Another Unnecessary Intent Of Intellectualizing Neo-Cumbia

Much has been said already in this blog about the cumbia’s new school (a.k.a. neo-cumbia, nu-cumbia or whatever you wanna call it). 2009 has been the year when this new hybrid genre finally crossed over getting lots of media exposure in mainstream publications, from CNN, to Billboard, to Yahoo news and every other specialized music rag. Now, with the genre living its apogee, and new artist popping out every day from the most unexpected corners of the planet, I think it’s time to start searching for aesthetic parameters that define this style and its variations or sub-genres. After all, that’s what we -music journalists- love doing, labeling things, framing them, setting standards, and that’s what separate us from our fellow musicians.

So, what makes an artist, or his music, neo-cumbia instead of just plain cumbia?

The Underground/D.I.Y. Ethics: Traditionally cumbia has always been a music genre for large orchestras signed to a very controlling record label and aiming for massive broadcasting. From assembly-line-type bands with matching outfits created in studio by a producer, to multi-generational large groups that changed members constantly, to interpreters singing other people’s music without giving credit to the authors, to even “artists” who were just a pretty face for the pictures and didn’t even sing or play any instrument, cumbia had very little underground credibility. When this new generation adopted cumbia as a genre, they did it from an opposite perspective, most of them are do-it-yourself bedroom producers working on a laptop and very few of them have a record deal, they have complete creative control over their music and they aim for a selective sophisticated audience rather than commercial radio play.

Find it in: Almost everybody mentioned in this article.

DJ Culture: There is no doubt that neo-cumbia as a genre owes most of its success to DJs, but DJs have been part of cumbia music since way before the neo-cumbia phenomenon started, from the mobile sound-systems in northern Colombia (“picós”), to the Mexican “sonideros”, to the DJs in Argentine “bailantas”. The main difference is that the new breed of cumbia DJs bring their knowledge and skills from other DJ-oriented music genres like hip-hop or electronica, so they have more of a focus on mixing techniques: blending, beat-matching, scratching, etc plus the digger mentality and a preference for the vinyl format. Traditional cumbia DJs spun mainly CDs and had very basic mixing skills if any, in fact, the average dancer at a sonidero party or bailanta would not expect the beats to be synchronized and the songs blended into one another; knowing when to press stop and play on a CD player were all the skills most DJ’s needed when mixing.

Find it in: Toy Selectah, DJ Panik, Oro11, Chico Sonido, DJ Dus, DJ Roger Más, DJ /Rupture, Mexican Dubwiser

The Hipster Factor: Keeping up with the newest coolest fashions and trends was never a cumbia thing. Cumbia, like most other world-beats, thrived in its own underworld unaware of the hipster fads and hipsters were too busy listening to indie-pop o avant-gard electronica. But then M.I.A. and Diplo came out as the new hip messiahs of the dacade and made global-ghettotech music the coolest new thing approved for hipster consumption. And cumbia (along with baile funk, kuduro and others) was among that new denomination. All of a sudden, college-age kids wearing fluorescent clothes and plastic sunglasses started dancing to this “new” thing called cumbia and eventually making their own.

Find it in: Alta Joya, Oro11, Disco Shawn, Douster, Los Labios, Frikstailers, M.I.S., Afrodita, Arcade

The Foreigner's P.O.V.: Dismissed by the locals in Latin America, cumbia was sort of discovered by Americans and Europeans traveling or living abroad. Foreigners had one main advantage for cumbia appreciation that locals lacked: they did not have all that baggage of social preconceptions. They just saw the music for what it was, a great catchy beat. They didn’t worry that it was considered music for maids and bus-drivers, that’s actually what made them like it even better. Plus, once the foreigners took cumbia back home to the first world and it became successful, native Latinos who were embarrassed to show their cumbia experiments in public, got the seal of approval and the encouragement necessary to come out and dance! Nowadays, there are neo-cumbia producers in the most random places like Netherlands or Australia, maybe Japan, and they all share that same unprejudiced vision of cumbia and that’s what makes them so fresh!

Find it in: Sidestepper, Up Bustle & Out, Señor Coconut, Dick El Demasiado, ElG, Oro11, Douster, Sonido del Príncipe, Cumbia Cosmonauts

The Iron(ic) Men: As I indicated many times in this blog during my record reviews, irony is a fundamental factor in most of new school cumbia and it’s, I think, what distinguish it from previous intents of updating or modernizing the genre. By irony I mean deconstructing and recontextualizing cultural elements previously considered “low-brow” with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor presenting them as “cool” and “hip”. In other words, when cosmopolitan middle-class young people borrow from cultural expressions (like cumbia) that used to be considered to belong exclusively to the undereducated working classes, even when they do actually enjoy the previously-forbidden-to-them music, their approach tends to exalt its kitsch elements... and that’s what makes it fun! The obscure pop-culture reference, the nostalgia of childhood mainstream products, the devotion to corny and tacky icons are all funny ironic elements when taken out of their traditional context, like when Oro11 spins record in front of a Virgen de Guadalupe beach towel while Disco Shawn passes cards with images of popular pseudo-deity Gauchito Gil at the Tormenta Tropical parties.

Find it in: Toy Selectah, M.I.S., Amandititita, Oro11, Disco Shawn, Bomba Estéreo, Villa Diamante, The Peronists, Fantasma, Chico Sonido, Dead Menems, Los Labios, Kumbia Queers, Afrodita, Fauna.

The Dance Music Approach: Above all other possible definitions, cumbia is basically a dance-oriented music genre. It’s not about the virtuoso musicians doing elaborate solos, is not about profound lyrics with witty rhymes that you need to listen with extra attention to decipher, it’s about making people dance, simple as that, and it manages to do so because its rhythm is quite irresistible. The main reason cumbia has gone from its hometown in Caribbean Colombia and Panamá to become the biggest Panamerican success from Mexico to Argentina and beyond, is its irresistible, catchy and, most importantly, easy to dance to beat (no need to take cumbia lessons!). No wonder electronic dance music producers from all over the world have been trying to grab that catchy beat and import it into the nightclubs dance floors. A lot of these current successful experiments with cumbia/house or cumbia/techno however, came from people who had very little or no connection at all with actual cumbia as a culture or scene, they just liked the beat, sampled it added a four-to-the-floor drum and made it into a track.

Find it in: Samim, Michel Cleis, Palov & Mishkin, Electro Tribal, Palenke Soultribe, Double Helix, Tovar, Harry Choo Choo Romero, Mo’ Horizoins, Frikstailers, etc.

The Thirdworldists: Maybe you don’t know this, but historically Latin American big-city youth have disregarded and rejected local folkloric music while closely following the standards of the cool set by the English-speaking world. With just a handful of exceptions, the most influential Latin American musicians among the youth used to be those who could sound in Spanish almost as good as those who sung in English on the radios and Mtv. This phenomenon was more evident than anywhere else in Argentina, the most tragically Eurocentric country in the whole continent, but it manifested itself in most other countries as well. Then in the mid 90’s a huge movement of thirdworldist rockers took by storm the media, commanded by French artist Manu Chao and his band Mano Negra, who in opposition to the Anglo cultural colonization taught the Latin kids to look inward for influences instead of following every trend dictated by London and New York. The revalorization of cumbia as an authentic Latin rhythm among the cool young people started before neo-cumbia, when local rock bands with a thirdworldist view incorporated the genre to their repertoires (Caifanes, Cafe Tatvba, La Bersuit, El Gran Silencio, Fabulosos Cadillacs, etc). Thirdworldists go by the assumption that native cultural expressions are inherently better than those imported by the white colonialists or imitated by the colonized. They embrace anti-globalization and progressive politics and fetichize music and culture of countries like Cuba, Brazil and yes, Colombia. They love cumbia because it’s a mestizo music and they love everything mestizo.

Find it in: Doña María, Sargento García, Ozomatli, King Chango, Sidestepper, Pernett, Lulacruza, King Coya, La Troba Kung-Fu, Ska Cubano, Up Bustle & Out, Agrupación Mamanis, DJ Santero etc.

