Showing posts with label Hardie Karges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hardie Karges. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Tucson's Hypertravel Hostel Proudly Supports Public Radio KXCI! (not Jay Z, just sayin')...

I Amplify KXCI
Is the new celebrity-studded 'Tidal' subscription music service, supported by the likes of Jay Z, Madonna, Beyonce and music's favorite bully Kanye, really a game-changer?  Will it succeed wildly where other streaming services like Pandora and Spotify have fallen short?  I have a better question: who cares?  Remember, we're just talking about a newer, arguably hipper internet-based form of radio, after all.  Huh?  Radio?  Maybe a little back story helps:

Radio: the word inspires... not much really, not any more, and yet it has been the soundtrack to many of our lives, up until now, not bad for a medium whose electromagnetic waves were not even theorized until 1873 by James Clerk Maxwell, and whose frequencies were first proven to exist by Heinrich Hertz in 1886, with practical applications first experimented in 1896 by Guglielmo Marconi, and commercial broadcasting begun in the US in the 1920's.  That's quite the international success story: kudos (and don't call it 'wireless' any more)...

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Globalquerque! Rockin' in the Free World...

Los Texmaniacs
Music festivals are one of my favorite things in the entire world, 'world' music especially, music originating outside the dominant Anglo-American English-language pop juggernaut that gets exported everywhere. It's nice when it even trickles down to the provinces, further proof that good things can happen outside large cities. Albuquerque, New Mexico, is good for that.

It's nice to hear what traditional cultures can do on their own, and its especially nice to not have to search so long and hard for it at the source. You already know how hard it is to go to Cuba. And these days you might find more Malian music outside the country than within. That's convenient, considering that the country itself is largely destroyed, victim of Muslim fundamentalism. Mali is one of world music's greatest success stories.

Friday, August 30, 2013

SHARQ TARONALARI Music Fest in Samarkand: Great Music & People, Too Many Babies & Police

I guess I’m a sucker for spectacle.  I’ve been known to watch the Olympics opening ceremonies (just leave out the smoke machines, please), and I’ve traveled around the world more than once with music and cultural events in mind and on the itinerary, if not exactly the destination per se.  That includes WOMAD’s and Womexes, and multiple SXSW’s, and music and cultural festivals in cities as diverse as Livingstone-Zambia, Pyongyang-North Korea, and Zanzibar.  

Sharq Taronalari is not the kind of music festival where you top up on your favorite intoxicant, then boogie till the sun comes up with music from all over the world.  No, this is more like music carefully curated from state-sponsored entities in Uzbekistan in coordination with state-sponsored agencies in foreign countries to provide representative selections from representative groups to showcase the world’s ethnic diversity, sort of an Olympics of world music, without the competitive edginess.
 
No, this is not WOMAD.  But then again, it’s not North Korea’s Arirang Mass Games, either, a carefully orchestrated propaganda spectacle that would rival or surpass the opening to the Beijing Olympics in showmanship, but still a carefully-staged propaganda event.  Still, here you are expected to sit down.  That’s one of the only problems really, not that kids threaten to turn the venue into their own private playground, but that the Soviet-era authorities seem overly concerned to try and stop it, acting as truant officers to control the miscreants, to the point of limiting access to the festival’s entry.     
 

Thursday, August 22, 2013

The End is Near: Get it While the Getting’s Good…


It had to happen sooner or later, of course, that the summer would end, and that life would resume its typical humdrum course of ‘normalcy,’ as if summer were more of a carnival show than a respite, more of a vocation than a vacation, since huge sums are made and squandered in the business end of summer—traveling, resting, relaxing, recreating, and procreating, or working at it, anyway. 

Friday, August 16, 2013

Hollywood Babel On: Summer Winding Down? No, It’s Just Getting Hotter…


It is the best of times; it is the worst of times.  It is Rome before the Fall.  It is the last cabaret in Berlin.  The Emperor sips tea while the opposition join forces at the gate.  Still the violins play on while the Titanic sinks.  Nothing stops the music.  Nothing silences the singing.  Nothing can suppress the art that decorates our lives and simultaneously gives it meaning.  That’s the key to our survival.  That’s our tiny window in the upper corner of a stifling prison cell, a little patch of blue and a little ray of hope in the darkest and direst of situations.  In other words—and I quote—“loosen your butt screws” and dance a little.  The Fall will come later.  For now it’s still summer.

