Sound Taste

Friday B-Boys

A little late on the uptake, but wanted to highlight Jeff Chang's amazing article on why Koreans are the most accomplished B-Boys in the planet.

Even for someone not familiar with the vocabulary of six-steps and one-arm freezes, Chang's descriptions of the R16 competition are clear, kinetic and spellbinding. Add in rebellion against a militarized and straightjacketing culture, the key role of 1.5ers and the timeless boy desire to kick the other boy's ass, and you have a compelling read.

The article mentions Benson Lee's recent doc Planet B-Boy (which is already on my Netflix queue but has not yet been released on video/DVD). Below is this equal parts nicely symbolic and hilarious battle along the border between North and South Korea, which he cleverly dubs "Run-DMZ."

The overhead shot of the line reminded me of the great 2000 Korean movie, Joint Security Area, which takes place (and was filmed) in the DMZ. If you want a little more, the first few minutes of the movie are here.

Good-will hunting and sonic weapons

A NYT piece last week about the 1950s USIA program to have jazz musicians tour "hot spots" around the world to improve the image of the US prompted a lively email discussion among a group of friends, some frequent Sound Taste commenters.

One of the key questions was, if the govt. were to embark on a similar program today, what would it look like, given the diminished grab that jazz has?

We all agreed that hip hop is the equivalent globalized musical form that is nonetheless squarely identified with American cool. But how would it work?

Robert (aka Sovietiko) asked

Pero si es Hip Hop, que considero el mayor export de U.S.A ahora mismo, entonces quien seria?  Los que estan rapeando de to'el billete q tienen? Taria duro enviar un artista a Iran a que le diga a ellos "Pana, nadamas el reloj mio vale mas que lo que tu vas a hacer en un ano !!"
o Black Eye Peas con "mi hump, mi hump" ?

If it's hip hop, which I think is the biggest US export right now, then who would it be? The ones rapping about all the money they have? It would be rough to send an artist to Iran to rap "Son, just the watch I'm wearing is worth more than what you make in a year" or Black Eyed Peas with their "my hump, my hump."

This recent piece about Nas made me think he'd be an intriguing choice.

Kiko didn't think it would work at all today.

Como intercambio cultural, cool. Pero NADA tiene ese tipo de relevancia hoy en dia. DONDEQUIERA tan haciendo jazz, rock, hip-hop, etc. Si ha de ir alguien a'pero--o por lo menos popular--el bulto se lo harian, pero de seguro ya ellos tienen su version criolla. Por ej, cuando Paul McCartney toca en Moscú, el bulto no es por el rock, sino porq el es un ex-Beatle.

As a cultural exchange, cool. But NOTHING has that sort of relevance these days. Jazz, rock, hip hop etc. is being made EVERYWHERE. If someone great -- or at least popular -- were to go, the public would love it, but surely they have their own local version. Eg, when Paul McCartney plays Moscow, the big deal is not that it's rock, but that he's an ex-Beatle.

We disagreed a bit on this point. To me, local versions do not entirely substitute for the "authenticity" still credited to, say, gangsta rap stars.

And I totally agreed with Jorge's musical osmosis via military invasion theory:

pensandolo bien, es muy posible ke esten mandando mas artistas de lo ke pensamos ya ke a estas alturas hay tropas gringas en todas partes del universo, or so it seems...

thinking it over, it's quite possible the US govt. is sending out more artists than we think, given that US troops are all over the universe, or so it seems...

American music has often been imported via military occupation (e.g. Dee Dee Ramone first heard rock n roll as an army brat in Germany, and Japan developed a strong jazz culture fed by the American military presence there post-WWII). A couple of folks have started looking at the playlists of soldiers in Iraq & Afghanistan. I wonder how much of that music is filtering locally.

Thinking about this the past couple of days, I guess that the more interesting cultural exchange can no longer be government-sponsored, not just because there's no one with decent taste left working in government, but because it was a pretty suspect endeavor in the first place.

I think the interesting stuff is happening more at the NGO/indy level. Jeff Chang argues here that although gangsta rap is the soundtrack of the world (especially in conflict zones) there might be some room for more "conscious" hip hop to spread grassroots to various non-Western locales.