The Mash-Up: If the seventies are remembered as the age of funk and disco, the eighties are remembered as the age of synth-pop and hair metal, the nineties are remembered as the age of grunge and gangsta rap, what will the ‘00 decade be remembered for? If you ask me, the homemade mash-up phenomenon. Mash-ups as such, already existed in previous decades, you can go as far as 1983 and find Double Dee & Steinski doing pretty much what Girl Talk does now. What’s new is the democratization of the mash-up when the tools became widely accessible on line and anybody in his room can download instrumental and acapella versions of virtually any song and blend them on Garage Band. The first cumbia mash-ups appeared in 2004/05 done by people like Chico Sonido and Toy Selectah in Mexico and Villa Diamante in Argentina and they were fundamental in spreading the cumbia beat to other audiences that previously rejected the genre.

Find it in: Chico Sonido, Villa Diamante, Sonido Del Príncipe, Alta Joya, Oro11, Kinky Electric Noise, DJ Dus, Black Mandingo, Selector Chico, Zurita, Negro Moreno, Toy Selectah, etc.

The Hip-Hop Aesthetic: In some earlier post on this blog I defined neo-cumbia as the appropriation of cumbia by the hip-hop generation, now I’m expanding my definition with all these branches, but still, I think hip-hop has been fundamental to the development of neo-cumbia. Not only by the many intents of MCs rapping over cumbia beats, but also by the hip-hop production understanding of cumbia as a sampled-loop-based music designed for and by DJs. There have been plenty of people trying to rap over cumbia since the early nineties, most of them lacked absolutely of rhyming skills and hip-hop cred, so the results in general were pretty wack. It wasn’t until Ozomatli came out in ’98 with “La Cumbia De Los Muertos” with respected rapper Chali2Na and DJ Cut Chemist from Jurassic 5 that “real” rappers in Latin America started considering as valid the fusion of both genres. Don’t forget also, that neo-cumbia’s godfather Toy Selectah started as a rap DJ (with Control Machete), and so did many other producers of this genre.

Find it in: Toy Selectah, Selector Chico, DJ Kox-T, DJ Panik, DJ Dus, Fantasma, Alika, Crooked Stilo, Oro11, MaestroShao, Microphone Killa, etc.

The Jamaican Connection: Being both Caribbean rhythms resulting from the African Diaspora, cumbia and reggae are like brothers from different mothers. The more you go deep into the roots of classic Colombian cumbia and Jamaican Ska, the more evident the connection is. That’s why cumbia is so compatible with dub effects and dance hall toasting (and its bastard cousin reggaetón). This has been known by many for a while now, but it became obvious to the oblivious rest when the UK group Up, Bustle & Out released the revolutionary Mexican Sessions LP, which kinda became the foundation of the current scene.

Find it in: Damas Gratis, Fauna, DJ Chavez, Toy Selectah, Daleduro, DJ Negro, Sidestepper, Up Bustle & Out, Ska Cubano, El Hijo De la Cumbia, King Chango, Fidel Nadal, Alika, Princesa, Bomba Estéreo, Systema Solar, Sargento García, Mexican Dubwiser, Sonidero Nacional, etc.

The Artsy Aspirations: Talk about taking cumbia out of context! Trying to make the underdog of popular music something worthy of snobby modern art museum installations! Is it even possible or is it an oxymoron? These cats don’t care much about making you dance, some have an ironic sense of humor, others take cumbia very seriously, but their intricate remixes and subtle versions are to be enjoyed by the trained ear with close attention on the headphones or while tripping at an after-party. The average cumbia listener won’t get it, they probably won’t even see the cumbia connection, but music nerds, critics and DJs love them.

Find it in: El Trip Selector, Gonzalo Martínez, Señor Coconut, El Remolón, King Coya, Axel Krygier, Lulacruza, Frikstailers, Dick El Demasiado, Intima, Chancha Via Circuito, etc.

The Digger Mentality: The average cumbia DJ had to play the top hits of the moment and a handfull of classics... on CD. They were not much into digging through old dusty piles of vinyl searching for obscure oldies. Record-digging became a respected art thanks to cult hip-hop DJs like Shadow and Cut Chemist. Cumbia diggers are always in the search for old LP’s and 7 inches of Colombian or Peruvian classic cumbia and these are very rare records, not easy to find in normal record stores and extremely expensive to buy on Ebay. Paying 12 dollars plus shipping for just a single song, seems like an absurd anachronism in the times of free downloads, but diggers, like all proud DJs, tend to fetichize vinyl maybe a little too much. LP comps with naked chicks on the cover have extra collectible value!

Find it in: Chico Sonido, Sonido Martines, DJ Lengua, DJ Roger Más, Sonido Diablo, Sonido Franko, DJ/Rupture

Bomba Estereo at La Peña de Berkeley

Living in the Bay Area has this one main drawback, most cool new bands skip our town during their tours. Yup, it's hard to believe that such a cosmopolitan and hip place like San Francisco is not automatically in everybody's list of places to perform during their US tour. Everybody goes to New York and Los Angeles first and then, maybe, if we are lucky, they consider paying a visit to NorCal. Sometimes they never come this way (when will The Pinker Tones play in San Francisco? Hello!!!). When it comes to cool new Latin music this becomes more evident than ever, because of the lack of show promoters interested in this genre in the area. So, unless you are content with seeing Los Amigos Invisibles ten times a year, if you live in SF you're always wishing there was a fast train that could take you down to LA for a night to catch a concert and bring you back right away (nobody wanna be stranded in depressing-ass LA!).
You see, the thing is Bomba Estéreo is like the hottest Latin band of 2009, scratch that, it is THE hottest Latin band of 2009, period (go ahead, Nacional Records, you can quote that). They performed in Texas early this year for the SXSW conference, then they did New York in the summer and of course LA and finally, in November, when we were about to lose all our hopes, they made it to the Bay Area. Not even to San Francisco (hard to believe there's not one fucking promoter wanting to put together a Bomba show in this city!) they performed on a Sunday night in Berkeley.
Yes, an off night in an off town and the show was a total success with the place packed like I've never seen it before. And this is the mind-bending part of the whole thing, it's almost impossible to get San Franciscans to cross the bridge at night and it's way too hard to convince them to go out on a Sunday night (I remember trying to be a Sunday night DJ...) and still, with all those factors against it, the show was a great success. Another incontestable piece of evidence that show promoters in SF are sleeping... or retarded.
Anyway, Bomba Estéreo gave an incredible performance. Like I already stated on this blog before, incorporating Liliana Saumet to the band has been the best thing ever that could happen to them. Bomba Estéreo was cool in a sophisticated-neo-cumbia kind of way before, then they added Li Saumet and, like the album title suggest, they blew up, pure FUEGO (something very similar happened this year to Buraka Som Systema too)! Not only is she a great vocalist who can transition flawlessly from rapping to singing like only very few can, she has an unbelievable amount of explosive energy and she's oh-so-fucking-hot!!!!!! Her grabbing the two microphones at once, while moaning and screaming and singing about hooking up, and her side-boob that made you pray for a wardrobe malfunction... man, it was like the closest thing to live porn!
Colombia keeps providing the rest of the boring-ass world with excellent party music like only them know how to do. Bomba Estéreo is the best thing to come out from Colombia since, what? Sidesteppper? Aterciopelados? Shakira? ...cumbia? If you still don't have Bomba Estéreo's album Estalla/Blow Up yet, you must get it now.

