Via Okayfuture’s Erica Olsen:
“If formulaic microgenre standards are getting to you and you like music that’s just a tad outside the norm, these global bass takes on the trap aesthetic could make your day. There’s no way your laptop is going to generate these bass notes, so be sure to plug in to something a little more powerful.”
Read more here.
Listen to one of the tracks (by Joro Boro!) featured in this post below.
—> He said he believed that the recent spate of activism on diversity was being propelled by two issues: a lack of state funding for public institutions that has led colleges to admit more out-of-state students, who tend to be more affluent and less diverse, and challenges to affirmative action laws in states like Michigan and California.
Read more in The New York Times.
Two excellent Kansas City entertainment publications have written about Making Movies‘ five year anniversary as a band, which they’ll celebrate with two shows: one on Thursday, Feb. 13 (sign up for this secret show at their website), and on Friday, Feb. 14, respectively.
First up, in The Pitch:
“The foursome — Panamanian-born brothers Enrique and Diego Chi, Mexican-born Juan-Carlos Chaurand, KC-born Brendan Culp — are used to the confusion of new fans when they explain that their psych-rock and Latin-jazz fusion sprouted in decidedly unspicy Midwestern fields.” – The Pitch Kansas City magazine on Making Movies 5-Year Anniversary as a band. Read the Q&A w the band here: http://bit.ly/1fhUQUu
I also love this quote from the interview in The Pitch:
“I remember when we played the Buzz’s Homegrown for the Holidays show in November, and it was for an audience for all these kids that probably had never heard a band sing in Spanish. Maybe 400 people there had heard of us, but the other 1,200 had no idea who we were. We brought El Grupo Atotonilco [a traditional folk-dance group], and they went into their dance routine, and the look on these kids’ faces — you know, 96.5 the Buzz listeners, 18-to-23-year-old people who are just there to see an indie-folk band the Mowgli’s. And their faces light up. They don’t know what they’re seeing.” — Lead singer/songwriter, Enrique Chi
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The band also got a nice write-up in Kansas City’s Ink magazine:
“That’s kind of our mission: to breathe life into those old rhythms that are hundreds of years old. If one of my songs can’t sit on top of those old rhythms, then we have to move on. Those rhythms make almost any kind of person want to move. And the more authentic and legitimately we play those rhythms, the better it translates.” — Lead singer, Enrique Javier Chi in Ink Magazine Read the whole thing here: http://bit.ly/1g8ZCYk
Fordham University will screen “El Barrio Tours (Gentrification in East Harlem),” a documentary about gentrification and blurring of the line between East Harlem (often called ‘El Barrio’) and the Upper East Side, on Tuesday, Feb. 11, at 7:30 p.m. at its Lincoln Center campus. Room location and RSVP here.
The guest speaker will be Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of history and African American history at Fordham.
The film is the brainchild of East Harlem’s Andrew J. Padilla, who is a Fordham alumnus (2011). Though his roots in “El Barrio” go back to when his grandfather first moved to East Harlem 60 years ago, the filmmaker says it’s getting increasingly difficult to live there due the higher cost of living gentrification brings with it.
Read more about the film and Padilla via DNAInfo.
See a trailer for the documentary below:
Grab your máscaras and join us as we celebrate the joyful Caribbean and Latin American tradition of Carnaval with music, storytelling, dance workshops, and art-making for all ages. It all takes place on Saturday, Feb. 15, from noon to 4 p.m. at El Museo del Barrio in Harlem.
Details here.
Image via Kansas City Star
*** I work with Making Movies, and when I see the fruits of their M.U.S.I.C.A. camp (in conjunction with Kansas City’s Mattie Rhodes Center), I can’t help but be amazed at the power of music.
Regina del Carmen Sanchez wants to someday make her living writing music, playing her guitar and singing songs that have a message about the world as she sees it.
At 14, Regina’s world is pretty small.
It revolves around the little house she shares with her mom and grandparents on the west side of Kansas City’s urban core. The women of the house spend weekends frying, baking and selling empañadas to supplement the income Regina’s mom brings home as an office assistant.
“It’s my dream to become a musician to change people’s lives, to help them understand in an easy way what is happening in the world,” Regina said.
So when she sat down to create her first song, she wrote about being poor, being afraid to open bills, worrying that one not-in-the-budget problem could mean the lights go out.
She was 12 when she wrote “Keep Your Head Up.” It took her several months, writing at home as she lay across her bed or sat at the kitchen table. Sometimes even during breaks in class a lyric would pop into her head and “I would have to write it down right then,” Regina said.
