Making Movies celebrates the next phase in its career with an all-day block party

Late on a Wednesday night, the four members of Making Movies are squirreled away in their crowded rehearsal space, at the Heritage Musical Repair shop in Hyde Park. The locked glass doors do little to muffle the heart-pounding beats and Latin rhythms. Anyone walking past is likely to believe she’s missing out on a really great private party.

It is a party, kind of. In a room piled with towers of music equipment, guitarist Enrique Chi, bassist Diego Chi (they’re brothers), percussionist Juan-Carlos Chaurand and drummer Brandon Culp run through songs from A La Deriva (last year’s album, produced by Steve Berlin of Los Lobos). A bottle of Knappogue Castle 12-Year-Old whiskey is half-gone, poured into plastic cups from which the four men sip between takes.

The band picks apart “Te Estaba Buscando,” a slick, rock-meets-cumbia track from Deriva with smoky guitar work and a formidable pace. After that, Enrique Chi pulls out his iPhone to call up what sounds to the untrained ear like a traditional Mexican tune: swinging, joyful accordion notes, grainy shakers. But the Chi brothers are from Panama, and the song “La Vida Panama” is a Panamanian típico folk song. That style informs much of what Making Movies does.

Culp, a native Kansas Citian and the only white dude in the band, picks up an acoustic guitar. Diego Chi adjusts his strings. Enrique swaps his guitar for a ukulele-size Panamanian miniature. Chaurand — whose Mexican heritage shows up in his family’s ballet folklórico dance troupe, El Grupo Atotonilco — steps atop a wooden platform and taps out the song’s rhythm. Making Movies, a rock band a moment ago, is now a Latino folk ensemble.

“We want to grab folkloric Latin American music and performance art and make it accessible,” Enrique says later, during a break. “It’s just us expressing our culture to our community. We have found that by combining all these elements, we not only have something really unique — we kind of find something that strikes everyone because real music isn’t exclusive.”

So whatever else Making Movies’ music might be, it is, perhaps foremost, inclusive. This band has a mission.

“We get this opportunity to expose people,” Enrique says. “We get to serve our Kansas City community by being the one time someone would hear this type of music. And once we realized that was our strength, it was like, ‘Well, now we must do it.’ “

The Making Movies mission is about to have a much broader reach. In June, the band signed to United Interests, a small Colorado label that’s home to a handful of indie acts. It’s a big move for the band, which has insisted on operating independently since the current lineup came together, in 2009. Over lunch at YJ’s Snack Bar one late-September day, Enrique and Diego explain the journey.

“We talked for six months regularly on the phone about what it would mean to be on the [United Interests] label, and they’re the kind of label that is looking for artists like us,” Enrique says. He leans forward slightly and keeps steady eye contact, and his white smile appears often as he speaks. His dreadlocks, usually making a leonine frame around his face, are tied up today, lending greater directness to his gaze.

“Our band is committed,” he says. “We’re married. The four of us want to play in this band until we die, and we feel like we understand on a decent level what that means, to be an artist for your whole life. And that’s the kind of artist that they’re [United Interests] looking for. The goal is to make artwork together. Yes, we’ll have to make money, but that’s secondary. It’s about doing something that matters.”

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It’s also about support. For the first time, Making Movies will have help from a team of professionals invested in the band’s future.

“I always joke that, like, if there’s 10,000 people who own the record [A La Deriva] —and that’s approximately how many we’ve sold,” Enrique says, “I have literally shaken 10,000 of those people’s hands, or I’ve looked them in the eye or had a conversation with them and thanked them for buying the CD or taken a shot with them. For me, it’s the first time we’ll have people like our band that we haven’t met at a gig or something before.”

There’s plenty in the works already. Making Movies recently recorded a Tiny Desk Concert with NPR (it’ll likely air sometime this winter), and A La Deriva is set for a national rerelease October 7. But the quartet isn’t breaking out the champagne just yet.

“Our band takes a long time for people to turn their heads about it because it’s so different,” Enrique says. “So it’s usually not instant where someone is like, ‘Yeah, this makes sense.’ We also realized how much work it is and how many shows you have to do in a city before it starts clicking. It takes bands — unless you’re very lucky — 10 or 15 plays in a city to have it work. If you’re from KC and trying to play Chicago, it’s about the 10th time you’re there that you’ll get some traction. And then you think about the nation. How long does it take to play the nation 10 times with good stuff? You’re talking about a decade. And so it’s a big reality check, that this is a decade-long process. We’re starting this today, and nothing good is going to happen for a decade.”

A lot of good has happened for Making Movies, though, over the past half-decade. They know this, Enrique says, and they agree that it’s fortunate they all committed early — most of the band members are in their mid- or late 20s. But they don’t always feel patient.

“In a lot of ways, we’re really far for a five-year-old band,” Enrique says, “but in a lot of ways, we’re nowhere. Relative to a sustainable career, where we can have families and live off our music for the rest of our lives, we have a one-in-a-hundred chance. We’re taking a big swing.”

The band’s other mission right now is more immediate: the Making Movies Carnaval, Sunday at Knuckleheads.

The event is an idea the band has wanted to undertake for years: an all-day music-and-arts block party, spotlighting some of Kansas City’s Latino subculture. The music lineup includes sets from Abel Ullon (think a Paraguayan Jack Johnson), Latin folkloric ensemble Trio Aztlan, Los Angeles’ Ozomatli, and more. El Grupo Atotonilco is on the bill, a number of arts activities are planned, and several food trucks are opening in the East Bottoms for the day.

“It’s a way for us to give alternative Latino fans some alternative Latino music,” Diego says. “But we also want it to be an experience that enriches people, too. It doesn’t matter what background they come from, whether they’re from Kansas City or El Salvador.”

There’s that mission again. For years, Enrique says, this band has been too rock and roll for the Latino festivals and too Latino for the indie-rock bills.

“The Carnaval will be the only event in Kansas City where we’re not the odd ones out because we’re creating the environment for it and for ourselves,” he tells me. “Maybe that’s the impetus for doing it. I’m so one-foot in each culture. I speak English and Spanish almost identically well, and my family grew up with both those cultures. For me, hearing Cuban music and thinking it sounds like the Rolling Stones — that’s something that I feel like I can shed light on and share. That gives me a little bit of peace, knowing that I’m doing something that has a space to exist here.”