Mexican Institute of Sound

Camilo Lara believes in the Appellation of Origin—that is, the agricultural principle that products of a specific place should be proudly labeled, whether it’s fruit or wine or, in his case, music. “Be something unique from where you are, beautiful, and you can’t be copied or replicated,” the founder of the hybrid folk-electro act Mexican Institute of Sound once said. “Be a good mango—that’s a good mantra.” As a kid in Mexico, Lara became obsessed with sounds and the records that held them, especially the music that Esquivel! composed for the kids show Odisea Burbujas. Rather than playing guitar like his rock-obsessed brothers, he eventually began collecting records, searching for the bargain-bin finds that held the strangest sounds. In the process of compiling more than 50,000 LPs and 30,000 CDs, he began stitching these sounds together, creating propulsive collages that eventually earned him a record deal while he was still the chairman of EMI in Mexico. “He believes that anything is fair game,” Mike D told The New York Times in 2009, “that anything and everything is of interest and can be made to fit together.”

When Lara first began mixing cumbia with dance beats, he met criticism from people who either looked down on cumbia as the music of the poor or felt he was bastardizing both forms. But as cumbia’s magnetic feeling spread across the globe, Lara emerged as one of its futuristic champions, finding new ways to situate the sound in the present. He makes his records feel like Mexico City, the samples that surround or build his beats often culled from his life and crate-digging there. Lara has made music for Black Panther and Coco, Breaking Bad and Narcos, covered Metallica, and worked with the likes of Norah Jones and Toots Hibbert. All of his work—hyperkinetic and magnetic songs, as hooky as they are danceable—feels like home. That is, like a good mango.