Not to say I have a rose-colored vision of the possibilities of cultural exchange, given recent co-optations of anthropologists and other social scientists by the military. Michael at La Guayabita wondered whether ethno/musicologists are likewise being recruited. Seeing recent uses of music as a weapon, I woudn't doubt it.

[1958 pix of Dave Brubeck in Baghdad from Brubeck collection via NYT; pix of Nas by Justin Stephens via NY Mag; pix of soldier w iPod via weikhang.com]

Friday Panamá

I'll admit I don't know much about Panamanian music outside of Rubén Blades, El General and the criminally ignored Los Rabanes. But I haven't been able to get this new-stylee típico remix, "Oiga Morena," outta my head all week.

Squeezytunes (thx for da tip!) calls it "accordion reggaetón." To my ear, it sounds like vallenato processed through some serious machine-generated highhat and snares with hip hop/reggaetón verses laid on top.

Ignore the corniness of the video and just enjoy the song. The remixers are Comando Tiburón, featuring Nenito Vargas on voice (in a singing style that reminds me of Totó la Momposina), and killer accordion courtesy of Los Plumas Negras.

Poking around for more info I also ran into the song below, DJ Black's "Chucha de su madre," which is not as musically compelling, but still has a pegajoso beat and is a great protest song against political corruption, overdevelopment and worsening conditions for the poor. Apparently it was one of the biggest hits in the 2008 Carnaval in Panama.

The video's pretty cool too, with the early-80s looking new-waveish graphics interspersed with street scenes that look like Santo Domingo, like Rio, like Angola.

Dj black - chu... de su madre (sin censura)
Uploaded by antonyoso23

What's up with John Leguizamo?

Hangin' with the Homeboys is not only one of my favorite reel New York movies and a great exploration of male friendships, but to date it's one of John Leguizamo's best naturalistic roles. And those are far and few in between.

Leguizamo is usually best when his performances border on the ridiculous. For every Summer of Sam or Romeo and Juliet, where his Tex Avery mania works, there are goo explosions like The Pest and Spawn, or lugubrious messes like Love in the Time of Cholera. Leguizamo has only occasionally translated his onstage genius into a good cinematic groove.

He sometimes falls into a cliché of himself. In the recent Paraiso Travel (which screened at the Tribeca Film Fest but not sure when it's going into general release), he is once again the bitchy queeny gay/tranny (see To Wong Foo and several character skits in his theater work). Paraiso trailer here.

Leguizamo is super talented but needs directors with an inner crackhead to channel his craziness. Hence, Spike Lee, Baz Luhrmann and George Romero get him. Ironically, while he seems a living cartoon, I have never liked any of his comic book, video game or animation roles (I'm on the fence about Ice Age). And I give him credit for doing what few Latino actors do, appearing in Latin American productions (Crónicas, Paraiso Travel).

For a while, he kinda disappeared, but this year he's back with a vengeance. Aside from Paraiso Travel and The Happening, which opens Friday, he's coming out in Alfredo de Villa's Humboldt Park with Freddie Rodriguez, Righteous Kill and The Ministers. I know little about the last two, and have no high hopes for the Shyamalan flick. But let's see how he makes out in the Chicago-set drama.

Tonight, he's going to be giving a talk sponsored by the NYT. Alas, the event is sold out. But there'll be plenty of him to go around for the remainder of 2008 (he'll also be onstage in a play he did not write, American Buffalo. Hmmm.)

In praise of concón

I was thinking about rising prices of rice, cataclysmic food shortages, and the wisdom of peasant cultures while eating some Thai sticky rice this weekend.

I love sticky rice (and mochi and bibimbop) and other toothsome chewy rice-based treats because they all remind me of concón. This is literally the rice that gets stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Rather than being a culinary disaster, concón is a delicacy in the DR (In PR it is too, called pegao). To the point that some cooks purposefully cook rice so that it creates concón. (I've never quite gotten the hang of this, but I think it involves extra oil and extra fire toward the end of the cooking process.)

Like any hyper-local delicacy, there are rules:

1) It's easiest to make this in those possibly harmful aluminum round-bottomed pans commonly called calderos and available in hardware stores in Latin nabes. Do not try making it with your automatic rice cooker.

2) While it should have some color, it should not be burnt (golden to caramel, not black).

3) Texture-wise, it should be chewy to crispy, but should not threaten to chip your fillings (although some masochistic friends love just that, fighting the rice to submission).

