Sound Taste

Friday Prodigio

Here's another bonbon for accordion month, this time my favorite representative of new-school perico ripiao.

Perico ripiao, a fast version of merengue played with button accordion, tambora & metal güira, was a regional form from the Cibao region that was popularized nationally during the Trujillo era (see material in this excellent Paul Austerlitz book for the historical background. Dominican scholar Dagoberto Tejeda has also written some great stuff, which alas is not readily available here in los países).

Perico ripiao was displaced from the center of Dominican popular music in the 50s and 60s by so-called orchestral merengue (really big-band, analogous to mambo bands in NY) and later by the nimble, funk- and rock-influenced merengues of the likes of Johnny Ventura and Wilfrido Vargas.

But perico ripiao never really went away, and it's remained a viable genre. In the early 90s, I found a couple of amazing compilations of perico ripiao, which had been rebranded as merengue típico. There were older stars, like El Cieguito de Nagua, and younger players, like La India Canela (one of the few women accordionists around).

There's a thriving perico ripiao scene in NYC, which Sidney Hutchinson has documented and is writing about. And in that scene, El Prodigio, né Krency García, is an undisputed star.

I've been dying to see this guy live, but he only seems to play Monday nights in the middle of the Bronx or at 3 am in Bushwick.

The video below is shaky, but not the worst of the bunch on YouTube. The song below is "El Refrán (Rebeca)," which he performs often. Watch first the sax-accordion combo, then about a minute and a half into the song, Prodigio tears it up. Sound quality varies wildly, but enjoy anyway.

Friday "Toa"

Some folks (like Wayne) have been sharing new reggaetón songs that depart from the dembow tyranny, which makes me think that despite the greatly exaggerated rumors of the genre's death, it may just be moving on to the next stage of development.

Ran across the video below in Daniel Hernandez's blog, and as a Calle 13 freak, I just couldn't pass it up. Daniel calls it a "Calle 13 video featuring Big Yamo," but really it's the other way around. The Colombian singer, from Cartagena, sounds good, as does the electric violin. I'll be loading it on my BBQ iPod mix.

Though this is touted in YouTube as the "official video," it doesn't take an expert to recognize the Calle 13 clips come from "Tango del Pecado," "Atrévete" and "Se Vale To."

As usual, the bellaco sexiness in Residente's lyrics comes to the fore and pushes aside Yamo's serviceable "quiero tocarte toa y hacerte mi señora" refrain. But it's all good. And it's way better than the other version, with Natya, which urges her partner to "sube el dembow." Por favor, que BAJEN el dembow.

Jailhouse merengue

While in the clink last week, merengue de calle star Omega made good use of his time, writing a new song, "Dueño," which you can preview below in a bare-bones video filmed in the Najayo jail. (Thx to remolacha for highlighting the video.)

The song is a basic boast:

Dueño, el talento que no tiene nombre ni tiene horizonte
Sueño, mi música no tiene cola ni ruido de pistola
Aparecerán los que hablen mal de mí, pero yo soy pa tí
Ellos jugarán con lo más sagrado que yo tenga, te lo querrán quitar...

Basically: my talent has no limit, my music doesn't need gun sounds (gangsta posturing), people gossip about me, want to take away what most matters (but they won't succeed).

Love the minimal but clearly merengue de calle beats against the bench, the lazy but on-time choruses. Guess his success is not all due to production, after all. Also love how savvy it is about using the on-the-fly, lo-tech uses of YouTube (he starts out, "Let's fix this video, which is turning into a piece of crap, and do something to send to YouTube."

While serving a sentence for allegedly beating his wife, Omega also played a concert. Not quite Johnny Cash in San Quentin, but still in the tradition of jail time serving as a boost to an outlaw image. This fueled rumors that the jail time was a publicity stunt. Who knows.

Omega served only a week of his three-month prison sentence and was released on RD$1M (about US $29,000) bail yesterday after his wife dropped the charges.

[Najayo concert pix via diario libre]

The other f'd up campaign for prez

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Friday video with a note on presidential elections that have been more tedious and annoying than the one in the U.S. Dominicans are voting today for prez, and you don't have to be a genius to guess that incumbent Leonel Fernandez will be re-elected.

At this time last year, the three major parties had spent RD$409M (about US$12M) -- by now, they've probably spent ten times that amount. Among the expenses? Ads with celebrity endorsers like Vin Diesel.

One of Leonel's big initiatives in this past term (aside from the metro for the misbegotten) has been making the DR a Hollywood-friendly location. He's taken a few trips to the Dream Factory with his wife to cozy up to movie execs, spending millions from the public till.

This "work," and the fact that a long list of celebs have getaways in Cap Cana and other tropical fortresses in the vicinity, has yielded a couple of shoots -- The Good Shepherd and Miami Vice.

