If you have a spare hour, then feast your eyes on Geoff McGhee’s video documentary “Journalism in the Age of Data,” which explores the exciting potential and occasional pitfalls of modern data visualization.
Sounds and Colours might become your favorite destination if you are, like me, passionate about South American culture and music. This is a perfect interview if you want to know more about the constant transformations of music creation in South America. Here it is, S&C’s Editor in chief, Russ Slater, pointing the new genres emerging, the impact of technology on music creation and promotion, and of course a very nice top 10 2010 with music from Chile, Brazil, Argentina and more …
Where are the new music epicenters of Latin America?
Well, Sounds and Colours focuses on South American music rather than Latin American as we feel that this music does not get as much attention as it deserves, with often music from Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico getting all the plaudits. Within South America, Colombia and Brazil are the two most high-profile countries, and quite deservedly so.
Colombia has some amazing new artists mixing Latin culture and beats (especially cumbia) with elements of hip-hop and pop, with Bomba Estero, Systema Solar, Choc Quib Town and Pernett all breaking new ground in this area.
Brazil on the other hand continues to attract people with hybridisations of samba and bossa nova, as well as the new phenomenom of baile funk. Yet this only begins to tell the story as some of the best independent music in Latin America comes out of Brazil with bands such as Otto, Eddie and Lucas Santtana mixing Afro-Brazilian rhythms with electronics and other more left-field influences such as kraut rock. You also have great bands making alternative rock/pop records; Mombojó and Do Amor being two who have released revelatory albums this year.
Mentions also have to go to Argentina for their electronic cumbia scene, as well as a thriving indie-pop community, Chile as the center of electro-pop in South America, and Peru for a very interesting avant-garde rock scene.
Beside Cumbia and baile Funk, what are the next musical trends you see emerging?
Brazil has a habit of creating new genres through splicing together a number of existing ones, and the future looks no different. In the North of the country you can find technobrega and tecnomelody (sometimes referred to as eletromelody), which are modern updates on Northern rhythms such as brega and frevo. In many ways this movement has emerged due to the same cultural conditions as baile funk in Rio; people have far better access to electronic instruments and they are able to sell their music via pirate CDs and earn money in a way which would not be possible via official means. Both technobrega and tecnomelody are largely electronic affairs with local rhythms and hip-hop-inspired vocals. Tecnomelody is the slightly slower of the two styles and has its spokesperson in Gaby Amarantos, a lady often referred to as the Beyonce Knowles of the Amazon. Due to the sheer infectiousness of these movements I really can’t see any reason why they cannot make an impact abroad.
In Argentina right now there’s an interesting evolution happening with “digital cumbia.” This style, which is an off-shoot of “cumbia villera,” (Argentina’s rawer and more urban cumbia) has now begun to take on a more distinctive sound, with artists such as Axel Krygier and Tremor bringing in folkloric melodies and rhythms from their native country, meaning that we’re starting to see Argentine artists get in touch with their roots and responding via electronic instruments. While there is no specific name for this movement yet (it’s generally referred to as “digital folklore” or similar) this is one area that we can expect a lot of developments in. As with these examples, a lot of the new movements coming from South America will involve mixing traditional forms with electronics, as well as a greater influence from hip-hop. We’re already starting to see this in other countries too with Novalima fusing Afro-Peruvian music with electronics and Los NIN mixing the music of the Ecuadorian Andes (i.e. woodwind and charango) with rap and rock guitars.
I am quite familiar with music from Bahia, Brasil where you can heavily feel the african influences … but is there other countries in latin america where you still feel a direct musical african heritage too ?
As well as Brazil, African influence is felt largely in the music of Colombia, Peru and Uruguay. In the cases of Colombia and Peru this music is now having something of a renaissance. For many years, the African influence had been neglected by the upper and middle classes, but now things are starting to change. In Colombia it is largely on the Pacific coast where the influence can be felt, especially in a music known as Palenque. This was brilliantly compiled this year on Soundway Record’s Palenque! Palenque! compilation where it seemed almost impossible to notice any difference between the music of Fela Kuti and artists such as Son Palenque and Wganda Kenya in Colombia. In Peru, the same thing happened with people listening to criollo music rather than traditional Afro-Peruvian music. Again this has changed, largely thanks to amazing ambassadors for the genre like Susana Baca and Eva Ayllon who have really ensured that the people take notice of the form.
