Olivera’s latest single “La Chusa” is a collaboration featuring Camilo Lara and Toy Selectah, which as Olivera explained to Univision in a recent interview, derives its title “from a South Texas Chicano folk story about this owl [in some Spanish speaking countries lechuza means owl] with the with the face of an old lady that stands on top of your house and scares kids into acting good. When I was a kid I was petrified of it!” Sonically though the song is comprised of a classic and beloved Columbian cumbia track, Los Hermanos Tuirán’s “La cumbia de la cordillera,” a track that’s not only about a bird on a mountain, and note even remotely related to El Dusty’s title, but it has also been used by sound systems and global bass DJs in Columbia and elsewhere. Interestingly, the track is a buoyant and swaggering track, full of tweeter and woofer rocking beats and bass paired with a joyous and mischievously anthemic hook that will make you get off your ass and move.
Category: Latin Music
Hector Mendoza is an Dominican Republic-born, Miami, FL-based DJ, electronic music, producer and artist, best known in urban sound system and bass music circles as Happy Colors, and along with El Dusty, Mendoza has been at the forefront of a swaggering and emerging bass music scene that draws from traditional and beloved sounds across Latino America, including merengue, cumbia, bachata, Caribbean moonbahtron and meshes those sounds with trap, drum ‘n’ bass, footwork and other electronic music genres. And as a result of hooking up with Diplo‘s Mad Decent crew, the Dominican Republic-born, Miami, FL-based DJ, electronic music producer and artist has seen a growing national and international reputation as he’s collaborated with the likes of renowned artists including the aforementioned El Dusty, as well as some of electronic music’s renowned artists and producers including Major Lazer, Jack U, DJ Blass, De La Ghetto, Lapiz Conciente and Los Rakas. Additionally, Mendoza has played EDC Mexico, SXSW, Life in Color and at the Sony Music Latin Grammy’s 2016 After Party.
Interestingly, this past year may arguably be Mendoza’s breakthrough year, as his collaboration with El Dusty, “Cumbia Anthem” is the first world bass music track to be nominated for a Latin Grammy — for “Best Urban/Fusion Performance.” Of course along with that, Mendoza has been pretty busy — he released his latest single “Mamaguevo” earlier this month and as you’ll hear, the Miami-based producer creates swaggering and anthemic productions consisting of chopped up vocal samples, explosive, tweeter and woofer rattling 808s, twitchy synths and electronics. And while being as equally club-banging as El Dusty’s work, Mendoza’s sound seems to push the Latin bass music sound towards a mainstream-leaning direction.
Live Concert Photography: Fulaso at Nublu 10/8/16
New Video: The Lush and Boldly Colored, Primal Visuals for Y La Bamba’s “Libre”
Over the course of the band’s three albums and several lineup changes of collaborators, friends and musicians, the band’s material has gone through a variety of changes — but it’s the the band’s forth full-length effort Ojos Del Sol that may be arguably be the most radical turn in sonic direction, while returning to familiar themes of searching and personal discovery — themes that have come up a number of times in Mendoza’s own life, whether as the daughter of Mexican immigrants connecting with her ancestry and searching for spiritual meaning that goes much further than organized religion. In fact, as Mendoza explains in press notes, the material on the album thematically is a “cerebration of family and community” — but a community of shared humanity.
Interestingly, the album’s first single “Libre” finds Mendoza and company at their most self-assured but in one of the breeziest and pop-leaning songs as they pair an infectious and anthemic hook with an arrangement that includes what sounds like xylophone, a mischievous and sinuous bass line, a steady backbeat, Mendoza’s gorgeous vocals along three part harmonies in English and Spanish, a rolling, African folk music-like guitar line in a song that evokes a sense of almost childlike wonder and joy, while making a connection both to Mendoza’s ancestral homeland and Africa in a way that subtly channels Paul Simon’s Graceland.
The recently released video accompanying the song is a lush, cinematically shot video using impossibly verdant greens, bright reds, and a seemingly primal and ecstatic dance routine in the fields just featuring women wearing ancient-inspired costumes, masks and the like. And while being swoon worthy, the video manages to make a vital connection between the primal and ancient and the modern, between celebrating spring and summer and fertility, and a celebrating a community of strong like-minded women simultaneously.
