So I'm back from the EMP Pop Music Conference, which was fun, with performing academics (tho not enough), theorizing artists and lotsa smart-mouth music critics.
The good: My panel went well (it's certainly the first time I get hugs
from audience members afterwards). Everyone was properly wowed at Jim's
"Clumsy Sky" video (which I've highlighted here
before), and as loosey-goosey as my presentation about Yerba Buena,
Very Be Careful, the importance of creating and maintaining alternative
spaces was, I think it worked (see hugs).
Abraham killed it, not only because he went last, but because he was just as charming and quirky as I knew he would be. He played clips of jíbaro music that he heard as punk rock, Duke Ellington who he saw as mixing up all kinds of music and the kitchen sink, and then his own mixed-up music, asserting it as still Puerto Rican music. And Kraftwerk too. Even our moderator Louie was into it.
Other fave moments: the "Racial Ambivalence" panel, which according to the moderator was "not the Sasha Frere-Jones smackdown" (but really, it was), where S F-J was called a "paler Mailer" and Amy Winehouse came in second to Sandra Bernhard
as a "blues-face" impersonator; and Josh Kun's invocation of Calle 13,
Graciela Iturbide's "Mujer Angel" and LA radio character Don Cheto as migrant defenders.
The bad: Academic types who remind me why I ran away from academia for so many years. Like the guy whose paper was 99% dense Marxist & semiotic theory (talking about masculine chords and use-value) that somehow related to Perla Batalla, who I am not familiar with and whose significance I never got from the paper. And then there was the very nice but slightly clueless woman who it appears just discovered YouTube.
And don't get me started on the guy who talked about vomit-inducing Willy Chirino as a great example of transculturation in Cuban-American music. Same guy has a radio show in No. Carolina that has a big Mexican immigrant listenership. But he's surprised that they prefer pasito duranguense to Café Tacuba. Did I mention he was white?
The ugly: One thing's for sure: the EMP building is even more hideous in person than in pictures.
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