Boom Boom Kid at Thrillhouse Records

What could ever be better than seeing my favorite punk rock artist live and for free near my house? Doing so at an amazing vinyl record store that I didn't even know it existed and it's packed with tons of cheap records! Yeah, vinyl digging and hardcore moshing all in the same place!
Everybody should go through a punk-rock phase sometime in their lives, ideally around 18-21 years old. That's the age when punk's rebellion makes sense. Eventually you grow out of it, for obvious reasons (ok, some people never do), but you always will remember those years and the songs that marked that era, and whenever you are in a fuck-it-all mood later in life, you can always revisit those memories and once again listen to those silly songs you used to take so seriously back then.
I had my punk phase around 1994-95 and at that time, in Buenos Aires, the hottest new punk band was Fun People. I fell in love with their music the first time a friend made me a tape with songs from their debut album Anesthesia and that album has been in my desert island top ten list ever since.
Those were the years of Buenos Aires Hard Core, a collective of bands with three syllable names that pretty much carbon-copied the aesthetics and attitude of the New York macho-core bands of the time. Fun People came out of that scene and distinguished themselves from the rest by playing a more melodic (Californian?) brand of punk with sensitive lyrics (proto-emo?) and very eclectic influences (from trash metal to surf rock to reggae to bolero to The Smiths). I instantly loved them, not only because of their more accessible, catchy melodies, but also because of the unbelievable energy their singer Nekro, a true showman, had on stage. Since then I became a music journalist and so I've seen millions of live concerts of every music genre imaginable but still, to this date, I haven't seen anybody that can match Nekro's stage performance.
So, Nekro eventually became a solo artist and changed his name to Boom Boom Kid. At first I was a little reticent about this move, I thought it was gonna suck but the truth is that Boom Boom Kid's albums were even better than Fun People's and that's a huge statement considering I don't have any nostalgic feelings for the Kid because his music came out after I emigrated to the US.
Anyway, the one thing that singles Boom Boom Kid out of the rest of Latin American punk music, besides the already mentioned impressive live shows, is that he somehow managed to develop a huge steady following outside of Latin America. For a while now he's been coming to the US once a year and doing these D.I.Y coast-to-coast tours with great success among a crowd that's not necessary comprised of Latinos or Spanish speakers (probably due to the fact that his music is 50/50 English and Spanish).
Last night he played in the back room of a punk record store in the Mission District with a couple of local punk bands and of course I went. I thought I knew all the record stores that specialized in vinyl in this city, but I had no idea about this one! I got there early, with time to dig through the crates and I saw Boom Boom Kid there, who I still call Nekro, or Carlitos, for old times sake. We started talking about this and that and I told him I was DJing mostly cumbia nowadays and all of a sudden I had him talking about how much he loved Los Mirlos and Los Destellos and he owns lots of Peruvian cumbia in 7 inches. Then he told me that earlier this year he was invited to DJ at a cumbia event where Kumbia Queers played. And right after that talk, I went back to digging through the boxes of 7 inches and the first thing I found is a cumbia record! Yes! A cumbia 7 inch record in a punk rock store... for free! Yup, they have a box of free stuff and there it was, a 1983 single from the group Los Telefonistas, pressed by Ramex in Texas. The song itself is pretty wack, but hey, it's a cumbia 7 inch and it's free! I kept digging and found a bunch more interesting stuff, but no more cumbia. I need to go back and double check.
Later, Boom Boom Kid gave a semi-acoustic show because the drummer quit the band the night before, but with just one guitar he was still able to amaze me with his usual super energetic performance (sans the usual stage diving and crowd surfing). After the show, I bought his newest CD, called Frisbee (it actually comes attached to a real frisbee disc as packaging) and he also has a new limited edition 7'' called Benjui Jamboree (in clear vinyl!) with five songs recorded with his US back up band, Los Gummy Bears and of course it was the first thing I played when I got home and the first song that comes out is, oh surprise, a cumbia! Ok, maybe not a cumbia per se, it's missing the güiro sound, but the rhythm is definitely a cumbia.
BBK official site: http://boomboomkid.info/

CUCU DIAMANTES-Cuculand (Fun Machine Records, '09)

There was this Joaquín Sabina's song called "Yo quiero ser una chica Almodóvar," and the title kept popping up on my mind while listening to this album for the first time this morning.
CuCu Diamantes is a New Yorker of Cuban descent who used to sing (or still does, I don't know) for Yerba Buena, a pan-Hispanic collective directed by master producer Andrés Levín, known for mixing every single Latin music style that exists and somehow manage to make it sound cool. In 2005 Yerba Buena released their second album, Island Life (the island being Manhattan) which included the cumbia hit "El Burrito" sung by Miss CuCu (later in '07 it was re-released as a single with CuCu and über-nacos Los Tucanes de Tijuana with some neo-cumbia remixes by the likes of King Coya and Mexican Institute of Sound).
For her debut album however, CuCu stays at arms length from the all-encompassing Yerba Buena formula and their party anthems too focus mostly on old school bolero from a new millennium perspective. Now, I'm obviously not a big fan of the bolero genre, as I'm not too fond of songs that talk about love in a melodramatic way in general. However, I gotta admit that if I was the film director that I day-dream of being sometimes, and I was filming the sexploitation movies that I write in my downtime, I'd totally use her music because it sounds tailor-made for Almodóvar or for the case, a Latin Tarantino-wannabe (that's how high I think of myself in my imaginary parallel universe where I'm a film auteur).
Needless to say, I won't be DJing this shit too much, but my cousins birthday is coming up soon and I know she would love this, so I'm keeping it.

Available on emusic, itunes, amazon, etc.

SEO2 and CENZI, A.K.A. The Other Makiza dudes

I've talked long and extensively about my favorite former Makiza member, Anita Tijoux, who happens to also be one of my favorite human beings. Now it's the turn of the other former members of the mythical Chilean hip-hop group who coincidentally also released their respective second solo albums in 2009.
Right after the first departure of Anita in 2000, DJ Squat relocated to France and the remaining two members, Seo2 and Cenzi, joined forces to come out of the crisis as a duo, Némesis. As such, they delivered two albums (one on a major, one independently) where Seo2 did most of the rapping first and Cenzi (who in Makiza was only doing beats) started by doing the production and ended up sharing the microphone as well. Then it was Cenzi's turn to leave Chile and move back to Canada and since then the two friends have been working in their solo careers.
Seo2 was the male voice of Makiza, tough job. Being a really good MC, in his own right, he never received as much attention as his female partner. That must have been hard on him, but hey, that's a basic rule in the market, you put a pretty girl in your band and suddenly she's getting all the media buzz, she's in the center of all the pictures, she's getting all the fan mail, etc, etc. In hip-hop, where talented female MC's are an unfortunate rare species, this phenomenon happens more than anywhere else. I'm not saying that Mademoiselle Tijoux didn't deserve the extra attention, because of course, she was (is) an exceptionally talented artist, but Makiza was four people ("four heads" as they referred to themselves) and the concept was never "Anita and her band".
(As a sort of mea culpa I should say that since I was part of the media writing about them, I'm in part to blame for focusing on too much on Anita, rather than the rest.)
Anyway, after the failed reunion of Makiza in 2005 (where Cenzi didn't participate), Anita and Seo2 went separate ways and haven't talked to each other ever since. Something lamentable because I like them both and I wish they could be cool and because I don't really like feuds.
Seo2 recently released his second album as a solo MC, called Relativo & Absoluto (available on Itunes and Amazon.com) and I personally think it's his best work to date. His flow is impeccable over great boom-bap beats provided by the amazings DJ Raff and Bitman, among others. Similarly to Anita's 1977, which is also her second solo album, Relativo & Absoluto is in part an autobiographical opus and sonically focuses on raw purist rap that will please hardcore b-boys a lot more than mainstream listeners.
Cenzi, who also contributes with some beat production for Relativo & Absolute, recently released his second solo album as an MC (he has plenty of other releases as a producer) where, not surprisingly at all, Seo2 contributes as a guest MC in one track. It's called De Mi Menor a Mi Mayor and it can be downloaded for free (along with many of his previous releases) from his website. Unlike Anita and Seo2 who for their second albums went back to a classic hip-hop sound, Cenzi's latest work gets a little experimental with the inclusion of an acoustic guitar at the center of his production, with some quite interesting results. Now strictly from a DJ point of view, I'll be probably spinning Seo2 tracks way more than Cenzi's.
Back in 2000 I was there backstage halfway through my interview when I witnessed first hand Makiza's break up. Since then I always felt an special emotional tie to this talented group of Chilean artists. I don't really care that they are all far apart from each other nowadays, for me they're still the greatest hip-hop crew of Latin America.

