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?
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