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Chapter 1: The Yuma and the Guagua

By 29 June, 2016

Day 1: 1st May 2016

Cuba does not care if you are uncomfortable or in a hurry. Here, you learn to wait. I become aware of this detail of cubanidad almost upon arrival at Jose Martí International Airport in Havana where, after a slightly awkward exchange with a female airport security worker who tells me, “eres muy lindo” as I remove several articles of clothing for the baggage scanner, I spend half an hour searching for the currency exchange counter.

The three different people I ask for help give me three contradicting sets of directions, making me question my Spanish, which I’ve always believed to be fluent. At the Cadeca, four women in brown uniform shirts count stacks of cash, by hand, blanketing their desks with bills. After thirty minutes of waiting for them to finish and open for business, I take a seat on the airport floor below the counter and doze off, tired from a long night preparing for this trip, and the 4am flight check-in time. Another ninety minutes passes before one of the women shakes me awake, and I see a fat queue of impatient foreigners has formed behind me. I change some Euros I got in Miami to the Cuban convertible peso, aka the CUC, and get on my way.

From the airport, I take a taxi to the El Cobre train station, hoping to catch the six o’clock train to Santiago de Cuba, on the other side of the island, where the Manana Festival will begin in three days. When I ask the security officers at the station where I can buy a ticket they stare at me like I’m asking for the nearest bullet train.

“You can’t get a ticket because the ticket office for foreigners is closed,” one officer tells me.

“When will it open?” I ask.

“Tuesday.”

It’s Sunday morning.

“Can’t I just buy a ticket to get on the train?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t work that way here in Cuba. You have to have a Cuban National ID to get on the train right now.”

“I need to get to Santiago, so is there any way I can get on this train?”

“You’re not getting it. You can’t. It’s not going to happen today. You have to wait until Tuesday. Try the Vía Azul buses.”

Ok then; Santiago by bus it is. After going through another fruitless and frustrating exchange with the ticketing agents at the nearby bus station, I find out I have to go to yet another bus station specifically for foreigners, only to find that the only bus to Santiago that day has already left. Next option: a guagua. Cuban guaguas are essentially heavy-duty trucks of widely varying quality and construction, retrofitted with metal cabins and bench seats or old, used bus seats. They are not very comfortable but they are considerably cheaper than any other form of long-distance ground transportation making it a popular choice for Cubans.

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El Yuma

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La Gaugua

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Cubanos en La Guagua

The price for a fifteen-hour ride to Santiago: 12 CUC, or about 12 US dollars. I console myself with the idea that I’m getting an ‘authentic’ perspective of the trip between Havana and Santiago, travelling as ‘real Cubans’ do, and find a seat on the front bench of the bus facing the guagua (full of passengers staring back at me) the uncomfortable Yuma who only just now realises this is going to be a very tedious, ass-jarring, day-long ride over Cuba’s poorly-maintained highways. Various items rain down from storage shelves above us, secured with dry-rotted rubber bungee cords that threaten an avalanche of makeshift cardboard luggage and bags of rotting potatoes and onions. The guagua breaks down three times on the road to Santiago, nearly catching fire from a loose battery cable, and has to be push-started on the side of the highway twice. Not one passenger seems surprised in the least.

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We make a late-afternoon stop in a dusty little village restaurant called Paladar María (Paladars are privately-owned restaurants) where I find temporary relief in a cold Cerveza Cristal and some chicken with beans and rice.

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The guagua jangles along for another 8 hours before I arrive in Santiago at 2:30 in the morning, deposited on a deserted street, unsure of my exact location, without the help of mobile service or Google to help me find my way to my destination.

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I flag the nearest motorcycle taxi I can find, ask him to take me to the Plaza Céspedes, climb into his sidecar and rumble off into the dark early-morning heart of the most humid and petroleum-scented city I’ve ever seen.

Members of the late-night staff at Hotel Casa Granda, near the Teatro Herédia, where the Manana Festival is set take place, graciously help me find a room in a local casa particular to spend what’s left of the night. I’m welcomed with a private bathroom, fresh towels, air conditioning and a Chihuahua named Beatriz. I shower off the day’s sweaty travel grime, drop onto my single bed covered with peach-coloured sheets and slip into an easy asleep.

Welcome to Cuba.

Wrapping Up With A Room Full of Fuzz: Sónar Day 3

By 19 June, 2016

Day three of Sónar Barcelona 2016 was a quiet affair for this reporter. With only one artist hailing from Latin America, Saturday was a welcome opportunity to wind down before leaving town early Sunday.

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Malard is the musical brainchild of Colombian-born Sebastián De Los Ríos, currently based in Barcelona studying sound art and audio installation. His skills and interest in the artistic side of performance was on full display today in the Redbull-sponsored Dome, where his set was a great mix of cerebral and sensory.

Sending a guitar signal to a laptop and then messing mightily with the sound, Malard is a project that suited the mood of a slightly washed out Saturday crowd perfectly. Ambient and drone influences are clear, as the minimal input from the strings gets stretched out into impossible new shapes made up of white noise and echoes of melody.