3) It should be served separately, not mixed in with the regular rice. All the better to savor.

4) The more you can scrape from the pan in a single piece, the better. Hence why the picture below, of a pot-shaped piece of concón, is so impressive.

It makes sense that concón would also be loved in Haiti, and I know that for me the only proper bibimbop is one that has rice stuck to the bottom of the pot it's served in, but I wonder how many other rice-eating peoples love that crunchy sticky treat.

Anyone?

UPDATE: In Cuban = raspa. In Korean = nurungji. In Catalán = soccarat. In Farsi = tahdig. See, I knew it!

[concón pix via remolacha]

The Return of Harold & Kumar

The Saturday 9 pm screening of H&K at downtown Brooklyn's multiplex was the place to be. Not only was the audience very brown, even for Brooklyn, but we ran into several friends there. As my friend Roberto put it, "the beanerati, the chinorati and the Gujarati" were out in force.

First things first: was it as good as the first one? Yes and no. As a sequel, it could never be the breath of fresh air that H&K Go to White Castle was. And as much as I loved the intent of the more politicized humor, the satire of white privilege and racism was blunter than in the first. Writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg are good-natured rather than acidic. This is no "South Park" or "Colbert Show."

Structurally, this is a reprise of "White Castle." H&K's road trip through the American South west to Texas (rather than South through Jersey) has them meet the same sorts of characters they did in the first. Chris Melloni is back, as is the anthropomorphic bag of weed (only the deus ex machina cheetah from the first movie is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had a contract dispute?).

And thank god for the extended cameo by Neil Patrick Harris. Never enough of his whoring, snorting alter ego.

The extended trailer that's been circulating online gives away a lot of the movie's punchlines and funny set pieces. Which doesn't make 'em less funny. But here are a couple of things I noticed.

The new Harold: Like the 6 million dollar man, he's "Better. Stronger. Faster." While my devotion for Kal Penn burns bright, John Cho/Harold Lee got a little extra zing in this version. (Look for a hilarious backstory detail in a flashback to H&K's college years). And how can I not love a guy obsessed with food?

The Latin/Asian alliance: In the last movie, the Harold-Maria romance was a small glimpse into a different social order, not dependent on the Black-white racial axis. In this movie, there are a couple of key moments that establish Latin-Asian solidarity. H&K escape Gitmo with the help of some Chevy truck-powered balseros, and in the KKK rally they stumble into, they are called out as "Mexicans!" Implicitly, we're all in the same yola.

Too blunt: Aside from the caricatures of "Arab-looking" Gitmo prisoners, the weakest moment of the film is the extended scene with "President Bush," which plays up his "regular guy" image. Even under the fellowship of a shared joint, it's hard to reconcile the guy who says "I'm in the government and I don't trust it" with the guy who has pushed us into a security state that, um, puts our heroes in secret custody in a judirical no man's land.

And of all the racial stereotype-jokes put in the hands of zealot DHS agent Rob Corddry, one scene where he points a gun at a black man with a cell phone hits just a little close to home days after the Sean Bell verdict.

The writers' biggest political statement -- aside from the obvious one about racial profiling -- is arguing that despite the war on drugs, we are one nation under a bong, and that anyone who pretends otherwise is a "hypocritizer." Characters of all ethnicities, social levels and security clearances are stoners at heart. A weed utopia.

Speaking of people who must be high, Racialicious has a great discussion based on Tom Carson's GQ article on the movie that bizarrely claims that H&K are, alternately, "Happy-Go-Lucky Negros" and closet Jews. The piece is a perfect example of how stuck mainstream society still is on Black-white racial paradigms and Jews as the only minority with assimilation issues.

Carson's reading of the movie completely discounts how the first became successful, in great part, because it was discovered by Asian Americans eager to escape the binds of model minority status. It's not always about you, white man.

Reason #742 I love public libraries

Waiting for a printout at the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library last week, started browsing the eclectic-is-an-understatement "World" CD section and ended up carrying home almost a dozen records, including these gems.

Le Rail Band (feat. Mory Kante), African Classics (Canto 2007) This is what Salif Keita's famous band did after he left. And it's got some neat surprises even for those familiar with the Malian institution. "Walenumalombaliya" starts with a distorted guitar wail that would raise up Hendrix himself. And "Mariba Yassa" has what sounds to me like an African twist on yeyé psychedelia.