Friday, August 02, 2013

HOLLY WOOD BABEL: Peruano, Africano, Colombiano, Angeleno… Novalima, guey



Did you know that Peru had Africans?  If you’ve heard (of) Susana Baca, then you did; or should, anyway.  They’ve been there since the early days of Spanish colonialism, though never in huge numbers, apparently.  Still it doesn’t exactly fit the image of an Andean nation with an Amerindian culture defined by its high degree of advancement and largely unassimilated entrance into the modern age.  That’s the point, that the races in Peru never really mixed, natives confined to the Cordillera, and whites content to stay along the coasts where they—and their African slaves—landed.

Friday, July 26, 2013

HOLLYWOOD BABEL: Speaking in Tongues—Ethiopian, Arabic, Castellano, Anglo


If you saw the movie “La Bamba” many years ago, and hopefully paid attention to the Los Lobos soundtrack, then you know there’s a folk version of that song that predates the pop-rock version that Richie Valens made famous, and in many ways is superior to it.  Did you know that it goes on forever?  My favorite verse is the one that begins: “Para subir al cielo…”, reminding me of the Spanish title of the Bunuel film “Mexican Bus Ride,” se necesita,  una grande escalera…” and so on into infinity.  I think at some point Jarocho son masters just make up their own verses and let the Homies decide what sticks.  And now Las Cafeteras does their own East Los Angelized version that just happens to rock, not suck.  Got politics? 

The best part of living in LA (‘Hollywood’ for short) for me is that it is at the crossroads of so many immigrant cultures.  With the possible exception of Nueva York, I doubt that any other American city even comes close.  Miami?  Naah.  Chicago?  No way.  Even my favorite city San Francisco really only specializes in a few Asians in geographical symmetry and a few Hispanics in cultural sympathy.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Summer Heats Up in LA



How’s this global warming working out for you?  If it gets any hotter, I might have to go buy some beachfront property in Point Barrow, and charge tolls from oil tankers looking for a northwest passage straight over the North Pole.  I know some people like it like this, and most others would prefer to ignore global climate change rather than give up their petroleum-guzzling toys.  It’s an exciting time to be alive; I’ll give it that.  Fortunately, there is plenty of outdoor entertainment in the summer, though the cocktail waitresses can’t be too happy about that, can they?  

Friday, July 12, 2013

VIEUX ANEW: FARKA ME 2


“Hendrix of the Desert:” don’t you just love that name they try to hang on Vieux Farka Toure’, son of Ali, son of Ishmael and Mariam?  Yeah, about as much as I love PR rap in general, and ad copy in particular.  About as much as I love the attempt to fit Alex Cuba with the title “Hendrix of the North” or “Hendrix of Kootenay” or whatever it was, a few years ago.  The problem, in both cases, is that it’s just not accurate.  Alex Cuba’s pop guitar stylings are wonderful, but closer to Eddie Van Halen than those of His Majesty Hendrix.  And I dig Vieux, too, but he ain’t Hendrix; hey, he’s not even from the desert!  Hometown Niafunke is still the Sahel, not Sahara, last time I checked, and he obviously has sub-Saharan—not Semitic or Berber—physical characteristics, as the neighboring Tuareg do. 

Friday, June 28, 2013

Vaud and the Villains - How Do You Spell E-C-L-E-C-T-I-C?



The last thing I had in mind when I left my apartment last Saturday was to receive some musical epiphany at LA’s MacArthur Park… yes, THAT MacArthur Park.  I really wanted to go see Alex Cuba at Levitt Pavilion in Pasadena but just couldn’t talk myself into riding the metro for an hour and a half just to see a show probably not even that long and then ride the darn thing home again.  And I really like Alex Cuba, but you know what they say: “Time is money.” 

