Sound Taste

Friday Miti Miti

Rita Indiana could easily be the Dominican Grace Jones.

In "Encendía" she makes herself seem even taller and more angular skulking around in a cemetery (I hear she's like 6'4"). I'd been waiting for a video to go with the funny weird wild Miti Miti record Altar Espandex, which was released a couple of months ago and I've been meaning to write about. (Coming soon, I promise.)

"Encendía" the song is  electrogagá plus minimalist merengue mambo horns, nonsense cutup lyrics that remind me a little of Josefina Báez and a lot of Las Chicas del Can. The video is all Afro-Catholic hyperbole (Joan of Arc/Anima Sola images plus all the voudou that fits, possession included).

Smells like Daddy Yankee

Daddy Yankee is herbal. At least that's what we surmise from the ingredients in the -- wait for it -- new perfume by the McCain endorser and debate moderator.

DY, coming out in March 2009, sounds like a combination between a windowsill herb garden, your grandma's moth-repelling closet liners and a nice jacket.

Or in the over-the-top language of "flavour and fragrance" makers, "sensory innovators" Givaudan, it is a “fruity marine fougére and features an opening accord of ozonic mist, apple and ginger, a heart of basil, sage and cedar, and base notes of Brazilian red wood, suede and amber."

I've never quite understood the notion of the celebrity perfume. What is it that I'm supposed to want to smell like if I say I want to smell like J.Lo? For performers, success smells like grajo from sweating like a fiend in synthetic fabrics after a sold-out performance. Yum.

Apparently, the perfume biz has become a bit like publishing -- moving from a long development process and a quest for classics with potential for long-term sales to plastering marquee names on hastily developed menjunjes set to expire when the celeb's fifteen (or thirty or 2.5) minutes do.

Two shows: (In)formed by Color and NeoHoodoo

Checked two art shows this weekend, one planned, one unplanned.

The one that had the most visceral impact was the unexpected one. Surprises always hit us harder. First Carlos Cruz-Diez's "Cromosaturación" here.

You approach a glowing room in the otherwise bland-ish gallery within the hoity-toity Americas Society on Park Avenue. You put on paper booties (expecting a hairnet and lab coat, too), walk past the sign that warns of disorientation and vertigo and step into a field of green.

Actually, the room is styrofoam-white, and has the same effect as a photographer's white backdrop, which when flooded with flash makes subjects look like they float in space. The green fluorescent light swells within the space, so that your skin is green, the very air is green.

Next to that is a space in red, and when you move into it, the shift is intense. The realities of the red universe are not the same as the green universe. You feel pulled by a different gravity, your blood a different density. Next room is blue, and the jerking sensation is the same.

It was impossible for us to photograph. Our puny cameras adjusted to "normalize" the color field and could not capture the psychedelic effect.

Simple stuff, but really effective in messing with your perception. Maybe there is something to the theory of auras and yoga commands to think in a color.

And at PS1, a show I'll talk about more soon, NeoHoodoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith. Springing from Ishmael Reed's "NeoHoodoo Manifesto" but really more about how the trauma of colonialism and slavery never quite kills subcutaneous knowledge of symbol and totem and ritual and acknowledgement of spirits and nature.

In the biggest hall, the pieces that had the most mojo (to my eyes): José Bedia's incantatory Las Cosas que me Arrastran (The Things that Drag Me Along), with the artist/shaman dragging with him/on him the spiritual charge of the African and the Native American, connected by the chains of the penitent, the pilgrim; Radcliffe Bailey's Storm at Sea, where a small Ogún in the corner haunts an ocean of wooden piano keys and a black black ship that will eventually doom his children; Sanford Biggers' Ghetto Bird Coat, needed camo for protection.

As one of the artists, Amalia Mesa-Bains said to me in an interview at the opening, it's a happy coincidence this show has opened now, when we need the refuge of spirituality most, to recharge for the change coming.

[Cromosaturación pix (not from Americas Society) by Jorge Mor@n 1 via Flickr; Bedia's Arrastran at PS1 by me]

Friday Chowí

God bless obsessive fans. It's the only reason that YouTube has as many Latin musical performances as it does.

