Rhythm 'n' Roots

Thanks to one super super blog (Bass Music blog) I discovered another super super blog (Cooliado) with some super music and thing. Grab the mix recommended on the Bass Music blog for the reasons stated, a really interesting mix of techno-minimal-house which drops into neo-cumbia and finishes with The Doors. It was mixed by Un Mono Azul who was amongst the winners of the Fauna remix competition held by ZZK Records.

The inclusion of Faithless, Ricardo Villalobos, Animal Collective, Fauna, Missy Elliot, Renaissance Man, Kraftwerk and The Rapture all in one mix should be enough to wet the appetite!

The blog is full of good stuff and if you can wade through el español then there is a good read to be had and a some excellent music.




In their own words:

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After being drawn into starting my own music blog I soon discovered that the world of music blogging reaches far wider than you could imagine. All across the world people are blogging and promoting the music they love. I could easily spend a whole day trawling through blogs downloading music, reading about the latest musical happenings or hidden gems from the Ivory Coast to Brooklyn. Each blog in turn links to it's own favourite blogs which in turn lead you to more and more. The sphere is endless. For a fan of "world" music or of music as a whole, it is an inexhaustable gold mine.

Exaple: yesterday I had a few hours spare and decided to catch up on the blogs I have in my blogroll (<--- see over there.) I then headed to their own favourite blogs which in turn led to more, whose posts had links to more. I arrived at a blog called Awesome Tapes from Africa which uploads and shares music from cassettes found accross Africa. Ethiopian Jam's, Eritrean pre-banjo, banjo music, mixtapes from Mali, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and more. An incredible gem of a site. Then I found Radiodifusion which hosts a large collection of MP3s sorted by country. Then there is the blog of then man who spent three years in West Africa digging for rare records and coming back to Brooklyn and sharing them with the world. Not to mention the sites which bring all of this stuff together like Ghetto Bassquake.

Who would've thought Soca music would reach Brooklyn clubs or that Angolan Kuduro music would take the world by storm thanks to a pair of Portuguese DJs or indeed that people might be mixing cumbia with hip-hop, dancehall or dubstep?! These are exciting musical times, don't sleep on it.

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The fact I am posting this probably means I have too much time on my hands and am spending too much of that time staring at my laptop. The inspiration for this post is the twenty or so firefox tabs of blogs, myspaces, downloads, mixes and pure gold I have found on a recent trawl through the google ocean! After having lived in BA for five months and travelled a little in Latin America, (Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Bolivia..) I have become submerged in cumbia (more like it drowned in it; ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch!) Latin America's unifying soundtrack, a rhythm which came from Africa, travelled to Colombia and now floats in streets from Lima to Mexico City.


What has stoked my interest is the particular evolution of the sound in Buenos Aires. Before 2000 Argentine Cumbia was associated with a placid Romantic style. However, after 2001's economic crisis, a sub-genre appeared under the umbrella of Cumbia Villera (cumbia from the villas; the poorest areas of the city). Though criticised by many as a style which glorified drugs, violence and crime and held in contempt by the upper classes, it was a social phenomenon which grew directly out of the crisis, felt hardest by the poorest. The music is an expression of life in BA's slums much as Baile Funk was in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

Eight years on a new wave of artists influenced by Cumbia Villera and brought together by ZZK Records are experimenting with the sound and pushing it in a thousand directions: think cumbia remixes of Animal Collective, Clipse, minimal cumbia or even cumbia vs Peruvian Huayno! They are taking the rhythms of the street and making them global, bassy and funky. They also have awesome flyer designs:


Courtesy of the world-wide-web and the ease of travelling, mutant cumbia is escaping the continent and taking the underground, dance hungry world by storm. Helped by artists with world-wide appeal and "nuff-respect", (super-star-ghetto-bass crew: Diplo, D/J Rupture, Uproot Andy, Radioclit etc) the tracks are reaching ears in New York, Montreal, Norway and even London. ZZK are currently touring the US for the second time and set to play at this summers Coachella.

What you have to remember and what Grant Dull, the co-founder of ZZK explained is that independent record labels and distribution is near non-existent in Latin America, when compared to a city such as London or NY, for it's size BA is surprisingly musically homogeneous. Therefore the growth of the scene has been dependent on the Internet, networking, blogging, myspace, mashups and mixtapes. Luckily for them and us, the net-underground has latched onto it. I am latching on to them and adding my line to the web.

Here's how you get into it:

@ ZZK Records download their free mixtapes, scour the site for free MP3s, mashups etc, find something you like: buy it!

@ There is a world of music blogs which keep their fingers on the global pulse and have MP3s, mixes etc:

Diplo's Mad Decent

DJ Rupture's Mudd Up!

Matt Shadarteks Dutty Artz

XLR8R Magazine

Ghettobassquake

La Family Dub

Masala

Discontent

Look out for some updates, posts and new music on this blog! A mix is in the mix after the recent mix I did mixing up deepstep and techno (Download here!)

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