Friday, June 07, 2013

GREAT TRAVELS, GREAT WRITERS: Stephens & Leonowens



Have you ever noticed that the best travel writers never really considered themselves as such?  Look at anybody’s list of favorites and you’ll see names like Kerouac, Bowles, Matthiessen, etc. quite often, along with names like Theroux and Iyer, writers who certainly consider themselves travel writers, but not exclusively.  You’ll only rarely if ever see a guidebook writer.  But there is a historical tradition which goes back directly to Marco Polo and Ibn Battutah , and even Tacitus and Herodotus, before them. 

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Голос кочевников : Dengue Fever Live in Ulan Ade, Buryatia, Siberia, Russia? Oh yeah, baby, right there, that’s good…


 





My glorious career as a music promoter lasted a total of one band (I count time in personalities, not days-months-years).  Let’s just say it wasn’t my cup of pu-erh.  And no, I’m not some rich kid who decided to hire a hip breakout band for my fancy birthday party.  I’m actually a half-way respected travel and world music journalist with a background of intensive and extensive travel, and dealings in folk art and world-based cottage industries. 

Friday, February 22, 2013

SIXTO RODRIGUEZ: A Tale of Three Continents… and the #MassMarketing of #BigBox #America


searching for sugar man oscar best documentary feature predictions



Primero, Segundo, Tercero, Cuarto, Quinto, and… and… Sixto, ahhhh…  And the sixth time was a charm (not that the first five weren’t), and Sixto Diaz (Jesus) Rodriguez came into this world on July 10, 1942, the sixth son of Mexican immigrants working in war-time Detroit, more than three years before atomic bombs would fall on Japan and twenty-five years before rockets would land men on the moon.  No one would have predicted that his life would have been easy, but no one would have predicted that it would turn out like it did, either.  It all started with his love of music and song and… words full of meaning.  In case you don’t know the story yet—though you likely will soon if all goes well at the Oscars Sunday night---it goes something like this: in 1967 he released his first single “I’ll Slip Away” on a small label, to general neglect, and in 1970 and 1971 he released two killer albums, “Cold Fact” and “Coming from Reality,” on a larger label, also to general neglect.  He was immediately dropped from the label, of course, and so he discontinued his musical career in favor of jobs generally revolving around the related acts of construction and demolition.  But an Australian company picked up the rights to his work because his stuff was selling a bit there.  He even toured Oz in 1979 and 1981 with Midnight Oil.  And that was that.  He remained philosophical, of course, so in 1981 he got a BA in philosophy; so did I. 

Thursday, January 24, 2013

MALI’S JIHAD #4, and Counting: The Day the Music Stopped





It’s horrible, of course, the war currently going on in Mali, the desecration of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu, and the disruption of lives in a place where life doesn’t allow much margin for error.  Maybe the most ironic aspect of it all is that Mali has been able to cast itself so successfully in the last twenty years as the capital of world music, starting with Ali Farka Toure’ and including dozens of regional stars in its roll-call before making Ali’s son Vieux its latest luminary.  The griot and djeli traditions go back much farther than that, of course, which is about all that can be reliably said on the history of the subject.  Urban legends of Tuareg revolutionaries turning in their guns for guitars may be more or less accurate, if generously embellished for marketing purposes, but the claim of being able to trace American blues or jazz back to a single village in Mali is probably an over-simplification, if not necessarily false, given only anecdotal evidence and no clear genetic links.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Great Travelers, Great Stories



Traveling through space is geography.  Traveling through time is history.  I just finished reading the Travels of Marco Polo and Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux simultaneously; okay, actually I was alternating between them.  As fate would have it, they’re traveling somewhat the same route, at least part of the way.  No I didn’t plan it that way.  If I had, then it wouldn’t be serendipity.  I like that word, and I like the meaning behind it, the happy accident; the brilliant mistake.  It’s not a race, because I already know who’d win.  Slow as they are, trains are fast compared to caravan travel on the Silk Road, or even the open seas, which was the only option in Marco Polo’s time.  But as long as every picture tells a story, then overland travel is eminently worthwhile.  Once they’re known and renowned, then even the most impressive trail among them can become boring.