FEDERICO AUBELE-Amatoria Remixed (ESL Music, 2009)

I'm not too crazy about this one here. There was a time, back in the early 2000's when downtempo electronica fused with any cool world beat made me pee in my pants. When Federico's first album, Gran Hotel Buenos Aires (2004) came out, I loved it. They released it in three beautiful 10 inches vinyl EP's which still have a special place in my collection. For many years I was a lounge music DJ at restaurants and bars and I played the shit out of those. Both singles "Postales" and "Esta Noche" have been staples of my DJ sets for a long time, however my personal favorite was "Mona" because of the phrase "En San Francisco se había prostituido" which makes me smirk every time I hear it (I gotta sample that!).
Then it all changed when I saw him live and his show was almost as boring as a baseball game (and believe me, in my book there's nothing, and I mean nothing, as boring as a baseball game). That was the end of my affair with Federico's music. I kept playing his old stuff but more out of inertia than pleasure. Like when you keep fucking with your ex just because you got used to it and she's there and you don't find her attractive anymore but oh well...
So I pretty much stop paying attention to his following releases, Panamericana (2007) and Amatoria (2009), until today when I accidentally ran into this remixes EP of Amatoria and decided to give it a chance because I figured, since they are remixes, maybe they're fun and help me get rid of that idea of instant boredom that comes to my mind every time I picture his jewfro. "Suena Mi Guitarra" (Son Of Kick Remix) is definitely my favorite and I'll probably be playing it in my electro sets, "Otra Vez" (Gianna Breaks Remix) is not too bad either. The rest sound pretty much like Federico Aubele himself except for the house remix of "Otra Vez" that has a cheesy bass line that's just plain horrible.

Available on emusic, itunes, amazon, etc.

Gilles Peterson Presents Havana Cultura (Brownswood Recordings, 2009)

You know that Stuff White People Like blog? They should have a post about "white people" liking Cuban hip-hop.
I've always found it fascinating/frustrating how people from English speaking countries would listen to (and fetishize) Cuban hip-hop but completely ignore Latin hip-hop from other Central and South American countries. Me being an active part for many years of the Argentine hip-hop scene, I used to take this kinda personal. But I do understand that this interest in Cuban hip-hop is mostly based on the sociological paradox of the über-commercial-American-music-style-developed-in-an-anti-commercial-and-anti-American-environment more than the music and lyrics themselves. I've seen at least six documentary movies on Cuban hip-hop that explore this paradox, most of them done by gringos. I haven't seen any other gringo documentaries that explore how hip-hop spread through the other Spanish-speaking countries. So that kinda pisses me off a little bit.
That being said, I do agree that Cuba deserves special attention for having one of the richest hip-hop scenes in Latin America. They produce some damn good rap. But the reason why they produce so much good rap is barely ever explored in the journalistic work of those gringos. And that reason is that compared to any other country in Latin America, Cuba has the highest level of education amongst the poor marginal youth. Better education reflects directly in better use of vocabulary, hence better lyrics writing. You'll find plenty of great Spanish language lyricists in Spain, Chile or Argentina, even Puerto Rico (Residente from Calle 13 being the most notable example) but most of them come from middle class backgrounds. With a few extraordinary exceptions. But that strange combination of poor background and great lyricist in Cuba is more the rule than the exception.
Anyway, British DJ and world-music eminence, Gilles Peterson is one of those gringos fascinated with Cuban hip-hop and recently released this great compilation. It comes in a double disc format where one disc is mostly him and some collaborators exploring Cuban jazz, the other disc is a collection of rap songs by some of the most respected Cuban MC's like Doble Filo, Obsesión and my personal favorites Los Aldeanos.

Available on emusic, itunes, amazon, etc.

KING COYA-Cumbias de Villadonde (Nacional Records, 2009)

King Coya is one of the few Zizek Collective members that I haven't met personally, so I don't know too much about him. I do know that King Coya is the alter-ego of Gaby Kerpel, who way before the whole neo-cumbia thing was already an accomplished musician in Buenos Aires underground.
Unlike most other neo-cumbia artists who started as hip-hop or electronica DJ's (or reggae, or punk musicians) the King started updating Argentine folklore with new technologies in the form of artsy, experimental, ambient music and that took him to traditional cumbia.
Hence, his approach to cumbia is way more respectful than the norm, avoiding the hipster-irony tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that I like so much about this movement.
In fact you could divide the neo-cumbia scene in two: on one side the mash-up or cut-n-paste (or whatever) low-brow artists who make fun of modern cumbia's inner tackiness and make music that's mostly fun and dance-floor oriented (Fauna, Toy Selectah, Kumbia Queers, The Peronists, Fantasma, M.I.S., etc.); on the other side the ones who dig deep into Colombia's cumbia tradition and approach it from a thirdworldist perspective with artsy results in a downtempo or minimalist techno format (Lulacruza, Axel Krygier, Tremor, Doña María, etc). King Coya is like the king of the second group, his cumbias are beautiful and trippy, but they completely ignore the tacky Argentine cumbia context, focusing mostly on the folkloric roots of the genre. Even though the title of the album includes the word "villa" (Argentine slang for slums) this might be misguiding because there is absolutely no "villa" aesthetic or attitude in these cumbias.
Anyway, this album also includes some previously released material like "Cumbiatrón" from ZZK Sound Vol.1 and the Petrona Martínez remix of ZZK Sound Vol.2. There's also a remix of Lulacruza and one of the Yerba Buena hit "El Burrito" in the CuCu Diamantes version with Los Tucanes de Tijuana that was released as a single a couple of years ago. From the new, previously unreleased material, my favorites are ""Solo" and "Trocitos de Madera".

Available on emusic, itunes, amazon, etc.

SONIDO MARTINES PRESENTA-Nueva Cumbia Argentina (Soot, 2009)

If you just discovered cumbia's new school and are all excited about this exotic new music trend you will definitely find this compilation amazing. Sonido Martines is one of the most important players in the movement and a great researcher of old cumbia, an authentic cumbia digger that, not satisfied with Argentinean cumbia, decided to travel the continent in search for the roots and ramifications of this Colombian-turned-Panamerican music style. So if there's an authority you should trust when it comes to neo-cumbia, that's him.
That being said, if you have been following the current cumbia craze for the last couple of years, you probably already have most of the tracks included in this comp. There are two songs from the mandatory ZZK Vol.1 and two from El Hijo De la Cumbia's Freestyle De Ritmos. These are great songs, but there's no purpose in buying them twice, since they are the same versions. From the total of 13 tracks there were only three that I didn't already have. Sonido Martines himself provides only one track, a total rarity: a remix of a Peruvian classic cumbia with a Brazilian MC rapping on top. A great track, no doubt, but kinda doesn't fit in a compilation that has the words Argentina and Buenos Aires in all-caps in the title. There are a couple of other rarities that you might need to add to you collection, one track by Cumbia Villera pioneers Damas Gratis and one by the mythical DJ Taz who most people in Argentina point out to as the real founding father of the neo-cumbia trend (El Hijo De La Cumbia is his proud disciple). DJ Taz has been out of the public eye for a long time now so he didn't get to cash in the success of the hybrid genre he kick-started. Fortunately Sonido Martines was able to track him down and publish one of his songs (I wish I had the liner notes for the album because I don't really know if this is a new track he produced or one of his forgotten classics).
As a conclusion I have to point out the obvious once again, if you're going digital, you don't need to buy the whole album if you already have half of the tracks. However, there is vinyl EP version out there too that you might wanna get instead because most of those tracks have never before been published in that format.

Available on emusic, itunes, amazon, etc.

