Will Salas ‘slam’ for the arts?
Ben Ortiz … has cultivated San Antonio’s highly entertaining “Puro Slam”
performances through various venues for more than a year now … [and] the
audience has grown to the hundreds for recent performances. But Ortiz,
entertainment editor of the weekly Current, wants to make the Slam even
hotter.
Category: Writing
“Said one American: ‘I can hear those goddamn radios blaring Mariachi music and Rush all day and night.'” — The Onion, reporting on Mexico and Canada building a bridge over the U.S.
“It’s a daily struggle to keep an identity,” Quetzal’s song “20 Pesos” opines. “I don’t want to be folklore.” The third track on their new album, Sing The Real (Vanguard), also followed the opener at their Chicago debut, in which a modest crowd of mainly 20- and 30-something Latinos (like the band) chilled to the eight-piece combo’s deep excavations of son Mexicano and Afro-Caribbean rhythms delivered with R&B/soul stylistics matching ranchera fervor from lead duet Martha and Gabriel Gonzalez.
Since its performance space opened in 1990, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum has featured artists across the spectrum of time and tradition, from folkloric to avant-garde, through regular events and spring/fall festival series. This season’s ninth annual Del Corazón Mexican Performing Arts Festival features a diverse multimedia lineup, including a solid musical component with two Chicago debuts.
People danced! Though the roots of the music take that for granted, ¡Cubanismo!’s recent visit to Chicago thankfully found a venue that welcomed and encouraged a full floor of couples and gyrating loners to feel the rhythms moving through their bodies. Cuban musicians from storied groups, such as Orquesta Aragón and Irakere, have appropriately been hosted at the Chicago Theatre or the Symphony Center, and though such swank venues seem appropriate for the acts’ distinguished profile, these auditoriums tend to quell dancing unless someone ventures to crowd the aisles with a partner. But the Park West made for comfortable digs for those sipping at cocktails and venturing out onto the floor.
“I don’t understand a word of Spanish,” says Abstruse Tone (aka Seth Rich) of local hip-hoppers Earatik Statik. Neither does his partner-in-rhyme C-Lo (Carlos Polk), but that doesn’t stop them from grabbing the mic and freestyling in honor of tonight’s guests from the Oeste Side of Buenos Aires who, depending on perspective, are probably the farthest Down South group to come through Chicago. El Sindicato Argentino and Earatik Statik speak a common language of beats and flow from the mother tongue of hip-hop; neither outfit understands the specifics of what each other is saying tonight, but they embrace like homies meeting at a turntable land-bridge. “I can tell the production and rhymes are real tight,” says Abstruse Tone after ripping it on stage, “and they got a good mix of commercial and underground going on.”
The boys of Kardoid play music from their ranchera-loving parents’ nightmares. Mostly Mexican-American teenagers native to Chicago, these four up-and-coming rockers prefer Slipknot and Molotov — bands that can sound like planes taking off in their Midway Airport neighborhood — instead of the rural ballads and bandas of México lindo y querido. But when I telephoned guitarist Ivan Duarte at home, his mom answered excitedly in Spanish that he was busy practicing, as she passed the phone through a wash of feedback and amp distortion. “They really don’t like the music we play,” Duarte says of his family’s more traditional tastes. “But now that we’re getting attention, they have a little more respect for what we’re trying to do.”
A co-worker once summed up Shakira after “Whenever, Wherever” molested our ears for the 20th time on the same day: “She’s the Brazilian Britney.” “But she’s Columbian,” I corrected, and then I immediately felt like an ass. What ‘s the difference in this context, really?
The boys of Kardoid play music from their ranchera-loving parents’ nightmares. Mostly Mexican-American teenagers native to Chicago, these four up-and-coming rockers prefer Slipknot and Molotov — bands that can sound like airplanes taking off in their near-Midway neighborhood — instead of the rural ballads and bandas of México lindo y querido.
Like Ozomatli, San Diego’s B-Side Players observe the fateful September 11th release of their latest album, which in this case is a full-length debut for a septet that has been moving booties since 1993. Given the group’s new-school, pan-Latino-groove similarities to los Ozos from L.A., the disc’s title seems to describe a cultural phenomenon rather than political program.