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Malard’s stage presence is minimal, in keeping with the musical aesthetic: content to simply lead the sound in organic directions, he layers fuzz and phasing noise in an unstructured and unhurried fashion. There’s strong pulses of bass, rising to fill the hall and resonating somewhere just behind the ears, at the base of where the skull joins the spine.

The departing effect is to leave a very appreciative, if visibly dazed, crowd to applaud and try to process at the close of the set, as the final note fades.

Malard’s performance concludes Sounds and Colours featured coverage of Latin American and Latin influenced artists at Sónar 2016. But, but, buuuuuuut, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and, as always, keep an eye on the website.

We should have a full-length Nicola Cruz interview conducted at Sónar up soon, as well as photos and video from the last three days of festivities!

Dreampop, Swamp Psychedelia and the King of Sleaze: Sónar Day 2

By 18 June, 2016

Day two of Sónar started early with Argentine solo artists Sobrenadar (Paula Garcia, pictured below). Setting up centre stage in the cavernous hall with only a handful of people looking the worse for yesterday’s festivities, Garcia’s ‘aquatic dreampop’ (according to Wikipedia) soon won over the entire room and brought in a steady flow of interested ears. With only a guitar and a laptop/synth setup, Sobrenadar’s sound is surprisingly huge; like taking a deep dive in a warm sea of percussion and waves of bass.

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Awwz (Spain, pictured below) saw her 2015 release Bimba garner great reviews in the indie and dance press in Latin America, and made steps out of Spain with tour dates in Mexico. Today she was playing to her home crowd in Barcelona but had to contend with the weather, which turned torrential soon into her set. Playing to a dedicated hardcore of soaking wet dancers in the main arena (and a whole lot more cowardly but dry folks undercover) Awwz showcased her blend of futuristic R&B, storm be damned.

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Heavy on the sub-bass and kicks with nice shuffling hi-hats, there was a recurring sigh of synthesiser underpinning her music that added to the edge of melancholy and set it apart from the uptempo and upbeat that can dominate a festival. It’s not dour or gloomy but it has a nice emotional bite that may come as a surprise.

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Colombian DJ Las Hermanas (pictured above) was instantly my favourite performer on sight, simply for the band t-shirt from stoner doom band Sleep he took to the decks in. Given the apparel, his set was a totally-appropriate mix of treacle thick bass and dubby psychedelic soul. The selection was abrupt and choppy in places, but the mixing of ambient samples, creepy vocal clips and vintage brass was great, as if Nightmares on Wax were raised in a swamp in the lowlands and fed a steady diet of peyote and classic films.

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Trying to fit in two legends from either side of the Atlantic, I caught parts of performances from Roots Manuva (UK, pictured above) and Underground Resistance (USA). The former is a laconic rapper from London with a slack-seeming but razor-sharp delivery that makes him the sloppy ninja of British rap. The latter is a seminal Detroit techno outfit that influenced a generation of artists around the world. Both are worth checking out on record and in the flesh if you get the chance.

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Finally, Chile’s prodigal Germanic son, Matias Aguayo, was there to shake the foundations and to shake his hips in a militant fashion in his bid to be crowned the king of electro-sleaze (in keeping with the royal titles in yesterday’s roundup). Aguayo is energetic to the point of mania, irrepressibly filthy in his manner, and in possession of the finest selection of tunes to touch on everything between two musical/cultural stereotypes: innuendo-laden, lithe bodied Latin, and heavy-duty, fist-pounding teutonic techno stomp.

Thankfully the hour is late, and the crowd are in the mood to be seduced. The set starts slow with some simple pop games, breaking the ice before the evening descends into a tropical fever. In my notes for the set, I’ve written ‘just relentless’ (that’s a positive). Throughout Aguayo urges the crowd on, singing dirty, and chanting robotic filth into a vocoder’d microphone over rolling tech drums and 303 filter abuse.

There are enough varied breaks and hints at Aguayo’s continued fascination with pop to stop it being a one note display. Some mutated cumbia breaks out at various points, and a big vocal bridge sets up a wall of crazed snares hinting at the upcoming drop that grows and grows, until the wave crashes down and the crowd explodes into a frenzy of movement.

With that, its time to fix up, shower down, and bid farewell to another day. You can get in touch during the third and final instalment of this year’s festival via Twitter @MumblingMusing.

Melting Landscapes, Puerto Rican Princes and Mad Professors: Sónar Day 1

By 17 June, 2016

Spending a day of sunshine and blue skies dodging wonky dancers and ‘serious music types’ is a strange experience at a festival. Everyone attending Sónar seems to be there for the music but the casual bacchanalia is clearly present in the sunburn and too-big grins of some attendees. Getting photos and navigating crowds in a mix like this is a matter of not stepping on the toes of chin-strokers, and smiling wider than anyone sane if you happen to bump into the ones too far gone. Thankfully some of our featured artists were there, as well as some honourable mentions, and duty obviously kept this reporter on the straight and narrow.

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The first day started in a reassuringly righteous manner thanks to the the ever brilliant Mad Professor and the Spanish Dub Invasion. The veteran dub-reggae producer had three fine local MCs on hand to help fight off the vampires of Babylon, backed up by a none-finer selection of riddims. The set was largely heavily-versioned reggae standards, featuring crowd-pleasers from Bob Marley and Max Romeo, so that while not very far out by the good Professor’s standards, it got the crowd skanking and singing early.

