Los Locos

Los Locos is a musicalized poetry project that blends cumbia, rock, and jazz to explore themes of immigration, identity, and latinidad. Using a wide range of Latin American rhythms, Los Locos brings poetry into spaces where it’s rarely found - from bars and street corners to music stages and cultural gatherings. Unapologetic and unfiltered, Los Locos breaks open the space between music and poetry, daring audiences to keep up.

Los Locos didn’t begin as a band, but as an act of desperation.

On a Monday afternoon, while preparing some orders in the back of a sign shop in Bethesda where I worked at the time, I got a call from the director of WMUC, the University of Maryland’s radio station, inviting me to perform on their Sunday local band series. One of the bands they had scheduled for that week had dropped out, so they asked if I wanted to go now instead of November. After confirming my availability she asked, “What’s your band called?” I didn’t hesitate: “Los Locos”.

That left me 6 days to pull together a 30-minute live set that would be recorded and published for everyone to see. I spent the next 48 hours calling every musician I knew asking for help, everyone that said no I begged to at least recommend someone I could reach out to. Out of that chaos is that I met the founding members of Los Locos: Nicolás Guerrero, Collin Eccles, Jake Joholske, Milo Stout, Leonardo Loaiza, and Xavier. Six cabrones willing to spend three sleepless nights turning poems into songs.

What started as a frantic deadline became a project with a heartbeat of its own. Los Locos grew from those early rehearsals into a musicalized poetry ensemble, blending cumbia, jazz, and rock to carry stories of migration, identity, and Latinidad into spaces where poetry rarely dares to go.