The strangest thing is not that Polo’s observations seem so dated, though, as you would expect from travels that occurred some 750 years ago.  No, the strange thing is how dated Theroux’s observations seem.  Those observations are barely forty years old, and occurred in an era that I know well, the same one that gave birth to my own significant travels.  In fact if I had to place them within a historical continuum between Polo’s era and this date of January 2012, then I’d place them about half-way, which is to say that almost as much has happened within the last forty years as in the seven hundred which preceded it.  If that s

Monday, October 08, 2012

GOLDTHWAIT’S FILM “GOD BLESS AMERICA” HOLDS THE MIRROR UP TO ALL OF US





It is the best of times; it is the worst of times.  We make love to our iPhones and our egos, while begrudging food for the poor and health care for the indigent.  I don’t know whether to disclose or disguise my disgust and disdain for the America of 2012: an America whose obstructionist Congress of hicks and rednecks, flat-earthers and holy-rollers, have wasted two years of our lives treating our kindest and wisest President worse than the shoeshine boy that they obviously wish he were; an America so engorged on violence and inured to it that the cause isn’t even discussed anymore, merely whether we prefer homicide or suicide; an America so dumbed down that it prefers its arts and entertainment in the form of reality TV, and its presidential elections, too.  No, I can’t decide whether to disclose or disguise my disgust and disdain.  Both paths have their perils.  If I disclose my disgust, then I’m unpatriotic.  If I disguise it, then I’m dishonest.  So I look for others to do it for me.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

KEROUAC vs. ROLLINS, CRITIQUES or CRITICISMS, POLITICS & POLITENESS, AND THE GLORY THAT WAS PEORIA


I’ve often speculated that our golden age—like many others before it—must sooner or later be followed by a corresponding dark age of confusion and ignorance in some Hegelian meta-dialectic of history that must trump the comparatively logical meanderings of evolution, both biological and cultural.  We’ll have to start all over—won’t we?—the only question being the starting point.  Our current cultural trajectory—gas-guzzling and mass-consuming and baby-producing—is simply not sustainable.  Everybody knows it—witness the many end-of-days movie themes—yet no one is doing anything about it.  There are no futuristic movies of healthy functioning societies.  No, they’re all dysfunctional… unless they’re on a spaceship.  The glory that was Peoria (my metaphor for high-tech civilization superimposed upon not-so-high-tech societies) may all crash down precipitously, unless some governments and societies can figure out a way to make the changes incremental and less drastic.  The guy with the sign reading, “The end is near,” just may be right.  Global climate change aside, the poop just may hit the ventilator regardless of what we do.

And sure enough dialogue in the US seems to have turned nasty in the last few years, as if the election of a black President—an intelligent black President at that—were reason enough to throw all social niceties to the wind and hunker down for the impending Apocalypse, every man for himself and a woman for him, too, barefoot and pregnant and begging for forgiveness.  With the possible exception of the new poverty classes, probably nothing illustrates the paradigm shifts underway within modern societies better then the rise of a certain social medium or two which has changed the way people interact, socialize, and even think.  That’s medium—neither rare nor well-done.  If Facebook is the paradigm and ultimate dictator of short-attention-span fashion, then Twitter, Tumblr, and another large handful of online commentaries are the ranks and hierarchies through which multitudes of blogs and lesser opinions find their way into the critical mass of consciousness. 

The mainstream media even gets swept into the fray through their online offerings, and it ain’t all pretty.  Read the comments below any online article, no matter how minor, and the vitriol, hatred, and stupidity are so thick as to be almost incomprehensible from any rational viewpoint.  Everybody’s an expert now, and a critic, too, and full of opinions that preclude any compromise.  If Internet is the new democracy, then social media are the new tyranny.  Like an earlier Industrial Revolution was the death of the craftsmanship that preceded it, the new technological revolution could be the death of professional expertise, intelligent commentary, and even worse—politeness.  Apparently it’s occurred to few people that ‘kissing up’ is not the only reason to be polite.  Civil discourse and tolerance of opposing positions is good in itself. 