Nicola Cruz drew a good crowd to the indoor stage, for a set that pushed some hefty doses of synth along with the ambient soundscaping he’s perhaps better known for. Combined with a tremendous projection graphic of morphing rorschach inkblots and melting landscapes, Cruz’s set was a reminder of how much space there is to get lost in the rhythms and interlocking, puzzle-piece melodies that go into the music; guitars lurch and shimmer in and out of the beat but always land when and where they should, and shakers keep a subtler and slipperier time than militant kick drums do.

There’s plenty of shuffling in the audience as most respond bodily, even if their brains are still trying to process, and the set draws more people in as it gets heavier. More synth leads and bass lines get introduced, and leavened a little with folk instrumentation at the bridges and builds. It’s a testament to the strength of the material and to Cruz’s performance that he can take the crowd to some quite unfamiliar territories and still keep them together throughout.

France’s Acid Arab are a great DJ duo pulling the best and most hypnotic elements of acid techno and Mediterranean Arabic music together into a wonderful stew of finger-cymbals, 303 bass and ululation-inspiring build-ups and breakdowns.

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Lady Leshurr (UK; pictured above) brought the house down with a short set of her ‘Queen’s Speech’ material, added some grime to Sister Nancy’s classic “Bam Bam” and generally performed like she owned the place. Long live the Queen.

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Brooklyn house’s Puerto Rican prince, the Master at Work, Kenny Dope closed proceedings on the shortened first day (the following days go until the early morning) with a set that laid down a mark for the days to follow. Showing off a selection that drew on classic garage and hard house, polished modern beats and a mix that kept the whole crowd moving. It may have been the late hour and the last show-of-the-day feeling but it says something about a DJ who can bring together silver-haired disco mums, undercut sporting tech-heads, the summer-print fashion mafia, and the crustiest dreads.

Bring on day two, fingers crossed on the sun and blue sky…

All photos by Charlie Bailey.

Argentina’s Pablo De Caro Pays Tribute To Velvet Underground

By 15 April, 2016

The classic saying that has always stuck with Velvet Underground was supposedly once said by Brian Eno: “The first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” It speaks of the influence of the band, especially in terms of their ability to influence other bands.

Since Eno said those words I think it’s fair to say that their influence has grown even stronger, spreading far and wide across the globe, with its tentacles reaching and setting root firmly in Argentina. A few years ago we reported on the fact that the Argentine indie music scene had put together a track-by-track cover of VU’s debut album Velvet Underground & Nico. Now, it’s the turn of Argentine singer/songwriter Pablo De Caro who has put together a 5-track tribute to the Velvet Underground.

Imaginatively titled Vuelvete Underground (translating as something like “Becoming Underground”), the EP features covers of three Velvet Underground tracks, “Femme Fatale”, “Candy Says” as well as the less-known “Over You”, as well as covers of Nico’s “The Fairest Of The Seasons” and John Cale’s “Andalucia”, all of which have been translated into Spanish. Simply recorded with guitar, vocals and sparse cello, drums and keyboards, the release shows once more the incredible influence of the Velvet Underground worldwide, as well as the Argentinian passion for a bit of VU.

Listen and download (for free) Vuelvete Underground below:

Episode 6: Disques Barclay and the International Collection

By 12 November, 2015

Music is as long as it is wide. from the smallest pluck of a string, to the incessant groaning of all the human beings on earth just living their lives. Linear narratives are just not enough.

CAIFE distributed records for Disques Barclay, one of France’s most influential platforms. This week’s sounds come from a whole series of Barclay’s master tapes that were received in Ecuador for the pressing of Barclay 45s. Eduard Ruault, also known as Eddie Barclay, founded the record label in the 50s. He was known for having a good nose for music. He famously brought the incredible Dalida to fame, but is also known to have refused to sign Bob Marley.

This week’s tapes are just a cross section, a core sample, a sliver of what was going on around the globe while CAIFE was pressing records. From chachacha, to French westerns. From the jungles of Paraguay to the pyramids of Giza. This is a little taster of CAIFE records’ international section.

Track Listing

1. Intro (Musica Interncaional Orquestada — no alt. label)
2. Unknown
3. Lucia Mendez – Polvo
4. Unknown – La Invasion
5. Unknown
6. Salgado Jr. – Mambo Borracho
7. Francesa Epic Western
8. Jevita Mia
9. Les Stranpontins – Shame and Scandal in the Family
10. Los Guaranís – La Noche y tu
11. Unknown
12. Badabada Bing Bing
13. Jacques Brel – Bruxelles
14. Quinteto América – Mulata (Cumbia)
15. Los Trovadores del Paraguay – Cascada (Polka Paraguaya)

Will Smith Makes His Comeback on Remix of Bomba Estéreo’s ‘Fiesta’ [VIDEO]

By 19 October, 2015

Excuse me if you’ve heard this one before as this track has been rattling around the Internet for a week or so now. This is the unlikely tale of Will Smith‘s re-emergence on the music scene after a near-decade silence. For his comeback he decided to work with Bomba Estéreo on a version of their “Fiesta” track, from their recent Amanecer album. The collaboration came after “Big Will” (as he perpetually likes to call himself) heard the track on a trip to Colombia and felt the need to get jiggy on it.