LATIN BITMAN-Colour (Nacional Records, '09)

Back in 2001 I discovered and instantly fell in love with this Chilean DJ duo called Bitman & Roban (best name ever!) who personally sent me a copy of their album Robar Es Natural for review consideration at the office of magazine I was working for. The album was pure digger's gold, very downtempo-e, according to the times, but full of that original hip-hop aesthetic of making new original music using only pieces of other existing music mixed together. That was the reason I fell in love with hip-hop in the first place, the idea of a music collage, with hidden nods to the attentive listener.
However, one thing that distinguished Bitman & Roban from the rest of the vinyl diggers out there was that they used, in quite ingenious ways, some super recognizable samples of crossover classics (and this was way before Girl Talk made this trend hipster-cool) making their mixes a little more accessible to the masses of non-obscure-vinyl-collectors. I don't know how they got away with doing that for a bunch of albums without getting sued for copyright infringement, specially after they started getting published in the US by Nacional Records with the interesting but much less amazing, Música Para Después Del Almuerzo (where they combined their sampling skills with live instrumentation). But they did got away with it, flying under the radar, I guess.
Then all of a sudden, Bitman decided to go solo... and go Latin. He became Latin Bitman. Yup. I don't really know what motivated this move, but I figure it was a smart business premeditated decision. Regardless of his talent, he was never going to make it in the international market if he kept on sampling funk and old-school hip-hop, because there are already thousands of other DJ's doing that exact same thing in the US. He needed to distinguish himself from the herd and that's probably why he decided to bank on his Latiness (something the average Chilean hip-hopper is not too much in touch with). Once again, this is just my speculation, because I haven't talked to him since '06.
Anyhow, Colour is the second album he releases under the Latin Bitman moniker for Nacional Records and it just came out. It has some instrumental downtempo and bossa nova, some rap in español, plenty of good ol' funk, some English singing and rapping (all ingredients also found in previous work) and surprisingly, some impressive (and very current) electro and also some obvious reggae. But no easily recognizable samples.
Amongst the many guest, we have once again my very favorite Anita Tijoux (she was also featured in Musica Para Después del Almuerzo) doing a rap song ("Insomnio") that is aesthetically closer to the Anita of Kaos than the new Anita of 1977 (now why Nacional will release this and not Anita's album goes beyond my humble levels of understanding of the music business. By the way, did you see Anita's 1977 clip? Dude, personal friendship and obvious crush aside, that's the most amazing Latin American hip-hop video I've ever seen! I posted it at the end of my previous post, go check it out). All these elements, plus a neutral title in English, make this one Bitman's album with the most crossover potential to date, and I'll applaud it if he does in fact crossover to the gringo hipster crowd (in a Pinker Tones/M.I.S. sort of way) because he totally deserve it, but the DJ in me will always be more satisfied discovering hidden samples in the classic Robar Es Natural.

Available on emusic, itunes, amazon, etc.

ANA TIJOUX - 1977 (Oveja Negra, 2009)

Today is the day I was expecting for so, so long. If you read this blog consistently you know that I do not miss a chance to share with my readers my unconditional preference for Mademoiselle Anita Tijoux, and of course, the release of a new album by her has to be a main event for me.
Now known simply as Ana, Anita has been one of my very favorite artists for the last ten years but I'm totally biased because she also happens to be one of my closest friends and I adore her to death. Hence, don't expect this to be one of my cynical reviews.
Many people in Latin America (and EVERYBODY somehow involved in Latin American hip-hop) know who Ms. Tijoux is already, but I know I get lots of readers from the English-speaking half of the world who are not necessarily aware of this magnificent MC so this is your chance to catch up.
I first heard of this French/Chilean artist back in 1998 when I was publishing a hip-hop culture fanzine in Argentina. That little magazine had gone from being an underground Buenos Aires thing to a significant publication of continental proportions by then and I had readers in all neighbor countries. Some of them in Chile. Chile was, since the mid-nineties the most advanced and evolved hip-hop scene in South America (out of Brazil) and one of the groups that was making the most noise in Santiago's underground during those days was Makiza. A Chilean reader of my magazine sent me a cassette tape with a live recording of Makiza (along with other groups) and the moment I heard Anita's (one of the two MC's of that group) flow for the first time I knew she had a superb talent that distinguished from the rest and also I got the feeling that if I'd ever meet her personally, we could totally get along. I was right about both my assumptions.
Makiza released two albums, the independent Vida Salvaje (only as a cassette then, later re-released in CD format in 2004) and Aerolíneas Makiza (on Sony Music). I finally met Anita in 2000, right after Aerolíneas was released with the single "La Rosa De Los Vientos" (to this day one of my favorite songs of all time). That album had established the group as the biggest promise in Latin American hip-hop. While everybody else was stuck in the competitive-macho-from-the-ghetto formula, Makiza made rap accessible for all audiences by being human, sensitive and intelligent.
We were all waiting for Makiza to blow up to world-wide proportions at any moment but then something totally unexpected happen. Right before the release of their second single and the beginning of their South American promotional tour, Anita decided to leave the project. Not only did she announce she was breaking off from Makiza, she also said she was dropping rap music all together and moving back to her motherland, France. I remember that moment as one of the most emotionally intense ones in my life. I was there with the band backstage before their last concert when she told Seo2, the other MC, that she was out. She was my favorite artist and a great inspiration and she was leaving us. I cried that night, and I wasn't the only one.
We later spent a lot of time with Anita talking about her departure and her reasons resounded so strongly, that ended up being the final push I needed at that moment to leave my own country, Argentina, and consequently abandon my career as an aspiring MC.
Anita moved to France and almost at the same time I moved to California. But we never lost touch. She went through some big transformations during her stay in Paris, between 2001 and 2003. She took singing classes, trying to become a neo-soul singer. Meanwhile the rest of Makiza's member relocated in other countries as well, except for Seo2 who stayed in Santiago and pursued a successful solo career.
In 2003 Anita moved back to Chile but for a while she stayed at arms length from the hip-hop scene. She sung for a while in a funk band and she dreamt about becoming a solo artist. Her first public sign of life came later that year when she did a guest appearance in Control Machete's last album, Uno, Dos: Bandera (Control Machete, in case you don't know, was Toy Selectah's group). Many of her early-days fans where disappointed that she was singing instead of rapping.
2004 was the year of the big comeback. While promoting the re-release of Vida Salvaje, Makiza got together again for what was going to be a one-time show and ended up being a full-on reunion of Makiza. In 2005 they released their third album, Casino Royale. It wasn't a bad record, but the original chemistry of Makiza wasn't there any more and the new members added to the band where absolutely unnecessary. Soon after that, they dropped the project. Anita was going again through some major changes in her life, she had gotten married recently and soon after she became a mother. Going back to Makiza for a while reminded her of her first love: hip-hop, and she started rapping again but this time she was sure, her next project had to be her solo debut album.
In 2006 Anita crossed over to the mainstream, both in Chile and the rest of Latin America. In Chile thanks to her participation on a kids TV show as a voice over artist. In Latin America thanks to her collaboration with Mexican singer Julieta Venegas in the smash hit "Eres Para Mí". That song was latter remixed by Toy Selectah's Sonidero Nacional into an irresistible neo-cumbia track. It was then, when I first listened to that remix, that I had this sort of epiphany and I realized neo-cumbia was the next big thing to come in the Latin music world. I tried to persuade Anita into doing more cumbia tracks with Toy Selectah, who's also an unconditional admirer of her, but she had other plans.
During that time she recorded a whole never-releases pop album and did a few other guest appearances, with artists like Bajofondo's Supervielle and Chilean DJ's Bitman & Roban, among others. Then in 2007 she finally came out with her first solo album Kaos, which I reviewed in the very first post of this blog. I loved the album, of course, but I very much preferred her cumbia remix by Toy Selectah (even though I truly can't stand Julieta).
Anyway, now it's 2009 and her second solo album comes out, titled after the year she was born, 1977. This album marks a return of the very first Anita MC that I fell in love with back in 1998, a return to the basics, her basics, pure underground, refined, jazzy, introspective, sensitive hip-hop. None of those electro experiments, no pop aspirations (no guest appearances by Julieta Venegas!), a lot less singing, just pure raw rap (both in Spanish and French) to please hardcore hip-hop heads and b-boys alike.
I have to admit that I have been out of the loop in matters of hip-hop lately, listening to a whole other bunch of music styles (you know, cumbia...) but listening to this album for the first time yesterday brought me back to the first time I heard her rapping, the first time I saw her on stage and I idealized her as the ultimate female super-MC, the saviour of all South American rap.
Now the album will be coming out next week in Chile (yeah, I'm the very first one to review it) and hopefully somebody will soon make it available for the international market too. I think this could be a perfect addition to Nacional Record's catalog, don't you think? C'mon Mr. Cookman, could you PLEASE release this in the US?

