LA CONGONA NEW CUMBIA

[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!

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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!

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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]

Head over to RCRDLBL to get an exclusive tune from the new cumbia / cumbia digital compilation, put together by the deepest digger we know, Sonido Martines!

Los Destellos – Elsa (Sonido Martines remix feat Fefe)

the jam in question is Sonido himself remixing legendary Peruvian chicha cumbia band, Los Destellos de Enrique Delgado, with remix assistance by Fefe, a Brazilian firecracker on the mic. In one example of how Sonido Martines works, he 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!

the comp esta muy wapo… Sonido Martines presents: Nueva Cumbia Argentina! fresh heat from nu-skoolers like El Hijo de la Cumbia, Fauna, and Chancha Via Circuito, and visionary early material from DJ Taz and Damas Gratis, and more! 12″ and digital out now: iTunes / Amazon / Boomkat, etc. K VIVA LA KUMBIA!!

A week after Damas Gratis come to town, get ready for SONIDO MARTINES!

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:

if you are reading this blog, you know who they are. Lescano delivers madness guaranteed. If you don’t know, check my article on cumbia for The Fader.

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

Black Mandingo is back!

My friend Black sent to me a month ago the latest compilation of his remix and mashup.  I’m a bit late on this one and I want to apologize for this!  I had, just like dj/Rupture, computer problems and my available time just shrink to the minimum available!

By chance I had this compilation to listen to it.  I’m really happy to share this one.  I really like the flavor of his remix and mashups.  I was already with the Alto mixtape (download here) that he release  a year ago.  He also got his Fauna remix on zizek here!

Listen to Eazy e cumbia mashup, reggaeton modulado and the heavybass!

Download BLACK IS BACK here

Después de una exitosa presentación en el Zócalo de la ciudad de México el pasado mes de marzo,
frente a mas de 30.000 personas y un tour por el viejo continente, presentadonse en diversos festivales Europeos durante Junio y Julio, vuelve “El Hijo de la Cumbia” a tierras aztecas durante todo el mes de septiembre, presentando su material “Freestyle de ritmos” y que mejor inicio de este gran tour queen el Auditorio nacional, al lado de “Celso Piña” este 3 de Septiembre!!

El Hijo de la Cumbia is running things! Check above for his 10-day Mexico tour, starting tomorrow with el jefe, Celso Pina @ the Auditorio Nacional!!!!!! needless to say, this party will be crazy.

and his debut album, Freestyle de Ritmos, is available in the usual spots, like Boomkat, eMusic, Turntable Lab, and iTunes everywhere…

Sonido del principe just sent to me this morning his latest mix named cumbia 4 life.

Since a while, we used to get some crazy heavy bass cumbia remix from him on the net, bersa disco and cabeza, and he made it again with a new mixtape with plenty of new remix and edit.

Like he said: “CUMBIA is not a fad, not a passing moment of South American hipness. CUMBIA is a feeling that grabs your heart. For Sonido Del Principe, it’s CUMBIA 4 LIFE!”

Be careful, the guy will touring this autumn in south and north america.

SONIDO DEL PRINCIPE – CUMBIA 4 LIFE MIX, SEPT ’09

http://www.mediafire.com/?dzzjftn4htm

01. el original – me matas (dj andy & sdp edit)

02. kiko de galo – mi morenita rebelde (sdp edit)

03. chief boima – techno rhumba (sdp edit)

04. the peronists – haitiana (sdp edit)

05. el remolon (sdp edit)

06. sdp cumbia guitara edit

07. systeme solar (sdp edit)

08. dj lengua – mi camino (sdp edit)

09. sonido del principe – jozefa matia

10. marcelo fabian – sel y mar (sdp rmx)

11. bomba estereo – fuego (sdp rmx)

12. sonido del principe – boom boom

13. dynamic – this is why i’m hot (sdp rmx)

14. dj panik – ice ice baby (sdp edit)

15. sonido del principe – cumbia del mondo

16. toddla t – full up mi portion (sdp rmx)

17. general levy – champagne body (sdp rmx)

18. suckafish p – cloak & dagger (sdp rmx)

Tune in Mudd Up! with DJ Rupture tonight at 7PM, as Roberto Ernesto Gyemant aka DJ Beto, the man responsible for putting together those wonderful volumes of 1960s and ’70s “cumbia tropical & calypso funk” from Panama, joins me to talk and share some incredible music. He had a curatorial hand in Soundway Records Panama compilations and the Colombia! Golden Age of Discos Fuentes as well. Deep compilations with informative liner notes, the real deal…

We (Lamin & I) have been fascinated with the music of Panama ever since our visit from Wayne Marshall and Raquel Z Rivera, editors of the Reggaeton book, broke down Panama’s relationship to Jamaica with some deadly tunes and erudite commentary. (Missed it? It’s streaming here. Subscribe to the Mudd Up! podcast if you want downloadable versions of my weekly show: , Mudd Up! RSS.

Listen, get involved, throw in comments, phone in questions. Again, tonight @ 7PM.

For a warmup, check Beto’s mix of hard-to-find musica costeña Colombiana and tipica Panameña, streaming here.

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And if that’s not enough, here’s great CD rip of old school cumbias – although you might not guess it from the cover art featuring two cyber chicks (one in cowhide) and a tiny monkey sporting a baseball cap. [via]

Scratchy gems include a Vietnam-themed war/love song with a call-and-response chorus.

Descarga Sonidera

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.