Now where does the muscly ex-bouncer and living video game avatar fit into all this? According to a couple of reliable sources, Vin's bio-dad is some Dominican tiguere, and he spent some time there last year getting cozy with his padre patria. That may explain my unholy attraction to him.

Diesel ran some acting and directing classes last year (don't laugh), and has talked about opening up a film school there. (What Godardian or Almodovarian or Scorscesian insights into film Diesel might offer are still a bit of a mystery, but given the current quality of Dominican-made film, it can't possibly hurt).

All of this greased and facilitated by Hollywood-craving Leonel. So payback time came around, as it did for more unambiguously Dominican celebs like merengueros, bachateros & peloteros.

There's a series of 5 Diesel spots, with overlapping material. Most have amped-up behind-the-scenes action film footage and feature various versions of the following dialogue:

"Dominicanos, que tanto quiero, que lo bueno no cambia. Para mi gente, vota por Leonel, el presidente. Es p'alante que vamos" (the last is the campaign's slogan)

Not as cool as the Obama videos Gary Dauphin wrote about this week, but hey.

Listening to Vin, it appears he's just starting to learn Spanish, but already the tigueraje seems to be rubbing off.

Literary insularism: a wee rant

My post last week about the diasporic-phobic intellectuals in the DR prompted some intense responses, mostly by dominicanos here and mostly in private.

But island-based poet/editor Frank Báez wrote a longish, eloquent assessment in the comments section I share with you in translation below.

When Junot came to Santo Domingo to present “Drown,” not only did people think his book was garbage, but at the reading one guy stood up and offered to punch him.

That was more than 10 years ago. Since then, Dominican intellectuals strived to destroy the book and as the years went by and Junot did not publish a follow-up they put him down.

The funny thing is that all those people who destroyed him and made fun, people I imagine sticking pins into a Junot voodoo doll, are the same who weeks ago were photographed at his side in the home of the gringo ambassador and in the National Palace, celebrating his Pulitzer. “The first Dominican Pulitzer.”

The sad thing is none of these intellectuals have written about the book. Sad, but good for some, was also his visit to the Feria del Libro in 2006 when only a handful of people went. Since everyone dissed him, some of us were able to get to know him, speak to him and stay in touch. This led to his working with our magazine Ping Pong and the journal Hermano Cerdo.

My girlfriend tells me that of the people who went to the talk at this year’s Feria del Libro, an audience of more than 300 people, only a couple of students, no more than a dozen people, had copies of Drown or Wao with them. The people who introduced him and those who asked questions used a wikipedia entry as reference. They knew nothing of his work, and asked only the most general of questions, nothing related to the books. I think that says it all.

When we talk about Dominican literary intellectuals, we still only refer to people who are no longer qualified to make those judgments by the simple fact that they do not partake of a literary life. Meaning, they’re not publishing books that are interesting, or keeping an active, thoughtful life in the literary world and media. They’re people who only attend literary cocktails, who I call coctelistas.

Did I mention media? In Santo Domingo, we no longer see literary sections in newspapers. They’ve all been dismantled. Journals are nowhere to be seen. The only presence of Dominican writers is on the internet.

I think that instead of organizing meetings that are used for tourism (which is not bad in and of itself), it would be more fruitful to find a way for literary projects here and there to get to know each other. Let’s translate, and edit good books.

For example, we could do one called “La Isla Entera” (The Whole Island) where Dominicans from all places can write. Not just the ones on the island, but the ones in the U.S., in Spain, Holland, Argentina, etc. An anthology to pull all those folks together.

Title aside (which to me implies that it should include work from Haitian writers), I love this project. Anyone who wants to give me or Frank names of folks who should be in there can do so by emailing me via this site, or him at his site.

Junot in Dominilandia

I swear I don't have a Junot obsession, and that he doesn't pay me to promote him. But it's not every day a Dominican writer is top literary news in the U.S. When the next one (and the one after that) hits, I'll be there too.

I was curious about how he was received in the DR post-prize. Last week he was one of two featured guests (the other was Derek Walcott) at the Feria del Libro, the country's annual book fair.

When Drown came out and he visited the island, he was as roundly trashed as Julia Alvarez was, for the same stupid reasons those of us living in English are: we've been away too long, we write in English, we write about cultural references they don't get, we're not obsessed enough with Trujillo, and if we are, we get our facts wrong. Nuyoricans can chime in any time.

I wondered if the AngloAmerican literary establishment's seal of approval would change things.

Media reports like this one and this one mostly stuck to the facts: he was there, he was controversial, everyone wanted to kiss his ass. The Listin Diario gave more space to announcing he'd be attending a lunch with the U.S. ambassador than to anything he said. And he was named Literary Ambassador of the Dominican Republic. Um. Yeah. Whatever.

