Mexican Dubwiser comes correct with a free 16-track compilation of cumbia/dub/latin/edits. Sonidos de Hoy y Siempre.

includes a tune from the great underrated/inactive? Cumbiampiro:

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Cumbiampiro – Sobredosis de Sabor

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here’s another cumbia, decades older. Tepito titular metadata garble: “68 Mu – Eca Esquiva”

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? – ? (Esquiva/Muneca)

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…

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

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

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

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

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

…and, darker still, songs about death:

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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:

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DJ Neo – Guacharaca del Llanero Solitario

2 weeks ago I was mixing some cumbia at the party for the album release of my friends psychotropical orchestra here in Montréal and I was talking with the lead of the group who’s from Mexico. We had an interesting discussion about cumbia and sonideros.

He told me about la peregrinacion (pilgrimage) sonidera were all the sonideros across america converge to the church on one day for a special mass and party. Just like almost any peregrinacion in the mexican culture, La virgen de guadalupe is the center of the day and if you have the chance to participate, the best place to follow la pergrinacion is in la Basílica de Guadalupe in Mexico DF. There’s one in couple of city in the us also (I.E. Los Angeles). Anything that can protect the sonideros for the year to come is a good thing!

Here a good video from the famous mexican Grupo Kual where you can see what happening.

El Hijo de la Cumbia, playing in front of… 15,000? 20,000? mas?! … a whole lotta people in Zocalo, Mexico City.

next stop Europe.

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Poncho Kingz – Space Cumbia (Sonidero Nacional remix)

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!

KEYWORDS: bottles of water in the desert, white shirts, brown power, blackout, cumbia boys.

epic Sonido Condor youtubery. (kicks in around 1:40). shout to Oro11 for the link

video dedicado para los imigrantes gracias al sonido condor y sonido lesboss por la alluda para conseguir los permisos para subir este video del primero de mayo dia en que los imigrantes salieron al las calles a demostrar su poderrr

El Proyecto Sonidero. A blog/organization/blob looking at the sonidero movement as a creative response to “the necessities of a distinct order, one operating as a transnational platform of expression, innovation, mediation, participation, and communication across wide social sectors.”

Good blogroll, too.

El Proyecto Sonidero reconoce la potencia del movimiento sonidero como respuesta creativa a un conjunto de necesidades de distinto orden, que opera como una plataforma transnacional de expresión, innovación, mediación, participación, y comunicación para amplios sectores de la sociedad. Éste es el territorio que explora nuestro trabajo con la comunidad de sonideros, los espacios culturales y los ámbitos académicos y artísticos.

and today en D.F. they’re doing this…

I was just talking with Benoit about the barrio de Tepito of D.F. (Mexico City). It’s a fairly heavy neighborhood. Also called Barrio Bravo. And one of the best places in the world to find cumbia CDs (10 pesos per CD, or about $0.66 cents given the pesos recent 40% devaluation against the American dollar (which Mexicans in America refer to as the peso). Benoit found some of the material for his recent Cumbia Con Bass mix there a few months ago.

[taken from Barrio de Tepito]

Right after talking to him, I take a look at the free book Self-organisation/counter-economic-strategies, edited by incredible Danish arts collective Superflex. In a nice coincidence, the first essay is on Tepitos! PDF here.

The essay, written by Alfonso Hernández y traducido al ingles por Hugo Hopping, is called “TEPITO: a barrio of artisans in light of global piracy”. Here’s an excerpt:

Previously, rural bandits and urban gangsters fought against the local chief or landowner. They had no ideology of power and they did not aspire to use one. Today, however, modern crime is a punitive involution that seeks to wield power, inciting barbarism and terrorism. There is a resurgence of a modern repressive state that protects only the global mobility of capital, and covers up the geopolitics of criminal markets that continue to impoverish countries and trigger migration – from the countryside to the city and from one country to another.

Any similarity between local suffering and what we are experiencing at a national level is presented as pure coincidence, as the media reinforces the black legend of Tepito. Consequently, we feel the need to reveal why we rebel against those who at all cost want to make of our barrio bravo a social-economic laboratory of delinquency and drug dealing. Just as national sovereignty is disappearing, the modern re-
pressive state gerrymanders both the existing districts and the virtual ubiquity of Tepito, altering the economic equilibrium from within as well as from without.

It is hard to believe that piracy impoverishes commerce. Piracy creates controlled financial spaces for those who make their living, by milking the conlict between formal and informal trade and the subsistence economies that surround it, without ever affecting the black market profitability that is financially administered by white-collar executives.

In this pitched battle against the barrio bravo, many of our youth have been corrupted, others have lost their lives, and many more have become prison fodder. Nevertheless, Tepito lives, risking everything, knowing that for a bastard you need a bastard and a half. Even the black sheep is a member of the family and charisma will put an end to the stigma.

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Superflex is on a powerful flex. In addition to helping Palestine apply to enter the Eurovision contest, they also do things like make art… check this recent video: Flooded McDonald’s

Flooded McDonald’s

from Superflex on Vimeo.

I’ve just recorded this weekend a small mix inspired by the cumbia sonidera.
I really enjoy the 70-90 sounds of that mix. There’s clearly a big bass present all the way long that I really enjoy too!

Some of the track are from disc that I’ve bought in Tepito Mexico DF.

Put it loud!

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Direct download

Cumbia con Bass tracklist
Las estrellas de baru – Lucerito
Dragones Rojos – Cumbia pa’oriente
Cumbia Disco – Los Telez
Cola Lex – El Remolon
Cumbia Galactica – Los Telez
Solo quiero bailar – Prede la vela
El Pibi Milli – Gianko y su sondiero de limpia (Lil’ wayne VS Damas Gratis)
El llanto de la tortuga – Karol y su Amor Gitano
Los piratas del Zanjon – Fauna (Zurita remix)
Cumbia sanajacintera – Lisandro Meza
Fantasma con 3 deseos – Fantasma
Mr. Yoso – Very Be Careful
Cumbia para recordar – Chane Meza
Suegra Buena – Andres Landero

First of all,

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.

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Karol y su amor gitano – Cumbia Cartagena

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Karol y su amor gitano – El maldito acordeon

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

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Karol y su amor gitano – Lllanto de la tortuga