Classical Peruvian chicha cumbia band Los Destellos running through New York with DJ assistance by Geko Jones and Benoit of Masala & La Congona.

You may have heard Los Destellos as remixed by Sonido Martines a year or two back:

Los Destellos – Elsa (Sonido Martines remix feat Fefe)

Sonido tracked down Los Destellos, explained to them what was going on in the slippery world of ‘new cumbia’, and with their blessings got permission to flip this remix. Now-thing realness with respect for the foundational musicans!

Cumbia on NYC’s NPR show ‘Morning Edition’! A few days ago I stopped by to talk Cumbia 101 with WNYC, results can be streamed or downloaded here at the WNYC Culture blog. You’ll notice the radio audio is tucked away inside a post of mine on the Sonido Martines D’Antigua party in Queens… and if you haven’t seen it yet, my 1st post for WNYC Culture is about thongs and world music.

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my intention is to post 1 cumbia a day here in 2010. I’m off to a slow start. Blame CPT.

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Over at Dutty Artz, check out PM Jawn’s latest post — on cumbia stores in Passiac, New Jersey! USEFUL INFORMATION FOR THE DEVOTED.

[interior of La Conga in Passaic, PM Jawn]

[Mungo's Hi-Fi flickr photo of Mictlan Dub Festi audience @ Salon Calavera, DF.]

The last couple years have given rise to countless cumbia remixes, which often function like a machine-translated extension of cumbia’s endless infatuation with the cover version. (I admit a fascination with badly sung covers, and have a special folder on some hard drive dedicated to precisely that: people who take a song and make it much, much worse, with all the soulfulness of a voice waaay outta tune.)

New York City’s Cumbiagra just released their first CD, a collection of versions entitled (Under) Covers. Musicians, they are playing many gigs this month. The first track on their CD is “Al Calor de la Cumbia.” Cumbiagra stretch this tune out to seven minutes (!) and the best part is that it’s great the whole time- provided you can deal with guitar solos in yr cumbia. Musicians!

Cumbiagra – Al Calor de la Cumbia

(Regarding cumbia musicality, you are immediately directed to this excellent interview with Mario Galeano Toro of Frente Cumbiero in Bomb. More on this in a bit.)

For Thanksgiving I was on 3-city tour in Mexico with dub master Adrian Sherwood, and the amazing Mungo’s Hi-Fi; on the road to Puebla we stopped at a place to eat (across the highway from the one pictured below) and I picked up a CD-r because it contained a much older version of “Al Calor de la Cumbia”. (Doug from Mungo’s has a nice photo slideshow from the tour here.)

I lost the CD packaging and don’t know who this is…. but Toy does!

Grupo Marina Perla – Al Calor de la Cumbia

This song contains a verse I love:

Yo veía el tiempo pasar
Más tú nunca viniste a mí
Cumbia, Cumbia, a orilla del mar.
Que por ella te conocí.

[Mungo's Hi-Fi flickr]

Yes, he’ll be playing the incredible ‘One Step Beyond’ party at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan on November 13th, with DJ /rupture, Maluca, Matt Shadetek & Jahdan Blakkamoore (more on this soon). That happens on Friday. The following day the cumbia will be concentrated:

it goes down today, Wednesday Sept. 16 – I’ll be spinning an all-cumbia set at the Treehouse party. Free! It’s a gentle evening for the 9-5 set; I start around 10:30pm, so show up early… It goes down at Littlefield in Gowanus, alongside Treeboy, Gamall, and Raspberry Jones.

When I say all-cumbia, I mean it! Material you can find in many many places, such as Mexican shops in Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, or via online stateside shops from Discos El Papi & Barba Azul. The point is, cumbia is close. So this set will contain no crunk cumbia, no ‘cumbia digital’, no bloggy remixes.

Expect current Mexican cumbia sonidera, with an emphasis on tracks that shout out Nueva York, like…

Formula 5 – La Cumbia Maestra (a re-post but hey)

…alongside more classic material from the 60s 70s & 80s, like:

Andres Landero – Canto a Cartagena (written by Betty Ochoa de Anillo)

And be prepared for potentially cheesy sad love songs, like:

Los Star Boys – La Culpa (“we had problems, the blame goes to both of us”)

…and, darker still, songs about death:

Lucy Gonzales y su Combo Orence – La Ley Poderosa

Great lyrics on this one, “The Powerful Law”. I have cumbia songs about Satan, but I don’t play those in public. On a tangentially related note, Spanish uses the same word for eschatology and scatology!

In closing – come through, come early, and enjoy this last one, an instrumental about the Lone Ranger’s guacharaca (in which we hear the sounds of his horse), from a DJ presumably named after Keanu Reeves’ character in The Matrix:

DJ Neo – Guacharaca del Llanero Solitario

remix produced by Toy Selectah, our broder en Monterrey, who’s hitting Manhattan tomorrow inna sonidero-raverton style. Listen to my radio show tonite (7pm EST) for ticket giveaways!

The main zone lies along Brooklyn’s Fifth & Fourth Avenues, from 36th Street to 60th Street.

I’ve got my favorite shops & have a good idea of the various specialties… but I’m not that generous.

Hint: good cumbia & good eats are never too far apart. To that end, here’s a nice well-annotated GoogleMaps mashup from Karen Z: the Taquerias of Sunset Park.

I’ll present myself. I’m Benoit and I’m doing with Khiasma and Jeune Premier the radio show Masala Cism 89.3 in Montréal. I’m really happy and proud to have the occasion to write on La Congona! I’m harvesting a lot in cumbia and I’m really happy to share what I’m finding with all of you, cumbia aficionados.

For my first post, I want to share 3 tracks from Karol y su Amor gitano remixed that sound terribly deep and intense. This Cumbia rebajadas is made essentially in Mexico where they slow down the beat to adapt to a typical dance and to get more bass.

Karol y su amor is quite famous in Mexico. I’m not a big fan of the original track.

I really prefer the version made by the sonideros and believe it or not, the voice in those track is originally a girl voice.

Karol y su amor gitano – Cumbia Cartagena

Karol y su amor gitano – El maldito acordeon

And a classic track, Llanto de la tortuga, but with a different mood:

Karol y su amor gitano – Lllanto de la tortuga

Jorge Meza – Pescador de Baru

& youtube mic blowout from a live show, still heavy under its own weight