The pull-quote of choice was a good 'un: "Dominican racism prepared me quite well for dealing with racism in the U.S." He shared an anecdote about being kept out of a nice Dominican club a few years back for being too dark.

Other remarks that appeared in press accounts which I suspect hit DR audiences a little hard were his comment that when he hears late dictator lite Joaquín Balaguer called "the genius of the people," "I die laughing."

Film/video editor Harold Martinez was at the talk, and shared some quick comments (we'll update with a more thorough account once he sends it in). He said that for the Dominican literary and political establishment, Junot is "almost an alien" and that "many criollos are pissed because he's not, according to them, Dominican."

The book, the Pulitzer, the visit and the reaction to it in the DR, said Harold, "has just raised the bar in terms of how much we [are] separate from each other...The one's born and raised in the motherland, vs the one's raised in the united."

At the Dominican Studies Association conference last week, I think the same day that Junot spoke in the DR, CUNY trustee Hugo Morales suggested we have an encuentro between island-based writers and diaspora writers. In theory, it's a great idea, but in this world, I have no interest in such a meeting.

We in the diaspora have the vantage point that lets us see links across countries, past superceded rivalries, down to the rooted structure of common oppressions. And many of us have lost our patience with educating a puny intellectual bourgeoisie that sees us as desecho rather than the future.

An exchange like that Morales proposes already happened, in 2001, thanks to a Rockefeller grant secured by Prof. Silvio Torres-Saillant. While Dominican intellectuals were happy to travel to the US on the foundation dime, they did not support the U.S. folks when they traveled to the island. No, thanks.

On the other hand, I do have hopes for the younger generation. As I've noted here, they are not as rigid about distinguishing between aquí y allá, possibly because many of them have moved back and forth. Strengthening those ties would be a more fruitful project.

[Feria del Libro pix via El Nacional; Leonel/Balaguer pix via britannica.com]

Nuyoricans and NuNuyoricans

Is Nuyorican poetry a relic of the past? Judging by the Nuyorican Poets Café's 35th Anniversary celebration at Town Hall last weekend, it's "Aloud and Alive," for real.

There were moments of self-parody in the evening. That came both with some of elders and with some of the younger people, especially the Nuyorican National slam team. They seemed like nice kids, but slams have bred a focus on flash and hectoring energy, a performance pattern that can be, that must be, copied and pasted in order to win, to outshout the other team.

In that setting, poets trying other voices, other tones, things that don't sound like hip hop MCs, tend to get eliminated. Some eventually find their individual sound, but I can't say I have the patience to sit through it all to wait out the chaff.

But on to the show. Some highlights:

Santo Pedro Pietri: The Rev. Pedro Pietri was invoked more often by more poets of all generations than any of the others in the lengthy list of the dead. And when the Café offered an award to the Acentos crew in the Bronx. it came in the form of a life-sized bust of Pedro.

The bust remained on stage the rest of the show, watching over the proceedings. Pedro's young son Speedo came out in Pedro drag and recited a couple of his dad's poems, including one from my favorite "Telephone Booth" series.

Vindicating Rosie Pérez: She was the Hollywood juice in the event, and despite the unbearable squeak of her voice and the treacle of her film, I give Rosie props for maintaining a real, living commitment to her Nuyorican community and important issues like AIDS, unlike some other girl from the block. Funny to think that back in In Living Color, Rosie was the choreographer and that girl was just one of the dancers.

The Black-Latino Alliance: Despite all the ridiculousness about Black-Latino conflict (Who's the biggest? Who's more victimized? Who gets the thin slice of pie?), the show demonstrated some deep historical and contemporary ties, by calling up Black Arts Movement writers and, among others, by the electrifying joint performance by poet Carlos Andrés Gómez and hoofer Savion Glover (a nice surprise for sure).

Best use of annoying pop song: La Bruja really is blossoming from a poet to a well-rounded performer. She came out in the guise of a silly boy, and after a couple of poems, segued into singing to a suspiciously familiar backup track. The chorus: "arroz con habichuelas, elas, elas, elas, eh, eh, arroz con habichuelas, elas, elas, eh, eh." Yup, that song. She had the whole audience singing along.

Yerbabuena is ready for prime time: Why in the world was their four-song set sandwiched in the middle of the show, while the downtempo Banana Pudding got to open and close? People were walking out when the jazz-lite band came back at the end. What we should have had was the rousing voices and drums of the tight-tight YB. All in red and black, they were sharp. And having Flaco Navaja sing with them (which he no longer does on a regular basis) was a treat. We would have bomba'd out of the theater if they'd closed.

[Pix of Yerbabuena, Rev. Pedro bust, Speedo & Rich Villar, Rosie, Carlos & Savion and La Bruja & Flaco by mamarazzi via Flickr]

Friday Chino-Latino

What's up with the reggaetón videos tipping at Chinese/East Asian images of late? Is it a reaction to the burgeoning China-Latin America economic connection?