Brian Jones presents The Pipes of Pan At Jajouka (Point Music 1995) I used to own this record and ended up selling it, because the Stones guitarist's incursion into Moroccan music -- basically recording the Master Musicians of Jajouka at a village festival in 1971 -- while supremely influential, just didn't grab me. Now that I've heard a lot more Moroccan and gnawa music, I was able to hear a little more context around it. Plus I dig thinking of Ornette Coleman hearing the drone and translating it to his own playing.

Blond Blond, Tresors de la Chanson Judéo-Arabe (Buda Musique 2006) The cover fella is an albino Maghreb-Jewish singer, born in Oran, Algeria, who worked in Paris in the late 1930s. As you'd expect, his songs are chanson, chaabi and a little cante jondo sounding stuff too. The whole al-andalus spectrum in one record.

Vieux Farka Touré, Self-titled (World Village 2006) I missed this debut record by Ali Farka Touré's son, as well as the gigs he played around town at the time. Bad, bad, bad. Because this record is a new classic, or should be. "Diabaté" alone, an instrumental with Malian master (and Vieux mentor) Toumani Diabaté on kora is worth a stack of blues records.

Rahim AlHaj, When the Soul is Settled: Music of Iraq (Smithsonian Folkways 2006) Aside from the kora, the oud is probably one of my favorite stringed instruments. As soon as I heard this, I ranked it up there with a Munir Bashir record I picked up on a whim in Paris (knew nothing about him, but heard it play in the store at the Institute du Monde Arabe and had to have it). Well, it turns out Rahim AlHaj was his student. AlHaj went into exile after the first Gulf War, first to Jordan and Syria and since 2000 to Albuquerque, NM. This is what "the enemy" sounds like.

Latins @ Tribeca Film Festival

The Tribeca Film Festival, which has grown by leaps and bounds since its post-9/11 origins, has some intriguing Latin goodies in its lineup this year. Screenings begin Wednesday. Get tickets early for the hot ones, now that the weather's nice people will come out.

The one that tops my personal list is Paraiso Travel, based on Jorge Franco's novel of the same name. Franco is likely the hottest Colombian writer of his generation, and this is the second of his novels that's been adapted to the screen. The other is Rosario Tijeras, which I don't think was released widely in the U.S., but has a title song by Juanes.

Paraiso Travel takes place between Medellín and Jackson Heights, and covers the whole sordid overland migration route. It's been a big hit in Colombia since its release in January.

Another big Latin American hit is the Brazilian Tropa de Elite, which uses documentary-style shooting to tell the story of special forces units and their brutal work in the favelas as well as the corruption rampant within police ranks.

The subject of the documentary Chevolution is one I've thought about a lot: how did the iconic Korda image become such an international selling point? In a recent trip in Santo Domingo, I saw it all over bootlegged merch, and I am more than sure that the closest most buyers have come to the Argie revolutionary is the Gael Garcia Bernal movie.

As you've heard before, I have a personal connection to Going on 13, a documentary about four California brown girls (one African-American, one Indian immigrant, one Mexican-American, one Latina-white halfie). But seriously, it's touching and clear-eyed and respectful of the girls' individuality. Go see it! Take your nieces, neighbors' kids, little cousins.

Another doc, My Life Inside, is a little less cheery. It's about Rosa Jiménez, a Mexican immigrant who ended up tried for murder after the accidental death of her babysitting charge. The wheels of justice do not grind equally for all.

Don't know much about the "hypnotic sexual thriller" Amor, Dolor & Viceversa from Mexico, but check out the description, maybe it floats your boat.

There are three artist-related docs: A Portrait of Diego on the frog-like Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Celia the Queen on the late Cuban diva Celia Cruz and Old Man Bebo about still alive but on in years Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés. Of the three, I'm betting on the last, fresher in subject at the very least.

Among the shorts, check out El Camino de Ana with the fabulous Marisa Paredes, La Hora Cero from Mexico, Bom Garoto from Brazil and the Latin casanova lesson Mamitas.

If you're curious about any of these movies, check their profiles at the Tribeca site. Most come with a trailer.

