Two music genres separated at birth: humppa & norteña.  Maybe they could collaborate at some point?

Mexican telenovela in Polish TV

Originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado

It’s 7 a.m. in Kraków, I turn on the TV and what do I see? A Mexican telenovela called Rebelde, which has spawned its own plastic pop group and of which I’ve written (and bumped into) before.

Scary way to wake up.

But it just gets better after repeated viewing.  And I don’t even like hip hop that much.

As part of their 20 years, 20 cities world tour Café Tacuba, my favourite Mexican band, visited this part of the world and we were there (careful with the speakers, sound level is rather high).

As you can imagine, I jumped around like a little kid, sang my heart out and was exhausted after the 2.5 hours were over.  We took some more videos and pictures of the gig.

TheBlueVipersofBrooklyn.com

Now I’ve definitely seen it all. 

Dangerous downhill

Originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado

(Cántese con la melodía de “El Rey”, de José Alfredo Jiménez)

Un hielito en el camino
me enseñó que mi destino
era bajar y bajar

Bajar y bajar
Bajar y bajar

Después me dijo un reno
que no hay que llegar primero
si no hay que entero arrivar…

Seguramente el maestro Jiménez estará revolcándose en su tumba.

Women get partner, Men get partner, battle royale

Originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado

One of the most interesting features of Finnish dance halls besides the age group, the music mix of tango, ballads, humppa and rock & roll and the fact that a few of the men seem to need too much courage of the liquid variety is that there are signs like this one here that also give the sexes turns to ask for a dancing partner, so that if the first line is on women look for men, the second men look for women and the third signals the “free-for all”.

At least dancing is something I more or less know how to do, and I already have a good partner .

Anybody who knows me a little bit (or has seen my profile at Last.fm) has probably realised that my musical taste is quite varied.  On any given day I could be listening to raï, ranchera, punk, samba, rock, jazz, metal, classical music, ska, axé, or electronica from Mexico, Japan, Brazil, Algeria, France, Belgium, Israel, India, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, China, etc… which if they’re not your usual Anglo-Saxon pop-rock will usually be clumped together into World Music, with very awkward results.

For example, with the current version of iTunes you have a “Genius” feature that promises to make perfect playlists for you.  However, the database they use seems to have been made by the record companies instead of users, so when it does find the music I have (which is less often than I would expect), if I ask to create a Genius playlist out of e.g. one of my favourite Mexican rock bands it will put it together with Mexican & Argentine traditional music too since they’re “Latin”, something akin to lumping James Brown together with Enya because they come from the English-speaking world.  It gets even better when I try it with some of my favourite samba artists, as they will be lumped together  with salsa, raï, Bollywood and tango acts because they are “World Music”, even if I do have plenty of MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) to make a list with.

David Byrne said it best: he hates world music.