Home · Artists · Los Fabulosos Cadillacs

Buenos Aires, Argentina · 1985-2002, 2006, 2008-act.

Los Fabulosos Cadillacs

Los Fabulosos Cadillacs don’t sound like any other ska band. Their music is a whirlwind of intertwining rhythms: ska blends with reggae, salsa, and even tango, while the lyrics swing from black humor to street poetry. It’s not a forced collage, but an organic sound that grew from Buenos Aires, where they started as a group of friends who just wanted to play without worrying about rules. Their influences — The Specials, Madness, or even Mano Negra — are felt in their DNA, but they twist them into something entirely their own, as if they had been born in a mechanic’s workshop rather than a conservatory.

The leap from underground to something bigger came with Bares y fondas (1986), their first album recorded at Moebio Studio with Daniel Melingo at the helm. They rehearsed in makeshift places: the Gaz disco in Olivos or even in front of River Plate’s stadium, where the band’s manager, a DJ, let them in. The press of the time received them with skepticism — “inexperienced,” “unprofessional” — but songs like “Basta de llamarme así” or “Yo quiero morirme acá” slipped into radios and the minds of those looking for something different. That album took them to the Astros Theater, where the audience was no longer just a handful of curious onlookers, but a crowd chanting lyrics no one else dared to sing.

1 Albums
15 Songs
548K Listeners/mo

Most played on DoReSol

Essential songs

See all 15 →

1 album|s · 1992

Full discography

Share stage, decade and obsessions

Related artists

Details, awards, members and more

More about Los Fabulosos Cadillacs

Biography

Among their most ambitious works is Fabulosos Calavera (1997), an album that reeks of pure experimentation. Inspired by texts from Ernesto Sabato, the record oscillates between the eerie and the festive, with passages that sound like rituals and others that feel like street parties. The band brought it to life with the Calavera Experimental Concherto, a series of shows where music and theater blurred together. But if there’s one album that took them beyond borders, it was Rey azúcar (1995), where salsa and ska embrace with lyrics about injustices and broken dreams, all wrapped in melodies that dance without asking permission. By then, they were already a band that not only sounded loud but also thought big.

The most tangible recognition came in 1998, when they won a Grammy for Best Latin Album for Fabulosos Calavera. It wasn’t an isolated achievement: before that, the “Matador” music video had won the first People’s Choice Video award at MTV Latin America (1994), and years later, “La vida” would repeat the feat. But they never stayed still. In 2008, the death of Toto Rotblat — their percussionist since 1990 — shook them, but they returned with the Satánico Pop Tour, a tour that took them across Latin America and the United States with La luz del ritmo. Today, with over three decades in the game, they remain that band that blends the raw with the sophisticated, the local with the universal, never losing the spark that made them different from the first chord.

Details

Born
19 Jan 1985
Country
🇦🇷 Argentina
Genre
Ska

Awards and honors

  • Grammy
  • Latin Grammy

Members

trumpet · actual
Daniel Lozano
· actual
Fernando Ricciardi
founder · actual
Mario Siperman
founder · actual
Sr. Flavio
founder · actual
Vicentico
· 1996–present
Ariel Minimal
saxophone, founder · 2008–present
Sergio Rotman
· 2016–present
FLORIAN
· 1991–2008
Gerardo Rotblat
· 1991–2002
Fernando Albareda
founder · ¿?–1990
Luciano Jr.
tenor saxophone · ¿?–1991
Naco Goldfinger
founder · ¿?–1996
Aníbal Rigozzi
saxophone, founder · ¿?–1997
Sergio Rotman

Record labels

Sony Music Columbia Records

The full catalog on DoReSol

All songs