“At the time I was thinking, ‘Let me write a song about the real struggles in my family instead of a song that’s just about me, talking about me,’ ” she said.
My house is in shambles but it beats being homeless.
It’s hot in the summer time, but in the cold the heat’s hopeless.
The bills are coming in and I’m looking so nervous,
because any day now, they could disconnect my service.
The song goes on about needing money, crying and praying, and wondering how long one could endure.
…
Love yourself and never give up. You’ll see a better life if you keep your head up.
Hand me down clothes but I’ve never been shirtless. B een misunderstood but no I’m not worthless.
Labeled a misfit ’cause I’ve always been different. Don’t want to be a number or another statistic.
Keep your head up …
“When she sings this song, you can tell she’s gone through it,” said Juan Carlos Chaurand, who plays percussion and keyboard for Making Movies, a four-member band from Kansas City with an Afro-Cuban/indie rock vibe.
Making Movies hosted the summer M.U.S.I.C.A. camp for low-income urban youths at Kansas City’s Mattie Rhodes Center, where last summer Regina was a camper. The band charges families $15 for the weeklong camp.
Chaurand said that providing inexpensive lessons and a chance to make music to children who otherwise might not have the opportunity is the band’s contribution to efforts to break the cycle of poverty.
One day Regina sang her song for the band members. They helped her write the music and took her to a studio to record it.
“It’s a great song,” Chaurand said. “To see that come out of her is pretty amazing.”
Read the whole story here. Watch a video of Sanchez performing the song with Making Movies below.
So if you’re into good music, the funky stuff with SOUL, you have to be into Sharon Jones. Born in Georgia but raised in New York City, Jones has a very interesting music career. After years of trying to make it in the business, including stints as a corrections officer and armored car guard, she got a record deal in her middle age when someone discovered her backing vocals on a Lee Fields track. (Fields is another of my favorites, and also someone who ‘made it’ later in life.)
I saw Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings in concert on the Upper East Side a few years ago and was blown away. Her energy was contagious. (Yes, this meant white people were having dance spasms in the audience of Beacon Theater. It was amazing.)
And this is why I’m super pleased to share news that one of my favorite DJs from Texas, Chorizo Funk, has put some of her best tracks into a mix: ‘#WeLoveSharon.’ Whew, it’s got so many of my favorites, including “I’m Not Gonna Cry (Scroll to 13:41 in the mix).” Damn that woman could SING!
By the way, this is the second in Chorizo Funk‘s “#WeLove” series. The first one, #WeLoveOtis, is one full hour of the best Otis Redding jams ever. Listen to and download it here.
And keep up with Chorizo Funk’s gigs and new mixes on his Facebook page. And catch Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings live (you must!) by checking her tour dates here.
You may be familiar with a controversial court ruling in the Dominican Republic that retroactively stripped citizenship from anyone born in the country to undocumented parents dating back to 1929. Not surprisingly, it mostly affects Dominicans of Haitian descent.
Public Radio International‘s “The World“ sent reporter Amy Bracken to the Dominican Republic to interview folks on the island, and much like the immigration debate here in the United States, opinions were mixed.
Take Mario Matos Cuevos, for instance. An 81-year-old retired soldier, he told The World “the Dominican president has made it clear that ‘everyone must get their papers in order,’ just like anywhere else in the world.”
When Bracken asked Cuevos if he thinks it’s unfair to make people who have lived in this country for generations go back and apply for papers all over again, he said “no,” since most of those affected have ties to Haiti.
“According to the Haitian Constitution, anyone of Haitian descent, whether legal or illegal, living in any country, is Haitian. That’s what their Constitution says,” Cuevos said.
On the other hand, high school student Yahisse Cuevas saw things a different way.
“Dominicans are very racist,” she told Bracken, “the way we abuse Haitians, always asking for their papers and mistreating them.”
It is no secret that many Latin American countries have attitudes against those with darker skin. One has to wonder how much that plays a factor in this debate.
Listen to the interesting audio here. And catch their other segments via their archives. The World is a great show to keep more in-depth tabs on news from around the world.
Totally random fact about me. If I’m getting ready to go out on a Saturday night, chances are I’m listening to old archives of “The Danny Stiles” radio show.
Stiles, who died in 2011, had this totally rad show in which he played “the greatest records of the 1900s” from 8 to 10 p.m. on Saturday nights on WNYC (820AM). Luckily, WNYC still airs archived shows.
I don’t know … it may seem corny, but throughout the show, I imagine couples dancing at parties in that era. In fact, Styles will talk about parties during the Depression, which must have felt like the highlight of the week, considering the circumstances.
