new heat’ that happens when rumba is fused with rock and Latin beats.”

Pantanito has taken the genre and worked on a grassroots festival for the past three years, promoting the event and giving emergent bands a chance to get their music heard by the masses. They thank their own big supporters, mainly the ladies at promo group Pishapeans, for their help along the way. This year their festival turned into a competition due to the overwhelming number of bands that wanted to take part in the day-long rumba, rock, and Latin jam session. “When we started, Rumba was just coming up; now it’s steadily growing, so this year we had a contest for the new groups and Los Impagaos, a fresh, spontaneous band from Barcelona won.”

Off the back of the festival, they are eager to turn things up even higher this summer and will perform at Festin Canibal, a new afternoon until early morning two-day festival complete with fire parades, habañeras, and more. Honouring the music joint in Cerdanyola of the same name, it promises to be a fullon rumba, rock, latin, and urban blowout. Pantanito will be there with Carles Mestre. After that they hope to get out into the rest of Europe, even getting on stage at some of the festivals in Romania.

Festin Canibal
June 28th