The resultant collaboration can be seen and heard below in a brand new video set in a dystopian warehouse perfect for the track’s carnal pleasures. As for Smith’s return to rapping the less be said the better. Quite why Smith thinks peddling stereotypes about going to Colombia in search of his own Sofia Vergara or other colombiana in designer clothes is beyond me. And the rhymes (asking a mamacita for a beer-a!) well there can be no doubt he’s out of practice.

Yet Smith’s presence has propelled the track onto new heights. Whereas “Fiesta” reached #20 in the Latin Pop digital charts on first release, this remix has already shot to #1. Which tells you all you need to know about the price of popularity. Get a Fresh Prince on your track and you’re guaranteed a hit, even when it means he then has to rap on it. Let’s just hope that the new fans Bomba Estéreo have surely accrued through the exercise stay loyal and the group stick to their roots rather than get too wrapped up in Miami’s superficial sound machine.

Episode 5: Música Popular Ecuatoriana

By 07 October, 2015

Before being a musical genre, complete with tonal structures and rhythmic conventions, pop music was just short for popular. It was not dictated by any aesthetic constraint, but simply had to be appealing to large groups of people. Pop music existed everywhere, and was different wherever you went. In the days before the internet fuelled globalization, popularity of one genre to the next varied from valley to valley, mountain to mountain.

When we talk about Ecuadorian popular music we are talking about hundreds of years of history. The cross-pollination of native musical forms and instruments with those of Spain which in turn had within them infused elements from across Europe.

When we speak of national identities, we tread a quagmire. The nations of the Americas are all very young: born out of the Royal Audience of Quito, a territorial division created by the Spanish that spanned a territory of one million square kilometres and reached the Atlantic ocean at the mouth of the Amazon.

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This map shows the full extent of the Royal Audience of Quito and its successive loss of territory from 1563 to present day Ecuador.

This region was created in 1563 and subdivided into provinces controlled by the Spanish who used the Amazon River as a means of communication and transport. Inevitably, culture was transported up and down the river, and its waters became as much a cultural confluence as a fluvial one.

The lands of the Royal Audience of Quito were conceded over the years, mostly to the Portuguese, but also to what would become Peru and Colombia.

Ecuador became independent in 1822 as a province of Gran Colombia, which lasted nine years and then dissolved. It is only by 1831 that Ecuador became a formally recognized nation. The music we consider to be Ecuadorian is like water; it crosses borders freely and diffuses slowly from region to region; it pools in fertile ground winding slowly through the plains but eventually reaching the ocean. The instruments may change, the ensembles vary, but the Venezuelan waltz, the Colombian and Ecuadorian pasillo, and the vals Peruano, are all deeply connected.

There are however, certain genres that have become inseparable from the cultural fabric of this region. Today’s mixtape/show focuses on two (of many more) Ecuadorian musical forms: musica mestiza, and musica criolla.

Musica Mestiza

Musica mestiza took the basic structures of indigenous musical forms and adjusted the ensembles; replacing clay drums with wood drums, interweaving flutes, guitars and other lute-like instruments that evolved into charangos, ronrocos, requintos, and bandolines; the sanjuanito is the most famous of the latter’s forms, but the albazo, and tonada are also heard everywhere, from tiny radios, to street performers.

The tonadas and albazos are considered to be the great grandchildren of the yaraví, three and six count, story-laden structures. The tonada tells stories of loss, filled with wise phrases about the cruel relentlessness of time. They often carry a sort of drunken swing to them, with sharp emotional melodies, switching from minor to major and back again, the tonadas have survived with great strength, taking Hammond organs and Casio keyboards under their wing over time.

The albazo, or cachullapi, is a tad faster than the tonada. Albazos are meant to energize the festivities when dawn has finally arrived, hence the name ‘alba’-zo. Not to play favorites but albazos have always had a big impact on my ears. The dynamism of the bombo, and rim, and the inevitable groove that it sends your body into. They have a gallop about them. Albazos can be heard all over the Americas in varying forms. The chacareras of the Southern Andes, and even some Venezuelan and Peruvian vals. These songs transmit the feeling of a hopeful future, energizing and positive.

The sanjuanito, or San Juan, is in 2/4 and has the feeling of a quick and short stepped-march. Its origin is not certain; some scholars believe it to be rooted in an ancient ceremonial dance, a celebration of the summer solstice, Inti Raymi, which became known as the San Juan after the Spanish conquest. However, Raul and Margarita Harcourt, the famous French musicologists believe that the San Juan is a derivation of the huaynito, an Inca musical form that spread throughout Ecuador in the brief 30-60 year Inca conquest. But there was, for a long time, a tendency to overestimate the influence that the Inca empire was able to have in its short occupation of what is now Ecuador.

