Category: moving pictures

Secret Disco: We Are Magic

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Exuma-Obeah

I think Sunday is a good day to post this song because if I believed in the sacred, this song would be it. This music is what religion should be: visceral, calling to a power outside and within oneself. It is dripping with magic.

A couple of months ago I traveled to Guanajuato, MX with friends and through one of these friends, met the drummer for the only punk rock band in the city. We spent the night chatting in this cave-like bar filled with hip youth from the nearby college. It was a warm, gothic-y place lined with red velvet wallpaper and playing the latest indie tunes from around the world. The energy of this punk rock guy, appropriately nicknamed Godzilla or Godzi for short, was intense and heavy. So looming was his presence that his entrance into the bar caused the students sitting around us to look nervously over their shoulders. He could make the rock walls of the building we were sitting in feel threatened, so formidable was his presence.

With a beer in hand he began to tell one story after another, breathlessly, continuously, hours passing quickly, each story revealing his wry sense of humor and unexpected wisdom. Finally, in a rare pause of the conversation, I asked him if he’d ever been to Veracruz. His eyes glowed for a moment, remembering. He said in Spanish: Yes, that is a beautiful city, full of magic. Magic? I asked, Real magic? Not magical? Magic, he says. There is magic in the earth there, it is a special place. Different cities in Mexico contain all kinds magic, some places it is stronger. For instance, near Leon there is a town which is very dark, there is bad magic there. You don’t want to visit this pueblo…but I go occasionally. A small moment of silence passes and he grins, leaving me to wonder what he does in the bad magic pueblo. Then his words rumbled off into a subterranean place of slurred speech and I sank back against the crumbling rock walls wondering how long the night lasts in Guanajuato.
I immediately thought of this story when I heard first heard this song, there is magic here. It is up to you to decide what kind of magic it contains.

I got the voices of many in my throat
the feet of a frog and
the tail of a goat

According to book The Secret History of Disco and comments left on the Youtube page for this tune, this song was popular at early disco clubs in New York. It was part of a musical trend that included other African inspired music like Babatunde Olatunji.

Secret Disco: Roller Boogie

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Bisquit-Roller Boogie

I tried my best to resist the lure of this video which I was first introduced to through artist Porous Walker‘s Facebook page.
What is it exactly that I find so lovable about this song? Is it the synthy Hi-NRG beats, the hypnotic vocoder robot vocals, the infectious chord changes, the catchy chorus backed by samba shakers, the requisite hand claps, the unrelenting bass line, the melodic alarm clock beeps taken from a children’s cartoon all topped by a perfectly timed cowbell pop? Or is it the video itself with the Chrissy Snow dancers, so vapid and rhythmless (you can see them counting beats in their head) following a choreography that means absolutely nothing to them cause all they are smiling about is the cocaine they were promised after the video shoot? Did Cicciolina find her inspiration here? Xuxa?
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Secret Disco: Cheesy Robot Music

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The Secret History of Disco Book devotes a good amount time exploring the influence of electronic and synthesized sounds in the development of disco. Briefly mentioned are a list of French “cheesy robot” musical acts that might’ve influenced disco composers like Cerrone and Giorgio Moroder. Looking up these tunes, I was taken with the pop pre-new wave sound of the genre. I also finally realized where bands like Stereo Total got their influence. They always seemed derivative of something else but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.


Elli et Jacno – Main dans la main 1980

Here’s some French pop reveling in all it’s cheese and fluffy bleepy quirkiness. It’s the stuff of my cotton candy dreams!
The sound cuts out halfway through, you can watch another version of the song here but I prefer this clip as it highlights Elli’s unique dancing style.
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Secret Disco: Sylvester and Patti Jo

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Patti Jo-[Moulton Mix] Make Me Believe in You ] (1975
Considered part of the post-Northern Soul genre that was popular in England but was remixed by by an early disco DJ (Moulton)

Due to the constant interference of jobs and the other mundane details that can consume one’s life, a backlog of posts have been piling up around this blog. They all need lots of editing and will eventually go up but for now, I’m going to start a small series of music posts based on an excellent book I’m currently reading: Turn the Beat Around, The Secret History of Disco by Peter Shapiro. I’m only halfway through because I’ve had to stop every few pages to look up many of the songs that make up this fascinating history. How can I not be intrigued by the music when Shapiro puts in passages like this?

