LOS ANGELES, JULY 31, 2024 – Subsuelo has performed on major stages from Coachella to Lightning in a Bottle and Red Bull’s Soundclash, but the crew is most at home on the astonishingly small, always tightly packed, open-air patio at Caña Rum Bar in downtown L.A.
By By Jessica Lipsky | Los Angeles Times | July 31, 2024
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Subsuelo has performed on major stages from Coachella to Lightning in a Bottle and Red Bull’s Soundclash, but the crew is most at home on the astonishingly small, always tightly packed, open-air patio at Caña Rum Bar in downtown L.A.
For seven years, the revered global bass crew has been packing in dancers for Subsuelo Sundays, a daylong summer-only dance party that features everything from created-on-the-spot cumbia cuts to reggaeton and amapiano remixes, hip-hop turntablism and edits of classic Mexican party anthems with live instrumentation. While Caña’s small stage may be a who’s-who of musicians and DJs — guests have included everyone from DJs Vikter Duplaix and KCRW’s Anthony Valadez, to Son Rompe Pera and Buyepongo — Subsuelo Sundays is incredibly unpretentious, welcoming and boundary-pushing.
“Our thing has always been experimental and evolving,” says Subsuelo co-founder DJ Canyon Cody. “One week you get samba and another week you get dancehall.
[Performing at Caña] gave us that opportunity to get back to what it is that we do best, which is incorporate many different things and provide surprises.”
Above all, it is hot. People are in close proximity, sweating and visibly enjoying themselves as they throw it back to new and familiar sounds. It’s what draws a local hospitality worker dubbed “La Vecinita” to the party during her breaks — if you look up at the right time, you’ll catch her dancing on an overhead walkway — and the reason why Esme Reyna had her wedding reception at Subsuelo Sundays in 2022.
“I have been partying and dancing with this crew for over a decade,” says Reyna. “My spouse and I decided to get married on a whim. We decided to have a tiny ceremony and celebrations on a Saturday, and then have a banger with all our local friends on the following Sunday. So we asked: Why reinvent the wheel? Why not just go where many of our friends already will be, or will want to be? Subsuelo Sunday.”
While the party was weekly for the majority of its run, Subsuelo has pivoted to a monthly event in 2024 to make room for other activities — including a new monthly pool party at the Godfrey Hotel in Hollywood and an upcoming tour. Their salsa-focused Aug. 11 party will feature Hong Kong-based DJ Gia Fu and L.A.-by-way-of-Venezuela DJ/shop owner El Marchante. The final Subsuelo Sunday of the season will be held Sept. 1 — an 11-hour event with Pedro Night of Washington, D.C.’s Adobo party.
Regardless of location, Subsuelo’s story is a study in the culture of Los Angeles: intersecting, evolutionary and extraordinarily cool. Ever dedicated to their craft, Subsuelo have achieved something increasingly rare in nightlife — longevity.
Subsuelo has performed on major stages from Coachella to Lightning in a Bottle and Red Bull’s Soundclash, but the crew is most at home on the astonishingly small, always tightly packed, open-air patio at Caña Rum Bar in downtown L.A.
The size of Caña’s patio allows the audience to experience high-caliber artists at close range, and those acts are often experimenting themselves.
“The more successful artists out there, they have been doing their thing for so long that it’s harder to find those butterflies-in-the-stomach things,” Cody reflects. “I see them get excited and kind of nervous, in a good way, about coming to play at Subsuelo and having to do something that is a little outside of their normal performance.”
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