Buy it here.

SANTULLO - Bajofondo Presenta (2009)

Last night we hung out with the Bajofondo crew again. Remember my video-post of that time I tried to interview Gustavo Santaolalla backstage after their last show of the tour? Well last night it was the last show of another tour and it also happened to be in San Francisco, where I live.
It was a private show so nothing crazy, but after the concert they wanted to have a little party before heading back to their respective hometowns (Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Montevideo...) so with a group of friends we threw them a party at a restaurant and it was awesome. Not food and beer flying this time, though. All the band was there, except the girl who does the video projections, I didn't see her. Lots of hot girls, groupies?
The guys from Bajofondo ended up jamming with the musicians of the restaurant's house-band and whoever wanted to grab an instrument and play, the rest just danced and drunk as much as it's ok to drink on a Tuesday night. Somebody must have a picture of myself onstage playing the güiro along with Oscar-winning überproducer Gustavo Santaolalla. Yes, we played some cumbias! Can you imagine Bajofondo playing "La Negra Tomasa"? Me neither. But believe me, it happened last night. Or was it just a dream? Please someone send me those pics to confirm this.
Anyway, I spent a lot of time talking to Luciano Supervielle, who's Bajofondo's DJ and was the first member of the collective to get his solo album a couple of years ago. We know a lot of people in common with Luciano because he used to be very involved in the Uruguayan hip-hop scene during the second half of the nineties and those were the times when I used to travel to Montevideo to attend hip-hop shows or interview bands. In his solo album he had the guys from Contra las Cuerdas as guests (probably the best in Uruguayan rap) and he also has my dearly beloved Anita Tijoux, who I mention in almost every other post in this blog.
The thing is, there's a new solo album by a Bajofondo member out, Santullo and I got it a couple of days ago but didn't really dedicated enough time to listen to it until today. Let me tell you, I really loved this album, maybe even more than any other Bajofondo release, including Mar Dulce. Santullo sings and raps with the style and swagger of a tango poet which is totally unique. But tango is not only present in his characteristic voice and flow and the half-electronic-half-acoustic music background, it is also very present in the lyrics and the choice of words. I've heard people trying to do this same thing before but nobody can do it as naturally and convincingly as Santullo, he somehow managed to find the perfect balance between early-twentieth-century tanguero slang and very current urban topics.
The album has ten tracks, nine of them are all new compositions, the other one is a version of the hit single "Pa' Bailar" from Mar Dulce's remixes. Definitely worth checking it out.

ZURITA-The Great Cumbia Swindle (Free Mix)

Like I already stated here once, listening to other people's mixtapes generally bores me to death. I almost never finish them and if I do is after skipping half of the content. Yeah, I know I'm a DJ and I make mixes and I expect people to listen to them so I should be more patient but most of the times those mixes suck and I can't help it.
Anyway, rants aside, I recently downloaded this new mix by Argentinean cumbia mash-up artist Zurita and had it on my Ipod for a couple of days until last night on my way out from the gym I finally decided to push play and oh, what a surprise!
I barely knew this guy, in fact I still don't know much about him but now I'm wishing I knew him before. The Great Cumbia Swindle rocks, it has plenty of classic cumbia with old school rap and Spanish dancehall all mixed with the right set of skills and it even contains a few unexpected surprises. That's what I like to hear. Besides my own megamixes, this is the only other cumbia mix I'm gonna leave permanently on my IPod. Keep up the good work!

Download it free HERE.

Cumbia Nenas!

I'd like to dedicate this post to some of the females involved in the neo-cumbia movement. I've always been interested in the participation of women in underground music, I guess because they tend to be a rare minority in almost every scene, also because, well... I like women. In a scene like this, that's been spearheaded by DJ's and bedroom producers it's particularly obvious the lack of female talent, but the few that are out there have been very significant and need to be recognized.
The most important and well known are definitely the anarkumbia riot-grrrls of Kumbia Queers, pioneers of the scene in all their right. I wrote about their 2007 debut album in the first post of this blog (yeah the post where I also said, two years from now everybody will be talking about cumbia, and that was two years ago, bitches). I particularly love these girls for being so irreverent and disrespectful of all music genres, which I think is sort of the whole sense behind this music, that tounge-in-cheek sense of humor, the irony of appropriating cumbia culture and taking it out of context in funny ridiculous ways. This mostly just happens within neo-cumbia artists from two countries: Mexico and Argentina, because it is in those two countries where cumbia is charged with a lot of social preconceptions as "music for the undereducated lower classes". So the fact that Kumbia Queers are half Argentinean and half Mexican is, I think, the perfect formula for their instant success. I also happen to love girl bands, period, I did since I discovered The Go-Go's as a kid and had my first celebrity crush on Belinda Carlisle.
Anyway, I have some great gossip for all you Kumbia Queers fans, two of the biggest producers of cumbia's new school ever are gonna be working on the new Queers' album: Toy Selectah and Pablo Lescano, from Mexico and Argentina, respectively. I honestly can't wait to hear what comes out from that combo.

Before leaving Mexico, it's my duty to give some props too to Amandititita whom, so far, for some odd reason, I've never mentioned here. This petite mexichick claims to be an intelectual, in fact her bio says she's a writer, but this doesn't really show much in her lyrics which are ironic and funny but silly-funny, not smart-funny, although she does say "you are more evil than Bush" in one of her songs, which makes me laugh every single time. Her sense of humor reminds me a little too much of Mexican mock-rockers Molotov, which I personally hate, but musically she's closer to the electro-low-brow Mexican artists like Silverio and María Daniela y su Sonido Lasser. I don't really like her music too much, even if it's a lot of fun to listen to sometimes. I have never play any of her songs on my mixtapes or DJ sets, but I know plenty of Mexican DJ's in town who spin her hits quite a lot. She might be just a myspace diva but she's definitely a character I'd love to interview.

You must already be familiar with Alika thanks to her collaboration with El Hijo De La Cumbia in his amazing debut album Freestyle De Ritmos last year. This female rapper-turned-reggae-toaster has experimented with cumbia on her own too a few times.
I've known her personally since 1996. Back then she was one half of a group called Actitud María Marta who basically kick-started the second wave of Argentine hip-hop in the mid nineties. They were very well known for their politically charged lyrics and their participation in lots of left-wing acts, however, their metal-rap at that point wasn't too great.
Around 1999 they broke up and Alika (who up until then was just Alicia) decided to go solo and in Chile recruited the band La Nueva Alianza to back her up. Alika has just released a new video for this amazing cumbia-rap song of her last album. I have to say I enjoyed the video very much, especially for the references to Chacarita, my favorite soccer team (even though I've never been a soccer fan). Here, check it out:

As for the rest of Actitud Maria Marta, far from calling the quits after Alika's departure, they turned up way better, when they replaced her with two other girls named Karen, one singer one rapper, and they got rid of the metal-infused musicians replacing them with hip-hop tracks. They haven't been able to come out with one official release since then, but they have toured all over the place, way more than any other Argentinean hip-hop artist. Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela and all over Europe, trust me, these girls sure know how to put a show. Now I've been close friends with Malena, the only founding member left in the group and she's been the FIRST person in the whole hip-hop universe I ever heard talking about fusing cumbia. Way back in the mid nineties she already professed a serious love and respect for Colombian cumbia and she mentioned it many times, but back then I never payed her attention because, as I mentioned here many times, I used to be a hardcore hip-hop purist.
In 2008 they released an independent CD called Con Perfume Revolución which you can download here and it includes the cumbia-rap "Eres Re-Lindo," a free version of the popular cumbia "Eres muy bonita pero mentirosa" from a female point of view. However the instrumentation sounds more traditional acoustic cumbia than the neo-cumbia sound of Alika and Princesa.
Princesa gained notoriety thanks to the Chancha Via Circuito remix of her song included in ZZK Sound Vol.I and also by another of her songs remixed by the amazing Frikstailers, both are neo-cumbia musts. She's part of the third wave of Argentine hip-hop, the ones that came out after the year 2000. But her rap owes a lot to the female pioneers. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out if she has ever done any cumbia on her own, only remixes by other people. Anyway, her Spanish dancehall isn't too bad.
My happiest find of 2009 was this other gorgeous Argentine woman who sings in Los Labios. Since I discovered them online, I haven't stopped playing "Bus Estación" at almost every gig. Unlike most of the other women named on this post who approach cumbia from either punk or hip-hop, Lulu does it from a gay-hipster-indie-pop perspective and the results are quite unique. Definitely a candidate for this end-of-the-year Best-Of's.

