Voices from the Mexican Underground: Festival Nrmal, Part 2

As the fourth edition of Festival Nrmal kicked off in the blazing sun of early afternoon in the Parque del Ferrocarril, I sat at a rusty swing set talking with Nrmal co-founder Sergio Palmero. People started entering the park, with crowds beginning to gather at the four stages. In the distance, I could hear Daniel Higgs' beckoning banjo.

Nrmal was conceived five years ago as a platform for celebrating music and art in Mexico. Originally the project of Palmero and four friends, it has developed into a collective of artists, designers, show organizers and promoters. They have a studio that they built from scratch in the upscale neighborhood of San Pedro, which they share with the design firm Savvy Studio. When I visited the studio earlier that week, the Nrmal team, Todd Patrick, and his small New York staff were in the midst of wrapping up logistics. The space emanated a youthful, creative, collaborative energy. Festival Nrmal is the collective's main event, demonstrating on a large scale the kind of work they do throughout the year. Previously, Palmero organized shows independently in Monterrey. Curating shows for Nrmal and connecting the collective with like-minded brands has become his full-time job. This year, the festival was supported by Red Bull and the Mexican beer Indio.

"It's like independent music in the sense that we do everything, almost with our hands. We need brands to finance part of what we do so we can be able to do it. Otherwise, it would be impossible. We take care of all the aesthetics of the festival. There aren't big brands taking over the stages, like at South by Southwest. We're all against that," Palmero said. "We try to keep it as personal and DIY as possible. We don't hire a production company. We are the guys that produce everything, starting from the whole concept of the art, the design, every single thing you see, the stages, the bands, the logistics, the showcases, the afterparties. We do everything by ourselves. I love it. I think I have my dream job, and it's something I feel really passionate about."

Sergio Palmero

Festival Nrmal has evolved greatly since its first edition in the spring of 2009 during the peak of the drug cartel wars. "Everyone was really scared. Bands were afraid to come to Mexico. It was a challenge, but it was something that made us believe in the idea more and helped us grow," Palmero said. "We could have said, fuck this shit, we won't do it, let's do something else. But no, we said, we have to make this happen—to make a statement that these things should happen, despite the bad stuff going on. In some kind of way, we try to build community." Since then, the cartel violence in Monterrey has calmed down. Over the past two years, Nrmal opened three venues in Monterrey—111999555, Gomez and Sergio's. "Before these venues, we did shows in houses, in parks, in free spaces. We were struggling for a long time to find places to do shows," Palmero said.

This year's festival was the best turnout yet, with 6,000 people and the most international attendees, partially thanks to efforts on the part of the Brooklyn-based Patrick, who worked to add more US and international acts to the lineup. "There's a growth that's very organic and natural. It's a festival created and curated for a very specific audience—you can count them with your hands, you know? It's not like these big festivals with 100,000 people. We don't see that happening here. We know we have a limit in the sense of how many people are interested, but the thing is to make a statement," Palmero said. "Since the first edition, the audience has almost doubled each year. So it's a really cool thing because more people are trying to understand the concept. When you go to other festivals and you see everything polished with expensive things and VIPs and lounges and freebies, and then you come here, you might get a bit confused."

Festival Nrmal is professional without being pretentious. Each component of the festival was carefully planned and carried out. Aside from a few sound issues, the festival was seamless. At the same time, the festival allowed for a certain amount of spontaneity, providing opportunities for community participation. Festival Nrmal integrated creative elements not typical to most music festivals—art installations, pop-up shows inside of a truck, a small stage where bands who played showcases that week could perform, and a market that offered band merchandise as well as work by independent Mexican artists, publishers and designers. It was easy to walk from stage to stage, making it possible to catch part of every set. Costa Rican garage-punk duo Ave Negra shared a stage with the industrial two-piece Mueran Humanos from Argentina, now based in Berlin. Sacramento’s Trash Talk played alongside the hardcore punk band Bocanegra from Guadalajara. The festival has a very continental vibe, and it seems there was a clear intention to form a bridge among indie bands in the US, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

Bocanegra

After watching the unbridled garage-psych of Tijuana's San Pedro El Cortez send festival goers into a frenzy that afternoon, I spotted the band's singer/guitarist Diego Cordova that night in the audience of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. More than once throughout the day I saw musicians invite people onto the stage or jump down from the stage and engage directly with the audience. "Some people don't understand us, but that's fine with us. The experience is a whole different thing,” Palmero said. “Everyone is hanging out with the audience. There is no such thing as a back stage. We have bands talking with other bands. There are no barriers at all."

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