Bilingual rockers Monte Negro bring together different music styles and cultures with their latest album

Culture Clash by David Jenison

Culture Clash Photo courtesy adenaline music

Monte Negro exemplifies the cultural melting pot that is Los Angeles. This bilingual band blends popular American rock, punk and alternative influences with such Latin music counterparts as Caifanes, Los Fabuloso Cadillacs and Spinetta. For their new album Cicatrix, the group found a perfect multi-cultural producer in Tone, whose credits range from Green Day to Santana. Monte Negro singer Kinski recently spoke with Estylo to tell more.

Estylo: You’re nicknamed after German actor Klaus Kinski. What characteristics do you share?
Kinski: He was a nut case, and I was more temperamental when I was younger. My brother gave me the nickname and I just kept it. Back in the day, punk was my way of getting my anger out. I moved to Venice [Beach] from Mexico when I was 10, and the music really spoke to me.

Estylo: Where in Mexico did you live?
Kinski: Guadalajara. There are two Mexicos. I come from middle-class Mexico in the ‘80s. You could skate and have a band because you had access to that culture. My family has been coming and going to the United States for generations. My grandfather lived in Chicago and actually worked for Capone as an engineer. I was always exposed to American culture.

Estylo: You’ve said you don’t like being attached to music movements.
Kinski: Most group movements are narrow-minded. It becomes this square, and squares are dangerous, in my opinion. I like to be a circle and flow through things and take in every kind of emotion. Sometimes with the new age, it’s like, “There’s no violence,” but there is violence and there is peace. There’s a dark and there’s a light. They’ll always exist and that’s what makes the world.

Estylo: You studied art history at UCLA. Did that inspire your music?
Kinski: I consciously studied everything besides European because our culture is very Eurocentric. When you study Chinese art history or Islamic studies, you realize the painters were very cutting edge. It actually opened up more doors, but it’s almost like the more you know, the less you know. That’s the beauty of the world, it’s an ever flow of inspiration. A painting usually doesn’t just have black and white, and as a work of art, I want to represent my record with different colors and different shades. I’m trying to do what the Clash, Bob Dylan and others did to me, to pass along that message and heal. I see the job of the musician as a shaman. You don’t know why, but music takes you into this mood and satiates you.