Texas-born Grant Dull has generated a little miracle. After moving to Buenos Aires, he started the Zizek collective, a group of DJs and electronic musicians devoted to a blend of digital rhythms and cumbia. What started as weekly parties is now a record label and a touring troupe.
Watch my interview of Grant clicking on the picture. Listen to the Zizek sound here.
Relishing the rich and varied canon of Latin music, I could not believe my bad luck when I moved to New York in 2004 and all you could hear blasting from cars, delis and bars was Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina.” Not only was it the dance-du-jour, ready to spread like fire throughout the continent, but somehow this phenomena made the question of Latino identity in this country even more complicated.
Now that the waters have settled —Daddy Yankee showed his true colors by endorsing John McCain for President, artists like Calle 13 pushing the genre in new directions— Reggaetón has come of age by receiving the academic treatment. Reggaetón (Duke University Press, 2009), a collection of essays and in-depth interviews, gives the first great blast of Latino music in the XXI century a much needed perspective.
Essays like co-editor Wayne Marshall‘s “From Música Negra to Reggaeton Latino” show the complex and transnational evolution of the genre. His musicological analysis of —yes— “Gasolina” even made me listen to that awful song with an attention I didn’t think possible. Other texts included in the volume, such as an interview with Panamaniam reggaetón forefather El General —police officers cutting his dreadlocks, public buses serving as moving clubs— bring the music back to where it belongs: the heart.
At NY1 Noticias, I had the opportunity to interview one of the co-editors of the project, Hunter College researcher and musician Raquel Z. Rivera.
The Dalkey Archive Press recently published The Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction, a stunning bilingual collection of 16 short stories by writers born after 1945. Álvaro Enrigue contributed with “On the Death of the Author,” which begins as an anecdote —a writer trying to tell the story of the last pure American Indian—, and seems to encapsulate the world. The heart of the issue and one of the most basic questions in literature: how to escape from literality to create art.
A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune of interviewing Mexican literary critic Rafael Lemus and Mexican-cum-New-Yorker writer Carmen Boullosa. Among other thoughtful things, Lemus —who had recently published a collection of short stories— said he saw no difference between writing fiction and book reviews: just a leap from text form to another. Boullosa, in turn, commented on her novel El complot de los románticos, an inventive text in which authors cross not only the borders between countries, but also those that separate the living from the dead.
Videos:
Interview with Carmen Boullosa
In 2004 I was surprised by the elegance of Federico Aubele’s LP debut, Gran Hotel Buenos Aires. On his third record, Amatoria, the Argentinean musician has moved from downtempo and electronic tango to pop ballads, and replaced the female singers with a (deep) voice of his own.
Watch the interview (with Aubele performing a fragment of Amatoria‘s opening track) here.
Andrea Valeria, a Mexican writer who prefers to be called an “astrologist” before “astrologer,” makes a brave an intelligent effort to defend the study of the stars as a source for self-knowledge.
She has Galileo on her side, she claims.
Yerba Buena’s lead vocalist CuCu Diamantes has released what promises to be one of the best Latin pop records of the year: her solo debut “CuCuLand.” The opening track, “Más fuerte,” is an amazing blend of chanson, flamenco, tango and go-go horns.
I recently had the chance to interview CuCu Diamantes at NY1 Noticias.
Watch the video for “Más fuerte”:
It is hard to remember any other television interview I have made that has generated more feedback than this one, with astrologist Andrea Valeria. Perhaps it was the fact that it had to do with sex and she mentioned the number of erections that men are supposed to have everyday (11); perhaps it was the fact that she mentioned that, given our respective signs, my wife and I should have “great nights of loving”. Watch.
José Manuel Simián 