Notwithstanding that “politeness” and “politics” ultimately derive from the same root word, the concept extends far beyond the sometimes life-and-death business of government into fields that are nothing but matters of opinion, such as the arts.  We aren’t nasty to each other for political expediency.  We’re nasty because it’s in our lower nature to be so, and that’s all anyone seems to care about anymore.  Criticism—whether literary, music, film, real estate or whatever—can be tricky business.  Obviously it’s opinionated, by definition, but sometimes the critic can simply be wrong or misguided.  The critic should have some credentials in the field in which he’s critiquing, preferably, but that seems to be no deal-killer usually.  Since reviews are usually written, he or she should also be a good writer, but… you know.  In fact sometimes a critic can offer a better critique in a field in which he’s not also a creator, something about conflicts of interest, I suppose. 

Anyway I think I’ve seen both sides of this (I review music; others review my writing) and have formed a few habits of conscience and convenience.  For one thing: I don’t skewer people.  That’s people—full of flesh and blood and intent and hard work.  Hollywood poster-boys and assorted sacred cows are another matter.  Still for the most part, if I don’t particularly care for something, I just leave it alone.  There are plenty of other things out there to review.  The requirements of a polite society to me are more important than the need to try to gain some ground by diminishing others.  Somebody has to be pretty pretentious—AND over-hyped—for me to want to take out the poison pen.

Still, many critics do.  And when they do, perhaps it’s only fair to hold up the mirror to their own work, not always easy since most critics are not also creators of original material.  This is my feeling toward Henry Rollins right about now.  Now I’ve always felt a certain amount of respect for Henry, even if I wasn’t any huge fan of his work.  Fact is, I’ve heard very little of his music, simply because radio stations don’t usually play it, so there’s that.  But I have read much of one of his books, simply because it was one of the few things I had to do in Pudva, Montenegro, in a stopover there some three-four years ago.  I was not particularly impressed, but still not vengeful toward the man.  He travels widely and espouses it wildly, so that’s good.  And I’ve read his LA Weekly columns and listened to his radio shows on KCRW since becoming a reluctant Angeleno, enjoying them both, so we should be good, right? 

Then he went and dissed Jack Kerouac.  He shouldn’t have done that.  He didn’t have to, but he did, describing his work as something like “total BS.”  That’s a harsh judgment, and an insult to any of us Kerouac fans, not to mention Jack himself, may he R.I.P.  He could’ve just said, “not my cuppa tea,” and left it at that.  Rollins is lucky he didn’t say that about W. S. Burroughs.  I’ve got a gun, and I know how to use it—just kidding.  What most people never understood about Jack was that he was essentially a poet, albeit a narrative one, and at the same time the chronicler of an age.  Now by all appearances, Kerouac and Rollins should be sharing the same side of the dial, whether musical or literary, so I’m not sure what the problem is, probably something similar to the same reason Mick Jagger felt inspired to diss Patti Smith, something about dissing someone whose turf you envy and couldn’t touch with a ten-foot body part. 

Regardless, I’d say confidently that Jack Kerouac could write spiral bindings around Henry Rollins, most obvious when Henry seems like he actually wants to be and do Jack, much less obvious when he sticks to the journalistic music criticism and curation which he really does quite well quite frequently, albeit in his own fashion.  To support this theory, I offer the following evidence, a sample of Mr. Rollins’ own writing in a recent LA Weekly column.  I’m not saying it’s bad; I’ll only say, “Imagine how Jack might’ve treated the same material,” then make your own decision:

September is upon us. In its final weeks, August was staggering crookedly, profusely bleeding from the puncture wound in its side from a dagger shot by an assassin dispatched by our collective heat-fueled discontent. Every year, August lashes out in volcanic fury, rising with the din of morning traffic, its great metallic wings smashing against the ground, heating the air with ever-increasing intensity. August, the great and doomed warrior of summer, knew that the end was near. Yet so titanic is its rage, it will takes weeks for its body to cool.
Late summer is fired, blasted winds, beginnings, middles and ends -- all ending. For some it's a parting wave to youth, love, conquest and deathless time. In the face of this destruction there is revelation, epiphany, agony and exhaustion. Empty pursuits on fruitless plains in search of lightning, or perhaps even nothing.
We know it, therefore we must slay it. We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost…