Now one of the most relevant things that happened to neo-cumbia in 2009 so far has been the release of Bomba Estéreo's second album Blow Up or Estalla, depending on the market. This colombian group has been around for a while mixing afro-colombian beats like cumbia and others with electro and hip-hop but their early work was more instrumental or had a male MC. The music was already great but the best thing that could have ever happened to them was adding a female voice (and beautiful face) to their songs. Liliana Saumet turned Bomba Estéreo into the first mainstream-crossover worthy act in the whole neo-cumbia, and "Fuego" the first neo-cumbia hit with radio and MTV appeal. I have already posted that video here once, but I love it so much that I'm gonna go ahead and do it again.

DISSECTING MERSAHOLIC

Art that needs to be explained is not good art, it's bullshit. That being said, I'm a man of contradictions and since I claimed in my previous post I wouldn't give away the play list for Mersaholic, I'm gonna say now, fuck it all, and contradict myself one more time by explaining to you some of the bits and pieces used on my latest mix. Why? Because I'm full of shit and so is my work and sometimes I think some of my readers need a hand when it comes to shit appreciation. Anyway, here's some Hard Data on the a few iconic tracks included in the collage.

00:07 - Carlos Gardel - Un Bailongo: I found this LP a long time ago, digging at a small record store in San Francisco. It has this absolutely perfect intro for almost any mix with tango pioneer Carlos Gardel saying something like "Attention guys, the dance party is about to start!" and since then I've been waiting for an excuse to use it. When I started recording Mersaholic my first decision was to use as much real vinyl as I could on this new project and so for the intro I mixed this track with another old vinyl by somebody called Jorge Reyes whom I have no idea who he is and how this record turned up among my collection (I think it belonged to a former roommate who left it behind). Jorge Reyes album is a very new-agey approach to pre-columbine American music and it has plenty of these atmospheric breaks with mumbling and weird nature sounds so I decided to use it as background noise for Gardel's announcement as if he was in an actual party. It worked out pretty well I think.

02:19 - Soda Stereo - Zoom: This one is the most openly obvious sample used in the whole Mersaholic mix. Instantly recognizable by all latinos of the world because it was the last single released by the greatest band in Latin American rock history before they broke up. Maybe if you come from an English-speaking country you have no idea about this, but Soda Stereo were pretty much the main instigators of something like a rock en español movement all over the continent during the 80's and early 90's. "Zoom" from 1995 is one of my favorite songs ever and it's so easy to sample that I wonder why there are not like a million remixes of it out there. DJing at Latin parties I always tend to include this song mashed up with a reggaeton or cumbia beat and people's response is great. So why isn't anybody doing this? Maybe they are and I don't know. I'd pay to be able to spin a Toy Selectah remix of this song but since there's not such a thing available yet, I mashed it up here with the intro beat of Toy's remix of Miranda! and Julieta Venegas' song "Perfecta" and then fucked it up with a lot of filters and effects.

03:10 - Illya Kuryaki & The Valderramas - Es Tuya Juan: I only chose this vocal sample because of the obvious reason that it says my name. But then I realized that some way or another I've been including some Illya Kuryaki on all my mixes of 2009. Linyerismo Episode I had the instrumental intro of "Jaguar House" remixed by Toy Selectah. Its sequel had another vocal sample in the beginning of Dante Spinetta (one of the two former MC's of IKV, gone solo) saying "desde Argentina!" from his song "El Apagón". Also in Episode II of Linyerismo I sampled the instrumental break of "Cumbia Sicodélica" by Emmanuel Hourvilleur (the other half of the duo). Now I'm not really a big fan of this proto-rap Argentine group but I did listen to them quite a bit back in the early-to-mid nineties before there was an actual hip-hop scene in Buenos Aires and so that's all we could get to see live on stage. So I guess they've been a big subliminal influence. They always had this sort of ironic approach to b-class pop culture that I love and coming from a hip-hop foundation they both ended up experimenting a little bit with cumbia in recent years. So big respect for both. "Es Tuya Juan" was their very first single, released back in 1991 when they were just two horny 15 year old teenagers, it was a big hit at the moment and people used to joke around with that song a lot in front of me because of my name. Somewhere in my mom's house I must still have the cassette tape of this.

07:13 - Chacho Brodas - Gypsy Woman: For ten years now I've been telling people that Griffi is the best hip-hop producer in the Spanish-speaking world. If you are into serious beat production I strongly suggest you pick up his stuff. He started with the group Solo Los Sólo (which I briefly sampled on Linyerismo Episode I) and then did production for lots of other artists including Tremendo, whose album Vidalogía is definitely one of the best rap-in-spanish records ever released worldwide if not THE best. Don't even try to argue that one. Anyway, Griffi's most current project is Chacho Brodas, a band he formed with tons of friends, including Tremendo, and they do some mind-blowing experimental shit that I can't even start to explain, so you gotta check it out. I really wanted to have some Griffi here even though it didn't fit at all with his style, just because I wanted to give him props for all the inspiration his work provides me. But because his shit is absolutely incompatible with cumbia I was only able to mix in a 2 seconds bit from this song that's not even easy to find because it's under three layers of sound. Anyway, this is my very humble respects paying for the best producer ever.

07:18 - Gonzalo Martinez - La Cumbia del Pepino: Now here I need all your help, because there's very little I know about this artist and it's urgent that I find out more, because he might be the missing link in neo-cumbia evolution. I found his album Gonzalo Martinez And His Thinking Congas almost by mistake on emusic.com and it has no information at all. It says it was released in 1998 and by the references sampled I assume it's from Chile. I also know it was released by the same label that released the first Señor Coconut albums so I assume Martinez has something to do with the German artist while he was living in Chile. But that's all speculation. That's it. I couldn't find anything else online. The album has a lot of electronic cumbia, sort of primitive and minimal but very interesting and easy to mix. Here I mashed it up with a track from the Mexicans Sonido Desconocido but if you wanna listen to the tracks in their original form, I suggest you pick up his album (he also has a collection of remixes available).

09:14 - The Michels Affaire - Criminology: I was at a bbq in the park and one song from this album came out of the speakers. First I thought it was the classic Wu-Tang track, after a couple of minutes without rapping I thought, "oh, it must be the original song that RZA sampled for that beat." Then I realized I was wrong all along. This is a band that plays instrumental funk/soul and recently released an album called Enter the 37th Chamber where they reproduce, live, the instrumental tracks of Wu-Tang Clan. How irresistible is that? I was looking for Wu-samples to mix with cumbia breaks and instead I found this. Amazing! Highly recommended.