Variety shows never went out of style in Latin America, so lots of groups performed on TV, providing a great visual archive of music and performers. That is, if the TV stations kept archives.

When I was trying to work on a doc on a Dominican musician a few years ago, we found out that it was nearly impossible to get archival footage, because tapes had either fallen apart, been re-used or simply damaged by heat and humidity.

But there are lots of VHS tapes taken off the air signal, lovingly dubbed and re-dubbed, and now on YouTube. I've actually become a connoisseur of sorts of the textures produced by various grades of decay.

I would date this video of "Pájaro Chowí" performed by Wilfrido Vargas y sus Beduinos to the late 70s by the width of the shirt collars and the circumference of the afros. This is the band almost at the height of its powers (which I think was 1980-1981), and a great example of all the lessons Vargas learned from salsa bands and dominicanized. Hard on the horns and letting the piano montuno anchor.

Vargas here is a great trumpet, backup voice and arranger (an informant just put Wilfrido's trumpeting in doubt). He didn't feel the need to take the central spotlight (a mistake he made later, just as Willie Colón did). Sandy Reyes' much sweeter voice does justice to the song.

My favorite part comes about 2:35, when "Yo estoy cantando" slows down the song and everything drops out except for a percolating piano, and discreet tambora and güira. And then the horns explode again. (Alas, the song cuts off).

"No one listens to merengue in Irak"

A story that ran last week in Puerto Rico's Primera Hora mentions how a merengue-loving resident of Puerta de Tierra had to be shushed during filming of the George Clooney-Ewan McGregor flick "Men Who Stare at Goats," based on a bizarre (and real) Army unit that claims to use paranormal weapons.

S/he was told the sound was disrupting the scene because "no one listens to merengue in Irak."

Aside from the incredible idea that Old San Juan can stand in for wartime Iraq, the production assistant was factually wrong. There is a lot of merengue and bachata and reggaetón in Iraq, in the mp3 players of Dominican-American soldiers (the DR retired its troops from Irak in 2004). The latest Dominican-American killed there was Sgt. Ricky Ulloa in August. There are dozens of others.

[h/t to Jorge for the story. Pix of Clooney on set from Primera Hora by Ana María Abruña]

Review: Calle 13 @ Nokia Theater

In short: Menos cafrería, más metales.

The new album may have fewer nasties, but on stage the Brothers 13 didn't really tune down the raunch that much. You still had immortal lines like "yo se que tu quieres chuparme las quenepas / aunque no sean de Ponce / no importa que no sean ni de oro, ni de plata, ni de bronce" (Suave); "Mujer tú eres toda una geometría / Tu tienes el pudín como me gusta / Estirao con estrías / como de repostería" (Cumbia de los aburridos); and, of course, the bad-taste classic, "Señorita intelectual, ya se que tienes / El área abdominal que va a explotar / Como fiesta patronal, que va a explotar / Como palestino..." (Atrevete te te!).

(My apologies to the non-Spanish readers. Suffice it to say, sexual innuendo involving tropical fruits, jiggly pudding and exploding bellies.)

Adding horns and reinforcing the beats -- drum kit, bateria, congas, timbales and tambora, often several going at once -- does stretch the sound in new directions. Though never fear, the theremin and melodica are still present. (Quiet Visitante often gets short shrift next to the vocal cafre charms of Residente, but he's what really has taken the band beyond a goof.)

The sonic soup now includes Balkan brass, heavier samba, batucadas, a dash of cumbia villera and some slips into the land of Two-Tone ska. All of a sudden, I flashed back to Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, circa "Matador" and "Rey Azúcar," when they found a similar sweet spot among the New Orleans-Miami-Kingston-Recife continuum.

The brothers are very intent on shaking off the "reggaetón" tag. Notably, Residente clarified that what they do is "música urbana." "Nosotros queremos ser los juglares del pueblo -- contar lo que pasa sexualmente, políticamente, religiosamente. Y eso es algo que se ha olvidado mucho en el género" (We want to be the people's bards -- talk about what happens sexually, politically, religiously. That's something that's been forgotten in the genre).