There’s more, too, if you want it.  Follow the link.  So you decide.  Critics are people just like you and me.  The only difference between a critique and a criticism is that the critique has a publisher.  Ultimately, though, the consumer is judge and jury.  That’s you; you vote with your pocketbook.  To all critics, I only suggest: be polite and be open and most of all, be professional.  Opinions and shallowness are two closely related concepts.  I’ll still be a fan of Mr. Rollins btw, but only for the things he does best.  Sometimes the medium is not the message; the message is.  BTW, I’ve now listened to Mr. Rollins’ own story-telling on mySpace while prepping this article, and guess what?  Not bad…  I’ve also listened to his original head-banging stuff on spotify from way back when, and… you know.  We’ve all grown up.

For my own part, this is something of a crossroads for this blog.  I’ve taken a bit of a break from my music reviews, not because I feel lazy or uninspired (okay, maybe a little), but mostly because I’ve been too busy with another project, the compilation of a couple of guides to hostels, the first in a series of a half-dozen intended to cover the entire world.  Still, I hope and expect to turn some attention back to this blog soon, BUT… it may not be the same as before.  As a few of you may know, I have some background in film, too, more than music in fact, so long have wanted to do some film reviews, too, especially the foreign films which almost never get press in the good ol’ US, and hopefully even art films which hardly ever get press anywhere.  Unfortunately film PR people don’t send me advance copies of films to review, not yet anyway… bummer.  Still, in the age of Netflix, that shouldn’t be a deal-killer, should it?  I mean, it’s not like I ever paid that much attention to the publicist’s rap anyway, and I’d certainly never reprint ad copy verbatim.  Sooo… stay tuned.

Peoria website 

Sunday, June 03, 2012

A BAND CALLED CARAMELO, FLAMENCO OF MANUEL AGUJETAS, & THE FILMS OF CARLOS SAURA

A couple weeks ago I was listening to KPFK and their special guest was Manuel Agujetas, the flamenco master vocalist.  The occasion was his performance that night in an intimate performance to be held in the Los Feliz neighborhood of greater LA.  His singing was incredible, unlike anything I’ve ever heard, so rich and powerful it’d probably take several Gypsy Kings to equal it.  I even considered going to the show, but that would have required an arduous ten-minute walk from my apartment.  Who’s got the time these days?  They also interviewed him and Sr. Manuel had some interesting comments to make, one of which was something like—and I’m paraphrasing—“these days anybody can call anything flamenco”…and apparently get away with it.  He must have been talking about a band called “Caramelo”…and others, too, of course.

Caramelo is a band from Brooklyn and they’ve got a new album out called “Ride.”  If it’s a flamenco band from Brooklyn, then you might figure right away that we’re not talking about deep tradition--maybe no deeper than a few well-worn LP covers at most.  But that would be wrong.  These guys—and girl—have gone to the well, drunk deeply and come back with mixed drinks.  Sounds good to me.  The band revolves around female vocalist Sara Erde, doing bilingual bilabials on songs that range from the tango-intensive drama of “Peligrosa” to the funky who’s-yo-mama of “Brooklyn.”  What about flamenco?  Alfonso Cid handles those male vocal chores, mostly on “La Luna.”  They never claimed to be a purist flamenco group btw, but influenced, so no false advertising here.

The opening song, “The Girl is Gone” sets the hybrid pace, with a mosque-like chant “no te vayas, nina” (“don’t leave me, girl”), though most of the song is in English: “I won't be lying for my love today, Won't be crying about the way you play, Won't be waiting in an empty bed, And I won't go crazy from the words you said. High roller the deal is done, Game over, the girl is gone.”  The song features a killer lead guitar solo, too, courtesy of co-founder Jed Miley.  “Como Quieres” ups the lyrical ante, an upbeat ditty featuring a tongue-twister that had me looking for a lyrics sheet (thank you): Como quieres que te quiera, Si quien quiero que me quiera, No me quiere (“How do you want me to love you, When the one I love Doesn’t love me?).  By the time we get to “Brooklyn” it’s obvious that this band has got some pure pop hooks, upbeat and very danceable: “That’s the way we get to Brooklyn, that’s the way we go now,” and featuring a trumpet killer solo, pure pop for kids of all ages…and races.