Almost the entirety of the next thirty years of dance music comes from this single record: the cheery bonhomie, the cloying fantasy of the good life, the doe-eyed spirituality, the cushiony, enveloping bass sound, the string stabs, the adoration of jazzy chords and jazz as a sound rather than process, the keyboards like pools of liquid mercury, the mantra as lyric.

The song he’s talking about is MFSB’s “Love Is the Message.”

Shapiro takes the time to not only introduce the reader to the genre’s significant songs, DJs, performers and other musical producers but also frequently delves into the social and cultural context of the music. For instance, his take on one disco’s greats, Sylvester and his anthemic and timeless dance floor favorite You Make Me Feel:

“You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” interrogated the African-American musical tradition and asked what “realness” is supposed to mean to gay black men who, alienated from almost all of society, were forced to hide their true identities for most of their lives.

My understanding of this song was changed completely.


You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)-SYLVESTER

More music in the next few days.

Style Influences

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My style influences: a little Romani, a little Bollywood, lots of Flamenco and a dash of chola!


Chunari Chunari


The Queen of the Gypsies: Rada


La Familia Montoya de Sevilla


Tangos from the movie, Flamenco


Hello Stranger


Lean Like A Chola

The Berlin Wall

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The Ex – State of Shock (90s song by Anarcho-Dutch group)

Two days ago marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

I just happened to have a few pen pals in Berlin when the Wall came down. They sent me bits of the broken wall as mementos. Pieces with graffiti were more desirable so some entrepreneurs decided to start spray painting parts of clean walls and then breaking off chunks so that they could be sold internationally for a higher price. Strange. I bet Eduardo Galeano could re-write this paragraph and make it profound.

I have photos somewhere of the Wall being torn down sent to me by a pen pal.  I should find and post them.

East Berlin is now gentrified. The modern architecture lovers were turned on by all that boxy Soviet construction. Funny world we live in.

In Los Angeles, we don’t need walls. We have freeways, bridges and a big concrete river to keep us apart.

berlin_wall3

Found the photos! Please click to see a much larger image.

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berlin_wall1

berlin_wall2

pen_pal

My Berliner pen pal who I met once when he visited Los Angeles. I don’t remember his name.

Favorite Video of the Week: When I Grow Up

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When I Grow Up from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

Another fine video from Fever Ray, they’ve been doling them out to us in recent months. I was crazy about the first single from the album If I had a Heart, which was Video of the Week back in February and every month or so  a new one appears.

I was fortunate to see Fever Ray play live this past week and it was quite a memorable show. It was difficult to focus on the stage as there was a huge amount of fog, smoke and incense released during the performance and bright lasers emanating from the stage.  Karin Dreijer Andersson was dressed in some kind of costume that from my vantage point looked like a cross between the character Tina from the Eightball comic and a Scandinavian version of Sigmund the Sea Monster. I think it was deer pelts and maybe some horns.  There was much energy in the performance but of the subdued variety and the low deep bass that seem to accompany every song rattled me to my core. Quite honestly, I felt is if I could have easily slipped into a trance and perhaps that was the effect they were going for. All hail the Church of Fever Ray!

For a better review see here.

Also check out The Sound of Indie to hear a live version of When I Grow Up.

If you like the Fever Ray video’s, you might want to check out the film ‘Let the Right One In‘ a story of vampire children and sadists set in Sweden. Stark and beautiful. See the trailer below.


Let the Right One In