The sanjuanito is born from festivals with ornate characters, parades, processions, theatrics, and fireworks. The streets are invaded by creatures from another world, like the Aya Huma, a two faced devil with a giant headdress, wearing bull skin chaps, goat hoof shakers hanging from his belt, and bells around the ankles. What I mean to say is that sanjuanitos were made for marathon parties, built to make the participants last, for week-long bacchanals, celebrations of cosmic wealth, abundance, sacrifice and homage to the gods.

the aya huma, is a sort of two faced devil, and is a dancer at the San Juan festivities. (photo credit: Francesca Rota)
The Aya Huma is an essential part of the San Juan festivities. (photo: Francesca Rota)

Of these three forms, the tonadas are heard most often and tend to be mislabelled sanjuanitos or pasacalles. Slower than the albazo, tonadas became hits in the cantinas. They aren’t all sadness though, alternating from minor to major, they convey a sense of hope and expectation, that is bound to be dashed by tragedy.

Musica Criolla

Musica criolla, was a term coined by the criollos to distinguish their music from the music of the natives and mestizos. It was surely a move motivated by the false ideal of European superiority. Musica criolla adopted popular musical forms from Europe and integrated them into a local context. This brought the Viennese waltz to our shores, and made the paso doble the preferred dance of the European settlers in their ballrooms. However, these European genres struggled to remain ‘pure’ and eventually became intermixed with their native counterparts. The pasillo emerged, borrowing the rhythms of the waltz, slowing it down, and giving it the cadence and tone of the sanjuanitos and tonadas. The pasodoble, on the other hand, quickened and adopted the manner of a San Juan, thus becoming the pasacalle.

The term criollo (‘creole’ in English), comes out of a racial discrimination based on percentages of pure European blood. The criollos were full blooded Europeans that had been born in the Americas. Musica criolla was the same; European music born in the Americas.

It must be said, that as time goes by, these superficial distinctions recede into the tides and cultures blend and cross-pollinate in ways that unify them for the future. To us, the distinction is an aesthetic one, and not a very significant one, to the point that in our time pasillos, pasacalles, sanjuanitos, albazos and tonadas can fit nicely together into a solid playlist.

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Laura Muenala plays everyday on Calle Chile in the old city centre of Quito. She is blind and is part of an association of blind accordionists who play on the streets for money. Laura was playing “Cansados Pies” as I photographed her, a song that is part of Episode 1, but that I hadn’t been able to identify until today. Her musical memory is impressive and she plays and sings hundreds of songs every day of the week.

There is a tendency to view the idea of a musical genre as something fixed, parametrized, something that can be defined by tempo, but in fact every musical genre is a continuum, a process. The process has not stopped, and in a way this is a glimpse into the origins of the process. Today there is a new mestizaje going on. Just like it has always been, the process of creating musical culture continues, and with it come new tools, ideas and platforms which have the potential to enrich and also decimate our local culture. The roots of Ecuadorian popular music are of a constant and vibrant interplay of the seemingly disparate.

On October 1st, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture celebrates a national day in honour of the pasillo Ecuatoriano, and though I’m all for celebrating our musical forms, it seems unjust that the pasillo would be the only one to have a day in its honour. Our mixtape this week, again from the unlabeled section, is a selection of six Ecuadorian musical genres. Tonadas, sanjuanitos, albazos, pasillos and pasacalles. Some of these tracks are instrumentals, and none of them were labelled, so I had to play this mixtape to all the willing ears to see if they could identify any of the songs, and they did; these tunes run deep in the collective mind.

Tracklisting:

1. “Poncho Verde” (Instrumental) – Unknown (Tonada)
2. “Ay Caramba” – Mendoza Suasti (Tonada)
4. “Huashca de Coral” (or “Peshte Longuita”) (Sanjuanito)
5. “La Naranja” – Unknown (Tonada)
6. Unknown (Albazo)
7. “Romance de Mi Destino” –  Valencia (Pasillo)
8. “Cuatro de la Mañana” –  Valencia (Tonada)
9. “Mi Adoracion” -Fausto Salgado (Pasillo)
10. “Chola Cuencana” – Duo Benitez Valencia (Pasacalle)
11. “Ayayay Cuando Me Muera”  – Fausto Salgado (Tonada)

Thanks to: Laura Muenala, Francesca Rota, Fidel Eljuri, Ata Wallpa, and Guanaco Mc for their help with the research for this episode.

Venezuela’s Algodón Egipcio Finds ‘Multistability’ On New Single

By 30 September, 2015

There can be little doubt that Algodón Egipcio is one of the most inventive producers in Latin America. The Caracas-born musician has constantly evolved since first emerging as half of Jovenes y Sexys, following that much-loved group with his exquisite debut album La Lucha Constante, through his expertly-judged covers and countless remixes, as well as the incredible track “La Espina del Cardenche” for the Norte Sonoro EP (still one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard!).

Now Algodón Egipcio is back with a stunning new track, Multiestabilidad, inspired by and sampling the work of underground British producer Mark Fell on his 2010 Multistability album (listen to one of the tracks from the album here), a work of extreme detail and granular synthesis that is given soul and bounce on Algodón’s version, even though the harsh edges and flowing glitches remain intact under its new guise. It is most certainly a brand new feather in Algodón’s cap.

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Episode 4: Love & Faith

By 16 September, 2015

This week’s tapes are from the unlabeled section. Sloppy recordings off the radio. Live takes, b roll, and outtakes, some of which I’ve identified, but most are untitled. All four tapes were in a bag together, for no apparent reason. The only connection I could find is that they relate somehow to love, its ups and downs, from infatuated teenagers, to jaded middle aged drunks, expectation, disappointment, all told through a gaze that quietly expresses the social fabric of those days. Some of them drenched in noise.