I feel as if you could never stop learning about music history in this country. Stiles didn’t just play songs by the greats, such as Frank Sinatra, or one of my personal favorites, Glenn Miller. (Listen to “In The Mood.” You’ll know it. It was a global hit in its day.)
Stiles pays homage to the history of music from our country, often featuring musicians of color, who as you may know, are at the roots of American music, though it was brought to the mainstream by record labels and white singers.
On this week’s show, he played a song that I know (incorrectly) as “Mani” (the Spanish word for peanut) because I’ve heard it on old Spanish radio stations. The song is called “El Manisero/The Peanut Vendor” and though there were several versions by many recording artists, it was Louis Armstrong who made it a big hit in the 1930s as Cuban rhythms was influencing music in the States. It was smart of Armstrong to record it. All of this I learned on the Danny Stiles show.
But wait! There’s more.
How does listening to this show translate to music I’ve heard in the nightclubs today? Well, using “The Peanut Vendor” as an example, Uproot Andy (real name: Andy Gillis) tends to play this track (I’m guessing this is the version he plays, though I can’t be 100 percent sure) at his well-known “Que Bajo?” monthly parties. It’s obvious they sampled “The Peanut Vendor” sound. And now I’ll think of Danny Stiles and Louis Armstrong in 1930 the next time I hear it!
Bonus fact: Another of my favorite Big Band songs is “Midnight, the Stars, and You,” by Ray Noble, otherwise known as one of the songs in The Shining. Creepy, right? 🙂
I have an interesting relationship with Colombian vallenato music in that my Colombian-music loving self didn’t always love it. I recall my cousin Maria asking me why I didn’t love it at and me saying “it’s old people music.” Ha! (We joke now that she was — and still is– a romantic, and I was [and still am] a cynical cold hearted kid. Go figure.)
I often heard vallenato at parties growing up because it is somewhat of a somber music, in which the ‘grownups’ sat around, reminisced about their homeland, and had shots of aguardiente. At home, my dad preferred to play salsa and cumbia as he was always more of an upbeat music fan (like me!).
Like my father, I preferred to listen to salsa and cumbia, and later champeta, but I gained an appreciation for vallenato as a young adult when I really started paying attention to the lyrics. So sentimental!
The music has its roots in Colombia’s pastures of Valledupar.
This form of music originated from farmers who, keeping a tradition of Spanish minstrels (Juglares in Spanish), mixed also with the West African-inherited tradition of griots (African version of juglar), who used to travel through the region with their cattle in search of pastures or to sell them in cattle fairs. Because they traveled from town to town and the region lacked rapid communications, these farmers served as bearers of news for families living in other towns or villages. Their only form of entertainment during these trips was singing and playing guitars or indigenous gaita flutes, known as kuisis in the Kogi language, and their form of transmitting their news was by singing their messages. (Source.)
Known as “el cacique (native chief),” Diaz was regarded as one of the best singer-songwriters of vallenato. But he didn’t come without controversy:
Diaz led a tempestuous life, serving time in jail over the death of a fan at a party in his home. He often showed up late to concerts or not at all, something his fans put down to his addiction to drugs and alcohol.
…
In 1997, at the height of his career and shortly before the launch of his album Mi Biografia (My Biography), a fan and friend of Diaz, Doris Adriana Nino, was found dead by the side of a highway in Tunja province. Forensic experts at first said that she had died of a heart attack following a drug overdose at a party hosted by Diaz, but a later forensic report suggested she had been suffocated.
After a lengthy trial, Diaz was sentenced to 12 years in jail for homicide, a sentence which was later reduced to six years.
Diaz, who had been put under house arrest, went on the run when he was due to be transferred to jail, allegedly hiding away in an area controlled by the infamous paramilitary leader known as Jorge 40. He handed himself in to the authorities in 2002 and, after having his sentence further reduced, was released in 2004. (Source.)
Much like when tropical music king Joe Arroyo died in 2011, Colombians have taken to the streets to pay homage to Diaz. And Valledupar’s mayor has declared four days of mourning.
Radio stations are playing songs from his vast discography nonstop.
There are several favorites of Diaz I love, but I’ll leave you with “Mensaje de Navidad” since it’s appropriate for the Christmas season:
Again, the lyrics are somber, but true, as the holidays aren’t always “joyous” if one is away from loved ones.
Unos dicen: Que buena las navidades
Es la época más linda de los años
Pero hay otros que no quieren acordarse
De la fiesta de Año Nuevo y aguinaldo
Pero hay otros que no quieren acordarse
De la fiesta de Año Nuevo y aguinaldo
periMENTAL 