11:17 - Grupo Fantasma - Chicken Little: I talked about Grupo Fantasma a few posts below and about how they are the best cumbia band in the United States and their musicians go on tour with Prince. Here I used a break from their song "Chicken Little" and a short vocal sample from that same song but in a way that's barely recognizable from the original. I also added the voice of a girl laughing on top of it and that girl, my friends, is my very beloved Anita Tijoux, from Chile/France, the best female MC of the whole Spanish-language rap world. She's part of all my mixes too (that's how obcessed I am with her). In Linyerismo's first episode I used her verse from "Eres Para Mí", her collaboration with Julieta Venegas remixed by Toy Selectah (that was the best song of 2006 and the one that made me wanna start spinning neo-cumbia). In Linyerismo's sequel I only used the sample from the beginning of her first solo hit, "Despabílate". Now I'm one of the luckiest mutherfuckers in the whole galaxy because once Anita stayed in my house during a visit to Argentina in the year 2000 with some friends and a beat producer who was working on some tracks with her at the time. This guy made the mistake of leaving inside the CD drive of my computer a disc with all the open tracks of a recording Anita never actually released, including the out takes. That laugh came from one of those out takes.

14:24 - Los Palmeras - La Muy Indigna: Los Palmeras are one of the few remaining successful cumbia bands in Argentina that still kick it old school. They had a huge smash hit a few years ago with "El Bombón Asesino" a song that besides becoming a wedding party classic for years to come, was sampled and remixed to infinity by the neo-cumbia avant-guard and helped establish and expand the emerging scene in Buenos Aires. In fact, the first vinyl release of Bersa Discos was a collection of remixes of that one song. Now of course, Los Palmeras have a pretty large catalog and are far from a one-hit-wonder. This song in particular, from 1994, talks about a woman who was extremely promiscuous and would have affairs with tons of guys from all over the world behind his husband's back. I sampled the bit when they said she went with 20 "gringos" from San Francisco and it's the second reference to my city on this mix, the first being the intro of "San Franciscan Nights" by Eric Burden and The Animals, a rock band from the 60's.

15:27 - Los João - Bailando Toda La Noche: I found this vinyl while digging at a record store in San Francisco, it's called "No Tengo Dinero" (I have no money) and if you look at the lame-ass faces of these dudes in the back of the album, they look pretty broke. I'm assuming they're from Mexico because that's where the album was published in 1984, but I've never heard of them. Pretty much all they do is covers of cheesy wedding-party songs. Most of them are horrible. The one I played is, of course, their take on Lionel Richie's "All Night Long" where they changed the lyrics completely from the original. Hilarius. The type of shit that I imagine Chico Sonido likes to sample.

16:13 - Lía Crucet - Nada: This woman is the personified definition of the word "mersa". She's a cumbia singer who's mostly just famous for having ginormous breasts. Her vocal skills are extremely limited and she never had a crossover hit that I know of, but still she's adored by the masses in Argentina as a cult figure, especially among the gay crowd. I only used a vocal sample from her song "Nada" that I got from the proto-neo-cumbia compilation El Remixero of 1995, a collection of cumbia-pop remixed for the dancefloor in the same style of the Tropitronic mixes of the early 90's that were hugely influential for me. I wasn't able to find a decent scan of the album cover anywhere online, but oddly enough I found the back sheet of the CD which you can download free here.

18:01 - Martín Buscaglia - Cerebro, Orgasmo, Envidia y Sofía: Wow! That's an irresistible funky bass loop! All the way from Uruguay, this guy surprised the world in 2006 with the eclectic and catchy El Evangelio Según Mi Jardinero, a memorable record that the guys from Love Monk in Spain released in vinyl and I'm so thankful to them for doing so! I have the 10 inch single of this song that also includes a guest appearance by Brazilian Arnaldo Antunes and it's one of my favorite records. Anyway, I was almost done recording Mersaholic but I have done this in two big chunks, the first one went all the way up until the "1, 2, 3, 4!" from Black Machine's hip-house classic "How Gee" and the second chunk started with the psychedelic Peruvian cumbia of Juaneco y su Combo. At the time of putting them together I had a really hard time because they were in very opposite keys so there was a massive sound clash. For a week, I tried every day with a different transition and nothing worked until I remembered this bass loop which essentially saved the whole project. I deformed it quite a bit by changing it's key, adding effect and vocal samples from the Colombian hit-machine La Sonora Dinamita and Argentinean cumbia villera star Nestor En Bloque. In the end the result didn't sound too bad. I think.

19:45 - Microphone Killa - Afterdark radio interview #3: During my infinite online researches for more expressions of neo-cumbia I ran into this Tex-Mex gangsta rapper who earlier this year released an album called Cumbia Tribal where he tries to rap over cumbia samples with dubious results due to his lack of lyrical skills (like most Latin immigrants born or raised in the US, his knowledge of the Spanish language is very basic so the rhymes end up being predictable and in very simple metric structures). Anyway, I appreciate the effort and I bought the whole album even knowing that I probably would never spin any of the songs but I was particularly amused by the lazy-ass skits which basically are just pieces from a radio interview where he talks about mixing cumbia with hip-hop. I sampled that for the transition in between Juaneco y su Combo and Afrosound where you can also listen to another Gonzalo Martinez break and that's, I think, the best transition I've done in this whole megamix. Maybe ever.

20:06 - Afrosound - Caliventura: Right now, this is the shit I've been listening to the most. Old school baby! I only found out about this amazing group very recently, which I'm embarrassed to admit, and I'm totally fascinated by it. I know very little about them so I'm not even gonna pretend to know my shit here and I'll limit myself to saying this is probably one of the most interesting Colombian cumbia artists that came out of the Discos Fuentes mothership. If you were interested in researching the African roots of real Cumbia, this is a good point to start.

23:30 - Sugarhill Gang - Apache: Everybody knows about this one. Sugarhill Gang needs no introduction for the hip-hop fans. This song was actually a cover of a song with the same name by The Incredible Bongo Band. It had a monumental drum break what has been sampled by everybody and their mothers and it's a b-boy's must. But instead of the classic version I went for Sugarhill's cover because they added this Latin percussion that went perfectly with the mix. For the transition into this track I also overlapped a vocal sample from De La Soul's first single "Plug Tunnin'" and De La Soul is by far one of my favorite hip-hop groups ever, especially when they had Prince Paul doing production. He's definitely another huge influence of me when it comes to sound collages. In fact De la Soul is Dead is definitely one of my desert-island top ten albums. Anyway, that same intro was also used in the song "Classic" by Kanye West, Nas, Rakim and KRS-One with DJ Premier's production. I don't know where the original sample is from but I listed De La Soul because that's where I got it from.

25:33 - Solo - The Big Stef: All I know about this guy is that he's from Italy and he has a very interesting take on Brazilian baile funk and I've been playing that track "Congaloid" at every single gig I had this year (it was also included in Linyerismo Episode II). I also know that my friend and fellow blogger Alta Joya, from Cooliado is perpetually infatuated with this guy and keeps posting about him. Anyway, I was originally going to use his other track from this same EP, "Joga Bola", because it's more obviously Brazilian but I was tired after a whole month of mixing Mersaholic and I wanted to finish it fast, I had lost my patience and even though deep inside I knew I should've gone for a couple minutes more, I decided to finish it there and The Big Stef was the perfect Grand Finale because of that ridiculously grandiloquent opera singing.

27:23 - Johny Tolengo - Mi Fiel Teo: Talk about what a lucky motherfucker am I! I was searching for a funny bit to end this mix and Johny Tolengo came to mind and the first song I play from him has this priceless intro. Johny Tolengo was a comedy TV character from Argentina during the 80's. I was in elementary school and I wouldn't miss any of his shows. It was basically a parody of a rockstar done by comedian Juan Carlos Calabró, absolutely exagerated in his arrogance and his tackiness. He's the supreme embodiment of the word Mersa taken to the extreme (just look at him!) so it was perfect to close Mersaholic. After the success of the TV show, Johny Tolengo was marketed as a kids star, released a big screen movie and two records, even though he can't sing shit. One of his classic songs, "Estás para ganar" is a mandatory party track at all wedding receptions in Argentina and up until today is still sung in the soccer fields by hooligans. The song I chose however is one of his lesser known ones, in the intro Teo, his servant, is very proud because Johny dedicated him a song and the rockstar gives him a copy of the record but warns him, "you can only play it once, because the turntable needle will wear out". Epic.