We start with a tragic bolero sung by a woman who is evidently offended at a greedy man, and accuses him of not being legal, not even with himself. More than heart broken she sounds like she wants to take that guy to court. This tape was mostly bits from the radio, from sometime in the 1960s and its about 46 minutes long, As I neared the end,  an abrupt cut led me into the voice of a woman whispering to an unknown lover’s ear. You can tell she’s really up close to the mic, “I’m yours,” she whispers,  “What are you waiting for? Don’t wait. Life is for living, day to day, second by second; its too short.”

You can feel the butterflies in her stomach.

It is such an intimate recording, not meant for my ears or yours, but for and from two that we’ll never know. She is so daring. She knows what she wants. Her voice is filled with courage and presence. Which is so different to the roles cast for women in the romantic genres of the time. Could I find out whose voice I’m listening to? Does it matter? Her words are a window into a whole whirlwind of possibilities: who knows how many events unfolded from this very recording. An office romance? An affair? Or was it the love of her life? Could they have had children? Where is she now?

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The stories we tell about our lives are irrevocably tied to love, and love in our societies has often come to be governed by moral standards set by religion. There is an absent presence of religious piety that hovers in the background of these tracks, like the tape noise, but quiet; silently defining the contours of expression and the way it is expressed.  These aren’t songs bout marriage, or courtship, or sex, or even falling in love. They are songs about the mishaps, the aftermath. Songs about resignation to a tragic fate. Like a desperate troubleshooting manual for a rocky love life. The innocent maidens infatuated, in search of their prince, but strangely aware of their future disillusions. The drunk lonely bachelors crying over their mistakes at a bar. The guilt, the pain, the burden of life, the human drama; the melodrama.

There are songs of devotion to a loved one that remind me of Sufi poetry. Not in their tone but their content, the metaphoric drunken stupor that is love, but could be God, or maybe just wine. It could be all three or just one at a time. But unlike Sufi poetry our drunken cantors seem to be wailing, on their knees, crying “why me?!?!” to the skies. Suffering, guilt, betrayal, rancor, and the death of a loved one. Love, though sweet, is so often a torment, a source of infinite pain. The clashing juxtaposition of cheery tropical rhythms with the rancorous words of a jaded lover, wishing you eternal damnation.

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El Infierno” (1620) by Panamanian-Ecuadorian Painter, Hernando de la Cruz “Infierno” is 4 meters across and 3 meters tall and depicts punishments for all the major sins. It can be seen at Iglesia de la Compañia

Hasn’t it been forever since the broken hearted sought consolation through music?

The question is what came first. Did the moral codes shape our lyrics? Or are they deeper expressions, of more primordial ways of being that the church only reflects back at us in the form of rules that we’re supposed to follow? Is it in our nature to seek salvation? A bit of both, most likely.

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The Sacred Heart of Mary carved in stone on the Portico of Iglesia de la Compañia, Quito.

Tracklisting:

Radio Recording of woman singing a Bolero (unknown), whispers, Benitez y Valencia singing “Quiereme Mucho,” and a song about loss (featuring Biluka, on the orange leaf). Eduardo Brito follows in a pitched-up vocal track recorded at a really slow tape speed. A painkiller commercial for Cefalina, and then the “Cumbia Bendita,” sung by another woman whose name I wish to find out. We cut to a radio non fiction piece about the Holy Marianita de Jesus, Ecuador’s first saint, and her precocious virtue, meshed with reversed recordings of the choir of the Casa de la Cultura del Ecuador (CCE). We follow with “Mi Primer Beso”, a song  bout the conditions that must be met before a first kiss will be allowed. Aulo Gelio (Named after the Roman lawyer and writer) aka Aut Shock, pitched up due to the tape speed, singing ballads about loneliness. We close with yet another unknown female singer, emphatically stating that she is over her ex., because he is criminally infamous, and belongs in the jails of oblivion.

There are four women whose names I’ve been unable to find, and I am still looking for any clues as to who they are. If you know anything please get in touch: [email protected].

Episode 3: Olga Gutierrez & Carlos Guerra

By 02 September, 2015

Olga Gutierrez was born in Quimilí, Santiago del Estero, Argentina in 1928, and came to Ecuador in 1962. She had been invited by the president to sing in honor of the Duke of Edinburgh. She toured throughout Latin America, making a name for herself as a brilliant singer and performer, but it was in Ecuador where she left her most indelible mark. Gutierrez performed scores of Ecuadorian classics and her recordings have survived her; her voice becoming an iconic part of Ecuadorian popular music.

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cover of one of Olga Gutierrez’s LPs “A Veces he Pensado” published by CAIFE

During her time in Quito she met Hector Jaramillo, Homero Hidrovo, and Eduardo Erazo, who at the time played as a trio called Los Brillantes. She joined them at which point the group became Los Cuatro Brillantes, and they went on tour spending a lot of time playing music in Mexico and Nicaragua.