New Video: The Deep, Psychedelic Grooves and Visuals for Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta’s “Camino Infernal/Phantom Weight”
Led by founding member Alex Chavez and featuring Pete Vale, Daniel Villarreal-Carrillo, Jaime Garza and Nathan Karagianis, the members of Chicago, IL-based Latin music quintet Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta have storied careers in a diversity […]
New Video: The Mischievous, Genre Mashing Sounds of Orkestra Mendoza
“Caramelos,” featuring Salvador Duran is the first single off the band’s soon-to-be released album ¡Vamos A Guarachar! manages to possess a genre mashing style as you’ll hear the enormous tweeter and woofer rocking beats and synths of electronica, an impressive organ solo, the twangy pedal steel of country and western, a bit of mariachi here, a bit of mambo there, a bit of cumbia, a bit of of this and a bit of that in a playful and stomping song that doesn’t quite sound like anything you would have heard recently, and they do with a mischievous, swaggering, danceable song. It’s the sort of song that much like the work of El Dusty and others, should remind listeners that the music from the American/Mexican border may be some of the most sonically inventive and challenging music you’ll hear in contemporary music.
The recently released video was shot by Josh Harrison at Tuscon’s RBar and features the incredibly dapper dressed band performing the song in the bar behind an incredibly colorful backdrop.
Live Footage: Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath on KEXP
Brownout, a relentlessly touring, Latin funk and rock act side project of Grupo Fantasma has become something of an independent act of its own since the 2014 release of Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath, which featured Latin funk interpretations of beloved Black Sabbath songs such as “Iron Man,” “Planet Caravan,” “N.I.B” and others.
October 28, 2016 will mark the release of Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath’s highly-anticipated follow up, Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath, Vol II through Ubiquity Records. And the second collection will feature the band putting their unique spin on deeper Sabbath catalog cuts including “Fairies Wear Boots,” “Snowblind,” “Supernaught,” and “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” featuring Ghostland Observatory’s Aaron Behrens. Just in time for the announcement of their forthcoming sophomore effort, the band (through their publicist) put folks on to this 2014 live segment they did for KEXP, which features the band’s impressive and funky takes on “Iron Man,” “Planet Caravan,” “The Wizard,” and “N.I.B” and members of the band talking about touring life, the response they’ve received from Latin funk fans and Sabbath fans alike and more.
New Video: A Gorgeous and Thoughtful Ballad from Cuban-born Pianist and Composer Harold Lopez Nussa
Interestingly, the Stateside release of Lopez-Nussa’s latest effort (the album drops here on Friday) comes as the US has begun to lift the embargo started during the Kennedy Administration and normalize diplomatic, cultural and trade relations — and in fact, it’ll be the first album by a Cuban-based artist to see a complete international release in more than 50 years. Now last month I wrote about two singles from the album “Mozambique en Mi B” and “Feria,” two tracks which possessed an understated and elegant simplicity that made them sound and feel timeless, as they nodded at bop-era jazz — hinting at the charm and mischievous wit and stunning melodicism of Horace Silver and Thelonious Monk but meshing that with a breezy and danceable tropicalia and Afro-Cuban/Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms. The album’s latest single, album title track “El Viaje” continues within the same vein of its preceding singles as the track consists of gently propulsive Afro-Caribbean percussion, a gorgeous, a stately horn line paired with the a sensual interplay between Wade’s tender and yearning vocals and Lopez Nussa’s dexterous blocks of piano chords providing melody and emotional heft in a breathtakingly gorgeous and accessible ballad.
The recently released video for the song splits its focus between a man walking down dusty roads and canopied forests to a yet unknown destination and footage of the musicians recording the song and hanging out in the studio — and interestingly enough, the video evokes the joy and wonder in traveling to someplace completely new; the profoundly lonely recognition of being a stranger in a strange place, where you don’t understand the language; the longing for seeing a face like yours in a crowd; the longing for home and the joy of returning home.
New Video: Peruvian Septet Bareto Returns with a Cosmic Take on Traditional Cumbia Paired with Satirical Visuals
The album’s latest single “La Pantalla,” will further cement the Peruvian septet’s reputation for pushing the sonic boundaries of cumbia as a looping guitar line played through gentle amounts of reverb are paired with soaring organ, electronic bleeps and bloops, an infectious hook with call-and-response vocals — and as a result, the song possesses a subtly psychedelic and cosmic feel. And along with that, the band manages to play with a coolly swaggering, self-assuredness.
The recently released music video is a rather satirical take on Peruvian TV shows, featuring shows hosted by grotesque talking heads, violent and absurd situations, spliced with footage of the band performing the show on a shitty late night talk show and footage of dancers splashing, sloshing and getting even filthier in the mud; in fact they get so filthy that they manage to spread their filth on to a nearby child.
Classically trained Havana, Cuba-born and based jazz pianist and composer Harold Lopez-Nussa was born into a very musical family. Not only are his father and uncle are both working musicians, his late mother Mayra Torres was a highly-regarded piano teacher. When Lopez-Nussa turned eight, he began studying at Manuel Saumell Elementary School of Music, then the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory and finally graduating with a degree in classical piano from the Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA). “I studied classical music and that’s all I did until I was 18,” Lopez-Nussa said in press notes. Then came jazz.