“Nico” proves they can do a slow ballad, too, and take bilingualism to a high art: “Nico, I need to take you home, Que rico, the sugar in your soul, Despacito, the way you lose control, Nico, I need your love.”  Rico, indeed, tasty tambien I tell you, usualmente tienen que ir a south Texas to find un restaurante Mexicana serving up scrambled tongue como estas, tacos de lengua o de pura cabezaPeligroso” is tango-like, gypsy—per the theme—yet light on its feet at the same time: “Why don't you stay, Here on Avenue A? Don't go back to Buenos Aires.  “La Luna” is the one genuine flamenco song, complete with weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth: “Girl, your words, Pierce my soul. Girl, your questions, Without longed for answers. Girl, that light, In the moon of your face!!)  The album is “Ride” by Caramelo.  It’s good.  It’s out now.

But is it flamenco?  Is anything flamenco?  Carlos Saura’s flamenco film trilogy (not to be confused with the documentary, which I have yet to see) is a wonder, thesis>antithesis>synthesis.  If the first realization about flamenco is that there are guitars as well as voices…and verses, then the second is that there’s dance, equal if not more important than the song, and the third realization is that there’s a stage surrounding it all.  Saura’s trilogy is not ABOUT flamenco; it IS flamenco, in the same way that dance is.  In “Amor Brujo” the unreal is posing as real and the good guy dies.  In “Carmen” the real is posing as unreal, and the witchy woman dies.  In “Bodas de Sangre” the unreal is unreal throughout—and recognized as such—and both guys die, and the woman wails, BUT…it’s only a stage.  In all three films the actors are the same…but different, the story is the same…but different, but none of that matters.  What matters is the dance, the voice, the verse, the chord, the clap…the strut…the fret.  It’s all a stage.  Nothing matters, but honor, and dignity, and the dance, and the music.  The characters, notes, movements, and sounds are just playing roles, and hopefully well.

But not me.  I’m not a musician (unless the fellatio I used to perform on the business end of a trombone in high school counts as “music”).  And I’m not an actor, nor dancer, nor singer.  I’m not really even a critic.  Have you ever heard me say anything bad about any piece of work?  I’m a writer, so I look for stories.  If I can’t find one, then I’ll make one up.  I’m a philosopher, so I look for meaning.  If I can’t find any, then…you get the idea.  I want to know what’s real, behind the matrix and the makeup.  World music is full of it.  I’ve pondered mightily on “Afro-Cuban music,” but that’s nothing compared to flamenco.  What is “flamenco?”  Everybody agrees that it’s Andalusian music, but not much more.  So why is it called “Gypsy?”  It has nothing to do with the people known as Roma.  You’ll have to read long and hard before you’ll find the word “Moor,” much less “Arab,” far less “Muslim,” in describing flamenco.  But what is Andalucia?  It’s that region longest occupied by Moors, of course, over 700 years.  And what are the distinguishing characteristics of traditional flamenco, and traditional Spain, in general?  There’s honor, pride and dignity, male dominance…  Sound familiar?  Ever notice the similarity of flamenco dance to some Middle Eastern forms of dance?  Ever notice the similarity of flamenco vocals to the voice coming over the closest muezzin five times a day?  So why do so-called “gypsies” get credit for something that 700 years of Arab-Spanish culture most likely created?  You tell me.

Monday, March 05, 2012

DEL CASTILLO’s "Infinitas Rapsodias": Guitar String Theory En Espanol

If music reviewers had to be certifiably impartial judges in order to air their opinions in these not-so-hallowed nets and webs of intrigue, then I’d have to recuse myself, because I like these guys unabashedly, have for a while as a matter of fact, ever since seeing them live in LA at a free gig in McArthur Park for the homies a few years ago.  First of all, you gotta respect any band that’ll go to those lengths to get in front of an audience.  Secondly, it’s appropriate considering that both the band and patrons were predominantly Hispanic, even though most of the audience probably never heard of them.  That’s the price you pay to be a star in Texas; you may not be a star anywhere else.  After all they were Robert Rodriquez’s “own band” Chingon back in the latter days of the “mariachi trilogy” and had a major presence in the final soundtrack and even the film itself.  Last time I checked their tour schedule a couple years ago, they still had a significant number of private parties to play.  That’s all changing.