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Olga And Los Brillantes (photo archivos vistazo)

It is unclear how Olga Gutierrez and Carlos Guerra came to collaborate, but, judging from the date of her arrival to the country, she must have recorded these pieces quite soon after her arrival. Guerra was almost 30 years older than Gutierrez, and by the time she came to Ecuador his songs were established hits in the local scene.

Olga Gutierrez would go on to settle in Guayaquil, and become the voice for hundreds of Ecuadorian classics, and she became known as “La Reina del Pasillo Ecuatoriano.” In 2004, she became a naturalized Ecuadorian citizen.

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Olga Gutierrez phtographed in the 1990’s (photo credit Vistazo archives)

Sadly, Olga Gutierrez passed away merely weeks before the restoration of these tapes began. She died in Guayaquil on March 10th of 2015, but she will undoubtedly be remembered for giving her voice to so many Ecuadorian classics.

Carlos Guerra was Born in Quito on the 27th August, 1896. he was a self taught multi instrumentalist who wrote his music mainly on guitar and piano. He became famous for co writing “Esta Guitarra Vieja,” a classic albazo.

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a drawing of Carlos Guerra Paredes, part of a billboard now on La Ronda.

It is said that Guerra and Hugo Moncayo had been drinking and playing music in an underground pub called El Murcielagario (the bat cave). The pub was hidden in the basement of the first house of La Ronda, and was a regular meeting place for many of the city’s bohemians. Hugo Moncayo had a rush of inspiration in which he wrote the lyrics, Guerra’s inspiration followed and he sat down on the piano, and so a hit was born.

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El “Murcielagario” used to be an underground bar. To access it you had to pass a trapdoor, and within it you’d find a regular crowd of artists musicians and poets. it is now a bodega.

He was one of the founders of SAYCE, the first Ecuadorian institution devoted to protecting author’s rights. He was also a regular on La Ronda, the street on which he was born and lived and where a lot of cultural and bohemian life in Quito took place. Artists, poets and musicians all intermingled while crafting the growing city’s culture.

Guerra became known for his pasillos, pasacalles, tonadas, albazos and aires tipicos, Ecuadorian musical genres in 3 and 6 count, derivations of the pre-Columbian Andean yaravi.

He passed away in 1992; he was 96 years old.

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La Ronda, famously narrow, known for its balconies decorated with geraniums, its colorful houses, and its poets.

This week’s tracklisting:

Side A:

1. Secretos: Pasillo (Carlos Guerra / Hugo Moncayo)
2. Sostenme: Vals (Carlos Guerra / Rosario Sansores)
3. Al Oido: Pasillo (Carlos Guerra / Enrique Echeverria)

Side B:

4. Arpita de Mis Delirios (Traditional albazo)
5. Esta Guitarra Vieja: Albazo (Carlos Guerra / Hugo Moncayo)
6. Esta Pena Mia: Pasillo (Carlos Guerra / Pedro Miguel Obligado)

Canta: Olga Gutierrez

carlos guerra-2-2

Episode 2: Raul Emiliani

By 04 August, 2015

From amongst the hundreds of tapes, one man’s name had a way of resonating a bit louder than the others. Perhaps it was the myth of him. A name I had heard my whole life, a man whose music had marked my mother’s childhood, and who had held me when I was an infant.

Raul Emiliani was a remarkable man. Born in Bologna, Italy in 1918 to a family of Roman descent, he was a young boy when he began to play the violin. It is said that during Mussolini’s regime, Raul and his brother Emiliano were summoned by Il Duce himself to entertain the then visiting Adolf Hitler.

Needless to say, Raul left Italy as a result of the fascist rule, which considered people of his ethnicity to be less than human. He left with a violin on his back, by boat to the new world, and somehow he ended up in the Andes. A place that he came to love very deeply. In Quito he got his license as a player for the National Symphony Orchestra, and began to make his name, not only as a violinist, but also as a pop composer, director, and teacher.

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RAul Emiliani’s Proffesional Orchestral ID; found amongst the tapes. ca. 1953

The man was handsome, and had a voice deep like a well. His skill with the violin is impressive. To my ears, he is a virtuoso, undoubtedly a maestro. He plays music of such detail and speed with such ease, it has always blown me away.4

While in Ecuador, Maestro Emiliani became good friends with Carlos Rota, my grandfather. They seem to have understood each other. Carlos was a very airy man, focused mainly on the workings of the mind, largely ignoring the appeals of the heart. Raul, on the other hand, even now, 26 years after his death, radiated the energy of an enormous heart, warm with fire and passion. Kind, and tender, sensitive, delicate, yet piercing like a shrill and perfect tone on a resonant E string.

Perhaps they were a good balance for each other. One all talent, no ambition, and the other all ambition, no talent. Carlos claimed to have found the talent of the Maestro, which may well be true. Whatever the case, It was through CAIFE that Emiliani made his first attempts at putting his music to the press.

It seems like Raul was caught between two worlds. One of symphonic virtuosity, and another of pulp fiction, pop culture, and musical consumption. He began to write a series of ballads, and chachachas, to fit the sounds of the time, maybe even become hits, and bring in some cash.

