On the radio tonight, I’ll be hosting Austin’s DJ Orion, performing live in studio! He’s extending the great Texan tradition of keeping cumbia crunk with his latest release, Carajo Colombia. After his DJ set we’ll find time for a quick interview and ticket giveaways to his Que Bajo show @ Santos on Thursday.
Here’s a taste of ‘Carajo Colombia’, you can buy it – setting your own price! – here:
mi hermano Geko Jones has started a FREE NYC WEEKLY party dedicated to “afro-colombian & tropical beats and bass”! QUE BUENO. ‘Que Bajo’ begins this Tuesday; I’ll be spinning a special cumbia sonidera set there next week (Nov. 11) as we gather celebrate the debut El Hijo de la Cumbia album. this week’s Que Bajo guest, Uproot Andy, gifted me this tune. It’s a wonderful afro-colombian song from the country’s salsa hero, Joe Arroyo. The real story, which we have grown unaccustomed to, is chemically free of explanation. . . . The story is always about something unexplainable. The art of narration declines as explanations are added. -Aira back in Yanquistan! MuddUp now resumes its irregular service big thanks for MuddUp reader Thraiped, who commented “I’m sort of obsessed with César Aira, Argentinian, ridiculously prolific… Most of his stuff is short – I recommend Como me Hice Monja (translated as How I Became a Nun) as a place to start.” Thraiped’s obsession is now my own, Aira is amazing… and painfully undertranslated. Since this recommendation i’ve worked my way through El Pequeno Monje Buddhista, Las Noches de Flores, and Como Me Hice Monja. All great, surprising, and a fair amount unlike each other. here’s a bit from this interview, in hasty muddy translation: “The meaning of the word ‘novel’ has expanded so much that it’s ideal in terms of freedom. It doesn’t occur to me to write anything else. I don’t like short story (as a form) because it depends too much on quality; if it’s not good, it doesn’t work. On the other hand, in the novel you can appreciate other things beside the author’s virtuosity, it’s a more relaxed form, let allows for changes of idea, regrets, asymmetries, sinous paths that I think adapt themselves better to my imagination.” & an excerpt from a nice essay: “El vanguardista crea un procedimiento propio, un canon propio, un modo individual de recomenzar desde cero el trabajo del arte. Lo hace porque en su época, que es la nuestra, los procedimientos tradicionales se presentaron concluidos, ya hechos, y el trabajo del artista se desplazó de la creación de arte a la producción de obras, perdiendo algo que era esencial. Y esto no es ninguna novedad. San AgustÃn dijo que sólo Dios conoce el mundo, porque él lo hizo. Nosotros no, porque no lo hicimos. El arte entonces serÃa el intento de llegar al conocimiento a través de la construcción del objeto a conocer; ese objeto no es otro que el mundo. El mundo entendido como un lenguaje. No se trata entonces de conocer sino de actuar. Y creo que lo más sano de las vanguardias, de las que Cage es epÃtome, es devolver al primer plano la acción, no importa si parece frenética, lúdica, sin dirección, desinteresada de los resultados. Tiene que desinteresarse de los resultados, para seguir siendo acción. “ One has to be disinterested in the results to maintain the action. Action! fire, gaitas, cumbia, interrupted silence: Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto – Fuego de Cumbia Los Gaiteros, folk but fierce, will play in Queens on August 2nd. $20/25 plus you have to go out to Queens (not easy from Brooklyn w/ no car)… nearly forgot! – I’ll by DJing at Remor in Girona (Barcelona) this Saturday May 24, and then on Saturday May 31 I’ll be at the Novara Jazz Festival in Italy, and the Saturday after that you can catch me live featuring Jahdan Blakkamoore at Madrid’s La Casa Encendida for only 3 euros! + + + & now for youtube: turntable rebajada from Sonido Martines. I like this one because the visuals are as simple as the rebajada itself – yet more disorienting. Andres Landero ground down to 33. … which leads us to a cumbia utopia – in the sense of an impossible, impossibly pleasant location. I’m not just referring to the pretty girls dressed in haltertops or asymetrical synthetics who are dancing on a computer-generated plane with that radiant horseshoe crab in the foreground as brass notes flare near a pre-peak-oil fantasy truck sold on eBay by Mad Max, now sober, turned beekeeper to support his love of honey – although that is a part of it. There is also a sense of rescuing. And, as always, the cumbia itself. Herself? Spanish, a gendered language. another big shoutout to our peripatetic South American point-man, Sonido Martines — his latest heads-up comes in the form of a deadly recommendation: http://africolombia.blogspot.com/ …is EXACTLY the blog I wanted to exist right now, but didnt know existed, until now. The subtitle — Africa – Colombia – Cultura – Música — just about covers it, a treasure trove of mp3s & album cover scans and INFORMATION. Syllart rubbing elbows with Cartegena cumbias & other forms of tropical? si señor. ¡Adelante!QUE BAJO
THE MAN FROM CORONEL PRINGLES
UPCOMING
AFRICOLOMBIA