What these guys do with nylon strings is what I like to do with my wife when coming home after a couple months in dusty lonely godforsaken countries that I have to visit just to prove to myself that they’re really there.  That’s the business of Rick and Mark del Castillo, acclaimed guitarists in the hollow body style.  What they do is a bit hard to describe, maybe something like classical Spanish speed-guitar.  Put the two of them together and it’s something to behold.  This guitar virtuosity is slathered with the icing of Alex Ruiz’s dramatic voice and muy macho personality.  They’re the cerebral European jazz musicians, solving equations with fine fret-work; he’s the bad-ass Mexican, in your face and up your spine with chilling renditions of romantic endeavor.  Most of the creative interplay of the band occurs right there, with a solid bass and percussion laying down rhythm.

Their new album is called Infinitas Rapsodias and contains a mix of new songs and old standards, and even includes a DVD.  For you initiates, the songs themselves hold no great surprises, mostly revisiting themes that have already been explored by Santana, Gypsy Kings, Los Lobos, or Los Lonelies.  It’s the musicianship that sells it, good hearty stuff that ranges from rock en Espanol to flamenco to Latin jazz, all with those distinctive guitars and that high-drama vocal, evoking the classic themes of life and love, romance and dance, heart and soul.   Still there are mysteries to be revealed internally.  The album begins with “Lumbres de Babylon (‘Lights of Babylon’),” classic Del Castillo with those great guitars, dramatic and romantic, “vamos caminando por las carreteras de la Corazon…baila conmigo (‘let’s go walking along the highways of the heart…dance with me’).”  “Fuego Egipico (‘Egypian Fire’)” follows up with a more pronounced Arab feel, guitars supplying the drama in a song purely instrumental.

At this point I realize something for maybe the first time.  I don’t know if any Spanish-language song genre—be it flamenco, salsa, whatever—has ever paid tribute to what I consider to be its significant Arab roots.  Even with flamenco, usually attributed to Spanish gitanos (gypsies), they don’t fit the description of Europe’s other groups of Romani.  It does come from Andalusia, though, the Moorish stronghold in Spain.  And of course, the Spanish history in the New World starts the same year that Arab history in Spain ends, so the culture was still mixed when it got exported.  And it’s still there today, especially in Mexico, in the machismo, in the leather work, in the horsemanship, in the adobe, and in the music, of course.  Where do you think those guitars—and horses—came from?  

Mujer Angel” is slower, with some sweet electric guitar, a pleasant break from the usual frenetic pace the boys set, still equally romantic, “Yo por ti muriera…mujer angel (‘I’d die for you…lady angel’), likewise “Canta de Alma—mira las estrellas, mira al cielo mira la luna que es la luna de mi pasion (‘Song of the Soul—look at the stars, look at the heavens, look at the moon that’s the moon of my passion’).”  “Brotherhood” is the only song in English, a duet with female vocals, and it’s a good one, “Oh there goes my brother, oh there goes my sister…whoa there is my mother…amen to the father.”

The rest of the album finds Del Castillo working largely in their comfort zone, with some pleasant change-ups in “Para mi Sobrina,” a mellow instrumental, and “Maria,” sung in Italian.  “Perdoname (‘Pardon me’)” has some nice piano and violin, and some painful slow revelations and supplications: “lagrimas cayeron como cae la lluvia … perdoname suplico…no me abandones, perdoname (‘tears fall like rain…forgive me, I beg you…don’t abandon me, forgive me’).”  They finish things off with a flourish in high drama, Amor Venme a Buscar, a duet with German opera diva Anna Maria Kaufmann.  How’s that for a finish?  No, music reviewers don’t have to be impartial and objective.  Sometimes we just know what we like, too.  That’s Infinitas Rapsodias by Del Castillo.  Check it out.  They’re on a world tour, also.  That’s even better. 

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