With the help of CAIFE, Raul Emiliani recorded a series of singles drenched in innuendo, moons and rockets, and the monokini which apparently was all the rage at the time. For those of you who don’t know, the monokini was a one part bikini, that is, a topless bathing suit for women that was supposed to be the thing during the sexual revolution. Clearly, society couldn’t handle the monokini, but Emiliani’s two singles about such a tantalizing subject, have survived the dust:

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one of many copies of Raul’s orchestral singles, quarter inch analog magnetic tape, in this case Bosch Magnetofonband

Raul Emiliani, however, was best known as a virtuous violin player. During the 1960s he was the director of the Quito Symphony Orchestra and took up posts as a teacher and scholar at Conservatorio Antonio Maria Valencia in Cali and various posts throughout the south of Colombia.

I contacted one of his previous students who spoke fondly of the pedagogic method Emiliani had created, and of the signature “gypsy cut” with which he interpreted all of his music.

There is no doubt in my mind that Emiliani was a virtuoso. I played the viola for 10 years, and I am baffled by the dexterity and freedom of his fingers. Not that my skill is any measure of virtuosity, but at least it gives me an honest measure of the skill that I lack. Raul’s playing is butter, smoothness of the best kind, at velocities unheard of to my 50bpm fingers. The way he slides into tone, so far ahead that it sounds like he’s slightly behind. His playing is raw gitanity. It is light-footedness and detachment, it is present moments passing into warm remembrance with immediacy and flow. A river. Perhaps his virtuosity is the sensuous relationship with the instrument, and his sheer passion, a sharp shrill like a caring knife cutting melodies through the air, buttered in analog warmth.

If you search “Raul Emiliani” online, you’ll find few results, most of them pertaining to the Raul Emiliani String Instrument line created by Eastman Strings. The Eastman Strings “Raul Emiliani” run in the $4,000 range, which means, they are instruments to be reckoned with. High quality, good wood, professional hand made instruments. that is to say, this is no cheap line of violins, but a serious musical enterprise run by master luthiers. On the web page a single paragraph states:

“In Memoriam: Raúl Emiliani was an Italian-born violinist, composer, and arranger. His work as a pedagogue contributed to the development of numerous fine instrumentalists. Professor Emiliani died in 1989.”

I contacted the company, wondering if it was the same man. To my surprise I received an email almost immediately from Rubén Salazar, Head of Orchestral String Sales at Eastman Strings, and he confirmed that he had been Emiliani’s student in Cali in the late 70s and early 80s. He said that when he first arrived at Eastman Strings in 2005 he decided to pay homage to his former teacher by naming the company’s top instrument line after him. It was indeed the same man.

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the cover of one of Emiliani’s surviving vinyl LPs

It is so strange the way a person’s mark can be left on the world in such obscure and disconnected ways. At least to the outside observer, Raul Emiliani’s virtuosity lays encapsulated in a cryptic message, in the form of beautiful instruments; his name side by side that of Stradivarius, yet his music, the sound he purveyed, the art of his fingers, has vanished without a trace. Gone. Only a series of clues remain, guiding those who are willing to look, to uncover the virtuosity of a man buried by time.

According to Rubén, nowadays a lot of the top players in the Northern Andean region, and perhaps throughout Latin America received training from Raul himself.

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a 7 inch vinyl print of Emiliani interpretting F. Poliakin’s “El Canario” and Alfredo G. Martinez’s “Para Tus Lindos Ojos”

One day I came across a recorded interview, Pinceladas Musicales, where the host, a man with a tinny radiophonic voice introduces the Maestro, as a purveyor of pure musical spirituality. After concluding that all music is about love, he tries to coax Raul to tell the story of the mysterious Nathalia. When the host starts to make unwarranted assumptions, Raul interrupts him, so he may stop rambling. The Depth of The Man’s Voice made me check the tape speed. Could it really be that deep?

My mother came in to listen to the tape, and she told me that this voice didn’t sound right, and it was true; it turned the tape was playing fast; that his voice was even deeper.

Thank you to Paulina, Ruben Salazar and Francesca Rota for their help with research and resources.

This weeks audio starts off with two of Emiliani’s orchestral singles:

“La Luna El Cohete Y Yo” (Chachachá)
and “Monokini” (Cumbia)

Emiliani directed the orchestra and wrote the two songs, which were meant to be ballroom hits. Though they are not characteristic of his personal style, they embody his flexibility, talent, and even his sense of humour.

We continue with 4 violin pieces recorded by Raul Emiliani and Hector Bonilla:

“Nathalie” (by G. Becaud / Pierre Delanoe)
“El Canario” (F. Poliakin)
“Para Tus Lindos Ojos” (Alfredo G. Martinez)
“San Juanito” (desconocido, Ecuadorian folk song)

We end with a short radio interview featuring Raul’s music, accompanied by Maestro Hector Bonilla’s piano. We start with “Aria Y Rigodón”, a classic whose author I have been unable to identify. We then go into an interpretation of an Ecuadorian folk classic “Chola Cuencana”, beautifully interpreted and embellished with gorgeous trilling arpeggios. After a short commercial break, we return with “Ligia” a piece written by Raul himself dedicated to a beautiful woman, a good friend’s fiancé, whom he appreciated greatly, it has the feel of a gypsy fantasy, with Hungarian undertones, and a fierce energy.