But the real secret weapon of Calle 13's current iteration is the sweet-voiced PG 13. Was she there before? Now she is definitely second voice and catching up fast. I even dare say, as much as I like the Tacoobs, that I prefer to hear her on "Nadie Como Tú." You can compare her performance here with the official video of the album version with Cafeta here.

[fuzzy Residente and PG 13 behind pink parasol by moi]

Friday Calle 13

OK, so I'm slightly obsessed with the Brothers 13. Wanna make something of it?

The new record, "Los de atrás vienen conmigo," drops Oct. 7. In the meantime, the group (with a more prominent role played by hermanita PG 13) previewed a couple of songs at MTV Tr3s' 2008 VMA Pre-Party.

"Fiesta de Locos" laces in a bit of Balkan brass into the usual mix. Pretty seamless, too. "Esto no es reggaetón / Pero como quiera bailas un montón / Si no te gusta esta canción / entonces tírate por un balcón / Calle 13 viene sin lubricación"

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Soca hangover

Slowly ramping up to regular bloggy activity again, having missed all the politrix excitement (Daddy Yankee's McCain endorsement, the tiro-por-la-culata Tina Fey VP pick, Gustav's still-damaging near-miss, etc.).

Went to the West Indian Parade yesterday, and to J'Ouvert in the wee hours for what I confess is the first time ever, with some excellent company: Wayne, Boima and Joe.

Wayne was disappointed in the lacking Jamaican representation, as was I. Jamaicans may win Olympic medals by the barrelful, but Trinis owned Brooklyn's version of carnival (despite t-shirts boasting that Jamaicans, Bajans, Grenadians, and so on, did).

To my mind, the Haitian contingents were the liveliest -- not just because Wyclef seemed to emerge from the crowd to jump atop some studio-apartment-sized speakers. The fast-fast compa, fortified with more blips and loops than a robot conversation, got all my mid-section Hispaniola solidarity going.

The Grenadian contingent was surprisingly large, both at J'Ouvert and the parade. There seemed to be thousands of red-yellow-green flags waving. Amazing, considering that only 7,205 Grenadians immigrated to New York between 1990 and 2000, and they don't even crack the top 40 immigrant groups to the city.

In the merch front, all the Obama stuff was really quite heartening (as Joe commented, "he's clearly got the foreign vote sewn up.")

[pan-Caribbean wristbands pix by moi] (I'm having technical difficulties posting photos)

Friday Guincho

Even with the rains, it's hot and muggy out there. So I've been listening to stuff I can bug out to. Big ups to Jace for turning me on to El Guincho (see the Fader piece he wrote on him), whose Canary Islands provenance it seems gives him a twisted perspective on rhythms. I dug this fan-made video to "Kalise." Simple FX. Basically a kaleidoscope lens. But matches the hypno-trippy fun vibe of the music.

He was supposed to perform today at a free South St. Seaport show, but seems like he's not coming. No news on his MySpace page. What happened?

Friday Mambo Gagá

Ever since I heard it coming out of a tinny car stereo in Santo Domingo, I've been wanting to track down what some friends identified as "electro gagá," a techno variant of the traditional voudou-related music played in processions in Holy Week in rural areas of the DR (in Haiti, it's called rara).

Have yet to find a record, but in one of Wayne's posts last week, on the heels of a post about avant duo Miti Miti, he posted a video of a kid dancing "gagá." Just what I'd been looking for. Super-stripped sound, an electric guitar playing the fututo part, a clave the only percussion, modern yet hypnotic. There's several videos of kids and other folks "bailando gagá," all to the same song.

And then I found the Pachemán y Griselito video below, which seamlessly mixes hip hop, "mambo" and gagá visually as well as musically. The men in the carnival costumes look to me like guloyas from San Pedro de Macorís. Some of the people dancing in back of the singers are marching in a procession, as gagá is traditionally performed. And all the folks dressed in white (albeit short and skin-tight) reference the religious nature of the original music/dance. Although, what is up with the one singer's Gilligan outfit?