“Jazz was scary. Improvisation was scary. That idea of not knowing what you are going to play . . “the Cuban pianist and composer explains. “At school I learned the works of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and then it was all very clear. That permanent risk in which jazz musicians find themselves in all the time was terrifying—of course, now I find myself in that risk all the time.” And yet interestingly enough, throughout his recording career Lopez-Nussa has found himself moving between classical, jazz and pop music rather easily. He has recorded a rendition of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ “Fourth Piano Concerto” with Cuba’s National Symphony Orchestra back in 2003; has won the First Prize and Audience Price of the Jazz Solo Piano Compeition at the Monterux Jazz Festival in 2005; has collaborated with David Sanchez, Christian Scott and Stefon Harris on Ninety Miles in 2011; has made an appearance on Esencial, an album of compositions by revered Cuban classical guitarist, composer and conductor Leo Brouwer, also in 2011; and as far as more popular projects, he was involved in the Cuba volume of Rhythms del Mundo, which had him recording songs with members of the world-famous Buena Vista Social Club; and he spent three years as part of the Omara Portuondo’s tuouring band — and naturally those experiences have deeply influenced the Cuban pianist and composer’s own personal style and aesthetic.
El Viaje, Lopez-Nussa’s latest full-length effort features the Cuban pianist and composer’s trio, which includes his younger brother Ruy Adrian Lopez-Nussa (drums and percussion) and Senegalese bassist and vocalist Alune Wade, as well as guest appearances from the Lopez-Nussas father Ruy Francisco on drums, Mayquel González on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Dreiser Durruthy and Adel González on percussion. Alune Wade’s collaboration with Lopez-Nussa goes back to when the duo worked together on Havana-Paris-Dakar, and as Lopez-Nussa explains, “Having a non-Cuban musician on this recording speaks to our contact with other cultures. Especially with African culture, which is so far from ours geographically and yet so close. Every time we play, I believe we enter into a journey we are creating.”
Interestingly, the upcoming Stateside release of Lopez-Nussa’s latest effort comes as the US has begun to lift the embargo started during the Kennedy Administration and normalize diplomatic, cultural and trade relations — and in fact, it’ll be the first album by a Cuban-based artist to see a complete international release in more than 50 years. And as a teaser of what you should expect to hear off the album and the Cuban pianist and composer’s Stateside tour, you can check out two singles from the album “Mozambique en Mi B” and “Feria.” And from both tracks, Lopez-Nussa’s compositions possess an understated and elegant simplicity that makes both “Mozambique en Mi B” and “Feria” sound and feel timeless; in some way, they nod at bop era jazz — hinting at the charm and mischievous wit and stunning melodicism of Horace Silver and Thelonious Monk but meshing that with a breezy and danceable tropicalia and Afro-Cuban/Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms. And while mining from somewhat familiar territory, if you’ve listened to as much jazz as I have, the material possesses a vitality that separates it from countless others. Check out how the interplay between Lopez-Nussa’s piano chords and Wade’s bass and vocals seem as though they’re flirtatiously dancing with each other on “Feria,” while “Mozambique en Mi B,” sounds as though it were heavily influenced by samba and includes a deft and gorgeous Lopez-Nussa solo — and it’s in those moments that the Havana-born and based pianist and composer reveals himself as arguably one of the more inventive, contemporary composers you’ll come across.
Tour Dates
Aug 10 / The Opera House at Boothbay Harbor / Boothbay Harbor, ME
Aug 11 / Payomet Performing Arts Center / Truro, MA
Aug 12 / Shalin Liu Performance Center / Rockport, MA
Aug 14 / SFJAZZ Center Miner Auditorium / San Francisco, CA
Aug 14 / San Jose Jazz Summer Fest Jade Leaf Lounge / San Jose, CA
Aug 15 / Kuumbwa Jazz Center / Santa Cruz, CA
Aug 18 / Vail Jazz Festival (Special Guest w. Maraca) / Vail, CO
Aug 19 / Aspen Snowmass Jazz Festival (Special Guest w. Maraca) / Aspen, CO
Aug 30 / Cotton Club / Tokyo, Japan
Sept 2 / Musashino Swing Hall / Musashino (Tokyo), Japan
Sept 3 / NHIC Tokyo JazzFest (Forum Hall A) / Tokyo, Japan
Sept 4 / Detroit Jazz Festival / Detroit, MI
Sept 5 / Detroit Jazz Festival / Detroit, MI
Oct 4 / Gateway City Arts / Holyoke, MA
Oct 5 / Museum of Fine Arts / Boston, MA
Oct 6 – 7 / The Berrie Center (Ramapo College) / Mahwah, NJ
Oct 8 / The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Terrace Club) /Washington, DC
Oct 11 / Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (Jazz at Lincoln Center) / New York, NY
Oct 13 / The Side Door / Old Lyme, CT
Oct 14 / BRIC Jazz Festival / Brooklyn, NY
Oct 15 / Chris’ Jazz Cafe / Philadelphia, PA
Oct 18 / Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant / Minneapolis, MN
Oct 19 / SPACE-Society for the Preservation of Art & Culture Evanston /Evanston (Chicago), IL
Oct 21 / The Dirty Dog Cafe / Detroit (Grosse Point), MI
Oct 22 / The Dirty Dog / Detroit (Grosse Point), MI
Oct 23 / Baur’s Listening Lounge / Denver, CO
Oct 27 / Blue Whale / Los Angeles, CA
May 6 / Rose and Alfred Miniaci Performing Arts Center / Davie, FL
Led by frontwoman and principle songwriter Luz Elena Mendoza, Portland, OR-based alt folk/folk rock/indie rock act Y La Bamba, the critically applauded act can trace its origins to early 2008 when Mendoza wanted to perform under something else other than her name, and began writing and making home recordings of her songs on a one-by-one basis largely drawing from the traditional Mexican folk songs she heard as a child growing up in San Francisco and playing with her cousins in the San Joaquin Valley, the work of Loch Lomond and Devendra Banhardt and others. Around the time she had begun writing her own material, Mendoza had begun regularly hosting an open mic at a sake bar in Northeast Portland, where she met the members of the band’s original line up — Ben Meyercord, Mike Kitson (drums), Sean Flinn (guitar) and Eric Shrapel (accordion).
