Tag Archives: music

Café Tacuba in London

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.

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Jazz in Central Park

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La Cumbia de Mario Bros.

Now I’ve definitely seen it all.  :D

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Pendiente peligrosa esquiando


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. ;)

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Finnish dance halls

Dancing Humppa


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 ;-) .

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Against the World Music category

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.

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Esquivel vs. Kubrick/Clarke

I’ve been listening to a lot of Juan García Esquivel lately.  Imagine my surprise when I found this mashup with 2001: Space Odissey, one of my favourite movies.

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El Huapango de Moncayo, versión del Sistema, dirigida por Dudamel

Excelente versión venezolana de un clásico mexicano.  Y no, no me recuerda a una cerveza ;)

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Finnish & Mexican 70′s kitsch

Finnish guy teaches how to disco
magazo

The lower one is part of an album called Easy Melodías,which is pretty much impossible to find these days.

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The Beatles meet Mexican indigenous peoples

And you get music like this (link in Spanish), by the Banda Plástica de Tepetlixpa from the southeast of Mexico State, Mexico.  I especially liked their rendition of Yellow Submarine, but be warned, this kind of music might not be for all tastes.

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