This aside from reggaetón's Bollywood influence, which in the case of Tito El Bambino, can be traced directly to Luney's sister Inés Saldaña, a Dominican deeply immersed in South Asian culture.

Arcángel's video "Pa Que La Pases Bien" features the image of a plane traveling from China to Colombia to Russia to PR. His partner is, from some angles, Asian-looking. And then there's dancers dressed in, um, coolie costumes. (Granted, there's also some stereotypical jíbaro and cossack figures, but still).

One of the earlier chinoiseries in popular Latin music is Tito Puente's "Hong Kong Mambo" and this El Gran Combo jala-jala song "Ojitos chinos."

And then there's the commercial popularity of salsa, merengue, bachata and now reggaetón in Japan, the Philippines, etc. Of course, the grand prize is Chinese audiences and a piece of the new Chinese prosperity.

Calle 13's song "Japón" used stereotypes of Asians (including pronunciation, Orientalist images and a repeating guitar line) to poke fun at Latinos' unwillingness to distinguish between different nationalities and the growing importance of Asia as a market.

And then there's this wildly offensive video (though the beat works) of "Bachata China con Flow" by El emperador de la bachata y los dragones de Boca Chica, a novelty song which nods to an increased Chinese migration into the DR (the DR has a long-standing Chinese immigrant population, since the 1940s, but it has increased greatly in the last few years, as the DR has become a popular jumping-off point for undocumented migration into the U.S. and has become a good investment opportunity on its own).

Abraham Rodriguez Jr.'s New Puertorro Noir Novel

The South Bronx's answer to Johnny Rotten is back. Abraham Rodriguez (he made fun of me for still using the Jr., though it's on the book cover) has made an intriguing sharp left into the mystery genre with the cleverly titled South by South Bronx.

Here's the interview I did with him for Viva. Our conversation was much longer, and more pleasant than I expected given how he came across in most of his early interviews.

In the mid-1990s, when he aspired to be a punk rock Balzac, and the language in his debut novel Spidertown made him the next Boricua literary hope (think of it -- how many known Nuyorican prose writers are there these days?), it seemed that every interview with him had him trashing "Latino writers" and "Latino literature."

In interviews like this one, he was portrayed as "an angry young man." Anarchy in the Bx. But after talking I realized he was engaging in a healthy polemic against the flattening wrought by marketing. The When I Was Puerto Rican syndrome, how only certain Latino narratives are seen as "marketable," as "representative," the sort of thing that prompted the McOndo rebellion.

"I am against this whole concept of homogenizing Latinos. Cubans have a different experience, Dominicans have a different experience. It's nice to be united, but we're not all the same. Fifteen years ago it was 'Hispanic.' I'm not 'Hispanic,' I'm Puerto Rican. I have a different history. I have different self-identity issues than a gangbanger from L.A."

He says he's not angry, just passionate, but there is some vinegar in his portrayal of how the art and literary worlds treat his two boricua artist stand-ins, Mink and Monk, who spend much of the novel suffering from post-success creative paralysis.

"I've been toying with the character of Monk for 15 years. I've never seen anyone write about the experience of being a Puerto Rican writer, a painter, a musician. You get the idea of what's out there in the market, how you've been marketed."

In another part of the conversation, boosting my thesis that we are in a Brown sci-fi moment, we discussed the myriad references to Kurt Vonnegut in the new novel. (Vonnegut will be the subject of an forthcoming post.)

Detective Sanchez, one of the main characters in the novel, talks about Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan as depicting the Puerto Rican condition. Earthlings are captured by Martians, have induced amnesia and are sent back to earth as soldiers to fight against their planetary fellows. "That's what's happened to us, we don't remember our condition as a colony," said Rodriguez.

"There were things [Vonnegut] said that were prophetic," said Rodriguez. "The nitty-gritty of the human condition. I was very sad to see how he was treated in the American press after he died, like he was a kook."

Rodriguez, like it seems a new generation of American artists, has found Berlin a hospitable artistic home. In some ways, he said, New York is more provincial than it thinks itself to be, and straitjackets identities. "I've always thought about the concept of the Puerto Rican as a world traveler. We have such a dualistic concept, of PR and the mainland. What if you're PR and the world?"

He's got five readings in town. One is at 7 pm in the B&N in Tribeca, the rest are in homier locales: Fri., May 2, 6pm at Cemi Underground in El Barrio; Sun., May 4, 3pm at Sunny's Bar in Red Hook; Sun., May 4, 7pm at KGB Bar and back on home turf on Wed., May 7, 6:30pm at the Longwood Gallery, within Hostos Community College in the Bronx.

[author's photo by Giancarli for the NY Daily News]

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]