Jungle Fever!

Here is a little preview mix for our next Hispanic Panic night at Stereo in Glasgow on the 14th of January. We will be turning Stereo’s cave into a steamy rainforest filled with mystery with live music from the Glasgow Drum Circle and the best música selvatica to boogie in a jungle fashion to! All proceeds from the event will be going to a research trip in the Manú national park in the Peruvian Amazon run by Glasgow University students. Listen below or download here.

Alongside some contemporary Peruvian artists and a few jungle related TUNES, the mix has a definite chicha leaning to it. Chicha appeared in the Peruvian amazon “oil boom” towns in the 1970s. Led by bands like Juaneco y su Combo and Los Mirlos, it was a real fusion music mixing surf guitar, indigenous melodies and cumbia rhythms to create a unique stlye called chicha. It has recently been exposed to the world through the fantastic Roots of Chicha Volume 1 & 2 released by Barbes Records.

 

Perfection

Boogat, the Spanish spitting Montreal based MC returns with another sure-fire tune. After working with some great producers in the global bass/digital cumbia ilk (El Remolón, Douster, Poirier) he has teamed up this time with Geko Jones (Dutty Artz/Que Bajo?) to produce “Perfection” which is available for free download from Remezcla. The tune is cumbia/salsa/latin dancefloor goodness with some playful lyrics about hablantes de español…

If you want to hear more then check out Boogat’s  latest mixtape Que Pegue Duro Y Violento mixed by Poirier and watch out for the MC’s forthcoming solo album in 2011.

Very Merry Happy Xmas

World’s End Girlfriend is Japanese musician/one-man band Katsuhiko Maeda who is behind some of the most genre defying electronic/instrumental music of the past ten years. In one track his music can go seamlessly from lush ambience and post-rock esq. guitar reverb to intense breakbeat rhythms, cut up vocals and fairground madness. Classed as unclassifiable. Check out his beautiful 2001 album “Farewell Kingdom” and his new label Virgin Babylon Records.

As a Christmas present WEG has re-released the 2001 “Xmas Song EP” (first released under the World’s End Boyfriend moniker) for free download from the 2nd to the 31st of December. The EP is a lot of fun, lots samples with moments of madness next to moments of beauty, it sums up WEG really. So from WEG and from RnR a Very Merry Happy Christmas.

Download here.

Sak Tzevul – Tzotzil Rock

Thanks to Botella al Mar blog for this. This has to be the only group I know that sing in Tzotzil, a Mayan language spoken in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Sak Tzevul, which translates as lightning, are from the town of Zincantán in southern Chiapas. Their sound is, at its simplest, a fusion of rock and marimba with traditional Mayan music. The band however represents a wider project to protect and promote the regional traditions, exposing a younger generation to their own heritage through music and giving a voice to a culture marginalised within Mexico. Here is the video for their song Batz i Son. There is a great biography of the band here (in Spanish). Really interesting stuff.

Sak Tzevul “Batz`i Son”, posted with vodpod

We Three Kings

One week to go we bring you a little christmas cheer from Mr Paul White to get you in the mood.

Paul White – We Three Kings

“No Puede Serrrrrrr! Noooo!”

A while back I happened upon the Peruvian YouTube sensation La Tigressa del Oriente, a leopard-skinned techno-cumbia singer behind tropiclash classics such as “Nuevo Amanecer” and “Anaconda”. One of her recent collaborations was with fellow internet memes (!), an Ecuadorian artist called Delfín “hasta el fin”, and the young protejé of Peruvian huayno, Wendy Sulca. “En Tus Tierras Bailaré” is like watching a cheap promotional video made by the Israeli tourist board in the 1980s which has been hijacked by three kitsch, superimposed  Latin American superheroes. (Watch out for “el pasito del delfín” and the fantastic zoo scenes.)

The video is phenomenal. It is intriguing if just for it’s amazing blend of imagery: deep sea diving, windmills, Israeli pastries, parrots, llamas, poppies, cowboys etc are all seemlessy combined. It is also a phenomenon and has reached 6.3million hits on YouTube and countless parodies. However, there is something else going on here. “En Tus Tierras Bailaré” is too good to be true. The project was not orchestrated by the three characters, they never even met when they recorded the song, it was in fact conceived by two advertising men from Buenos Aires and Madrid. It was not produced by a novice with a friend in Lima’s central zoo but by grammy award winning music video director Picky Talarico and the music wasn’t written by La Tigressa or Delfín but by the Argentinian musician Gaby Kerpel (who I interviewed here a few years back.) Or so they say…

A bit of Label Love

For anyone who likes to get something for free the internet is the place to be and after all, tis the season! Label Love is a compilation of songs chosen by the heads of a group of great record labels. Vol. 2 features some quality tracks from labels Ninja Tune, One Handed, Plug Research, Tru Thoughts and Ubiquity. A real mix of stuff from Full Crate’s “Never Never”, a J Dilla mould swayer to Madlinksy‘s (otherwise known as Zed Bias) garage roller “Ruled by Your Motions”.

It is available for download from Bandcamp where you can also pick up the equally excellent Vol. 1.

Mulher Rendeira – “A versão autentica”

As part of my dissertation I am looking into the history of the traditional Brazilian song “Mulher Rendeira” and I thought I would share my findings with the world. I first heard it on the soundtrack to Lima Barreto’s film O Cangaceiro and when I realised “Mujer Hilandera”, by Peruvian chicha band Juaneco y su Combo , was a Spanish translation of the same song it captured my imagination and got me thinking. Since then I have found 120 versions (and counting!), in 7 languages and from 16 countries. Quite a legacy for a song written by a 1920s cowboy in the Brazilian backlands about his grandmother!

“Olé, Mulher Rendeira, Olé mulhé rendá. Tu me ensina a fazer renda, eu te ensino a namorá”

I will present a different version of the song once every month or so, a feature if you like, and give a little background to the version and try to explain just how the song found itself being sung by the likes of The Shadows, German schlager star Heino and the The San Jose State Concert Choir. Read on to hear about the beginnings of the song and to hear version 1

A Welcome Return!

Welcome to the all new Rhythm ‘n’ Roots! For anyone who remembers it was formerly located here. This blog will concentrate on discussing music new and old, local and global, its effects, innovations, movements, discoveries and interpretations.

To celebrate the return of this blog I have put together the sixth mixtape Rhythm ‘n’ Roots Volume VI a patchwork of tunes I have become particularly fond of lately. Listen to via Mixcloud below or download here. Tracklisting after the jump.

Rhythm ‘n’ Roots Volume VI Cloudcast by El Buho, posted with vodpod