One screening you won't see me at is "90 Miles The Documentary," a making-of piece about Gloria Estefan's album by the same name. (Can we place a moratorium on "90 miles" references for anything Cuban?)

[images of Paraiso Travel, Tropa de Elite, Going on 13 and Old Man Bebo via Tribeca Film Fest site]

RIP Aimé Césaire

Maybe it just means I'm getting that much closer to death myself, but I feel like too many of the imprescindibles are leaving us these days. Martinican poet and revolutionary (valga la redundancia) Aimé Césaire died today in the island's capital Fort de France.

At 94, Césaire was around to see, and help bring about, the decolonization of his homeland, of Algeria (he was Frantz Fanon's mentor), the Black Power and Pan-Africanist movements. Not all those enterprises worked out perfectly, but they were still essential in moving realities.

Not only was he the founder of the pan-Black Négritude movement, and author of earth-shaking works like Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land) and Discourse on Colonialism, but he had a long political career as well.

He helped draft the legislation that turned France's Caribbean colonies into départments d'outre-mer and represented Martinique in French National Assembly. Representing the Communist Party, he was mayor of Fort de France from 1945 until 2001. Himself to the end, last year he refused to meet with Nicholas Sarkozy for his colonialist positions, instead supporting Ségolène Royal.

Reading Césaire's work as a graduate student opened up so many things for me: thinking of the tropics as a source of knowledge (not just a shadow of EuroAmerican originality), finding that punk spirit of creation-in-destruction in his quest for a new language to properly describe new realities, knowing that home and the world are not separate things, and that a lifetime's sustained fight for liberty is a worthy endeavor, even for a writer of ephemeral things.

Check a multimedia (image/sound) homage funded by UNESCO featuring work inspired by Césaire's universe and images. Love this quote from Césaire for the "necessary utopias" section:

Liberty is an act, a fruit. It is nothing more than actualization without end. At the end of the 20th Century, it is nothing more than a serene dream. Ideologies, with their heavy certainties, have shown their limits. Does the need for utopia reside in us, like a hardheaded dream? (My trans.)

Césaire is for me an example of how crucial it is for us to see how splitting the atom of language can happen even from a tiny island. Or rather, that the best views of the world as it is and as it can be only ever really happen from some sort of tiny island, or forgotten hill or lonely desert.

[pix of Césaire young, with Francois Mitterand and by the Caribbean via www.matinikphoto.com]

Nepotism alert: Gary Dauphin in NY, "Going on 13" in Tribeca

I've said it before in public, I'll say it bloggily for the whole world to know: I am very lucky to have insanely talented friends.

Going on 13 is a documentary my long-time friends Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Dawn Valadez have been working on for something like 7-8 years. It's finally done and getting several screenings locally at the end of the month at the doc's official World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival (more on that soon).

The doc, about the crucial changes four brown girls in NoCal go through between the ages of 9 and 13, is tender, empathetic and pulls no punches.

Among its charms, it presents a possible strategy for dealing with the obligations that we storytellers have to our subjects (something Sleep Dealer made me think about a lot): give your subjects say in the story, and always feature them in all materials apart from what the storytellers have to say about them. Ariana, Esmeralda, Isha and Rosie get to shoot video diaries and sometimes talk back to the filmmakers.

Kristy and Dawn (Dawn would say mostly Kristy) have set up a faboo website with info on the film, the girls, an installation representing the girls' rooms, and a blog. The blog currently features K&D's adventures at the Taiwan International Children’s TV and Film Festival (TICTFF), where they get to play with toys, hang with cool translators and eat glorious street food (girls after my own heart).

In the meantime, head downtown and into The Kitchen tonight at 7 pm for a reading linked to one of my favorite magazines, Bidoun. Three writers in the Spring/Summer issue talk about a triplet of telling objects. I'm heading down there to hear the always provocative Gary Dauphin talking about Eldridge Cleaver's pants. The event announcement promises "Magic tricks! Slide shows! A harrowing journey to the Cairo Agricultural Museum!" as well as a video by Ziad Antar. Fun for all.

If you don't know Gary's work, he's been writing a lot of late for The Root, and has revived his intriguing site, ebogjonson. Check it.

[Still of Isha and dumplings pix via Going on 13; Naguib Mahfouz's white linen suit illustration via Bidoun]