Over the course of the band’s three albums and several lineup changes of collaborators, friends and musicians, the band’s material has gone through a variety of changes — but it’s the the band’s forth full-length effort Ojos Del Sol that may be arguably be the most radical turn in sonic direction, while returning to familiar themes of searching and personal discovery — themes that have come up a number of times in Mendoza’s own life, whether as the daughter of Mexican immigrants connecting with her ancestry and searching for spiritual meaning that goes much further than organized religion. In fact, as Mendoza explains in press notes, the material on the album thematically is a “cerebration of family and community” — but a community of shared humanity.
Interestingly, the album’s first single “Libre” finds Mendoza and company at their most self-assured but in one of the breeziest and pop-leaning songs as they pair an infectious and anthemic hook with an arrangement that includes what sounds like xylophone, a mischievous and sinuous bass line, a steady backbeat, Mendoza’s gorgeous vocals along three part harmonies in English and Spanish, a rolling, African folk music-like guitar line in a song that evokes a sense of almost childlike wonder and joy, while making a connection both to Mendoza’s ancestral homeland and Africa in a way that subtly channels Paul Simon‘s Graceland.
New Audio: Bareto’s Mischievous and Breezily Futuristic Take on Peruvian Cumbia
Impredecible’s slow-burning yet buoyant new single “El impredecible,” possesses a languorous and looping rhythm, intricate and dexterous guitar lines familiar to Peruvian cumbia; however, the song manages to be simultaneously angular, as the looping rhythms are paired with complex polyrhythms and beats, ethereal electronics, warm blasts of horns coming out of the ether and earnest vocals to craft a sound that feels and sounds simultaneously traditional and futuristic.
If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past few months, you may recall that I’ve previously written about Melbourne, Australia-based Latin music nonet San Lazaro. Featuring band members, who claim heritage from all over the Spanish speaking world — including Chile, Cuba, Catalonia and elsewhere. And as result, the Australian act have developed a reputation for a sound that draws across the Latin Diaspora as it possesses elements of reggaeton, salsa, Cuban son, 70s New York salsa and 60s Peruvian cumbia in an effortlessly seamless fashion; in fact, the band has simultaneously developed a reputation for being Melbourne’s preeminent Latin acts, as the band’s 2012 release Clave contra Clave helped the band win Best Australian Latin Band, and their single “Muchacho Tranquilo” was included on the 2014 Rough Guide to Psychedelic Salsa compilation.
La Despedida (which translates from Spanish to English as “The Farewell”) the Melbourne-based nonet’s latest effort, appropriately focuses on some familiar themes to all of us — breakups, loss, insomnia, political protests and more. And adding to the emotional weight is the fact that the material is also deeply informed by the fact that the band has broken up and reconvened several times. Now, you may remember that “Amor De Despedida” was a propulsive song that balanced swooning heartache with a bitter, kiss off to someone who made the song’s narrator feel ambivalent and confused emotions, “La Ola” the album’s latest single is a swinging and bouncing bit of cumbia that has the band pairing twangy country music-like guitars with a propulsive and insistent rhythm and an enormous horn line to craft a song that’s inspired by the Chica cumbia sound of 1970s Peru — while the song’s narrator tells a woeful tale about a fickle love that seems to to come and go as she pleases, and as you listen to the song, the song’s narrator expresses a frustrated, bemused and ambivalent bitterness over it while admitting that they seem hopelessly pulled into a situation they can’t quite control.