Uruguay’s African influence is something of an anomaly in the history of South American music. Although the colonialists tried to malign the music of the African slaves, they could only resist for so long, and eventually would join in the celebrations. So it was that the music of the slaves slowly become the music of the people, and candombe and milonga took over, with white people blacking up their faces and wearing simple shoes and clothes to impersonate the slaves. Candombe is now central to life in Montevideo with drumming groups parading throughout the city during the week as well as playing a crucial role in National holidays such as The Day of the Wise Men as well as Montevideo carnival.
How do you see the new generation of Latin American artists using the web and the online world ?
It’s fair to say we are going to see the use of digital tools increase, especially in terms of spreading the word. In some countries, such as Chile this is being helped by the Government who are putting money into building websites for artists and musicians, but in most cases this is happening simply as a means by which any artist can reach the rest of the world. We are seeing the results of this increasing use of the web in the successes of artists such as Javiera Mena and Gaby Amarantos, who I mentioned earlier. Javiera is an electronic musician from Chile who is now able to play gigs in Mexico and the US as word-of-mouth on her debut Esquemas Juveniles album caused people to take notice of her talent. However Gaby Amarantos is probably the best example.
Although Belem is a big city in Brazil it is fair to say that far less people would have heard her music had it not been for Twitter, where she currently has around 4,500 followers. In a country as big as Brazil many musicians have to circulate their music virally before they can begin to look at touring or selling their music legitimately, and this is exactly what they are doing. In the case of baile funk, you now have a phenomenom where the music of Rio’s favelas can be playing within the clubs of London or Paris just days after a new song is made.
Hackers Computer Outlaws is an amazing 44 minutes documentary on the history of hacking. Exploits and stories of Captain Crunch, Steve Wozniac (Woz), and Kevin Mitnick.
Making radio channels out of music blogs ? This is what Tim Heineke and the cool team @twones had been working on. Here it is Shuffler.fm a really cool way to surf music blogs !
“Amsterdam, August 17, 2010 – Today Shuffler.fm launches in Alpha to help users channel surf the music web by easily browsing and navigating through thousands of cool music blogs. This allows them to discover great music and music blogs, without having to weed though every site, one by one.
Every day thousands of bloggers and music tastemakers write and post about music somewhere on the web. Shuffler first indexes these sites or publishers can add themselves. Sites are then are tied together as genre channels. Shuffler then allows you to browse the collected site content easily, listening to what you want, by genre. It is a visual browsing experience where you play, shuffle, browse track by track, and site to site. The web becomes your player, catalogue, and radio station. Bloggers are the dj’s, reviewers and tastemakers of this curated experience. “It’s great for publishers too”, says Tim Heineke, co-founder, “since it’s our purpose to promote the music on these great music blogs and sites. We offer them more traffic and views.”
Shuffler.fm is founded by five music tech geeks who are part of Tone collective. The start-up aims to make money with premium accounts, with extra features and unlimited playing, an iPhone and iPad app and advertising.”
“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”
Great wisdom that you can apply to art, music, brand and pretty much any modern businesses … Make it good !
In January, 2008, two students from Gustavus Adolphus College traveled to Bangalore, India. Their goal: to produce a film exploring the consequences of a relentless series of American influences on the lifestyle, culture and identity of the inhabitants of Bangalore city. What they were confronted with was a myriad of conflicting opinions across various generations of the cities residents.
Raised at a time when control by the British over the region was still fresh in people’s minds, the older generation tended to view influences by the United States as the new wave of economic neo-colonization of the region. However, the younger generation, more inundated by these influences via the media, have adopted this culture as part of their own and see it as an essential part of their identity as the next generation of Indian leaders.
From the media to romantic relationships, the outsourcing culture to night life, watch these opinions clash as we explore the true identity of BangalAmerica.
I often been asked what is the problem with the music industry. There is a lot of factors but the key point is the fact that it is not a music industry crisis but a support crisis. Why should i pay for a format that i dont like ? The only music that i am still buying is Vinyl.
Interesting to know also that artists never had a bigger part of the pie when CD and digital formats took over the Vinyl.
Manufacturing cost for a vinyl is around 4 to 8 $. In comparaison the CD has a manufacturing cost of 0.4 to 0.8 cents and digital files aprox 0 … let you do the math …
Vinyl is an object of desire, it is non dublicable and a perfect collectible object. It is so far the best way to consume artwork around a music object
In 1996 i started a vinyl distribution company called Chronowax. This company was selling close to a million vinyl per year. I remember when Chronowax did for example campain reissues for Dej Jam and sold more than half a million LPs …
Back then the promotion and viral aspect of the vinyl was key to enter the club scene and the dj’s playlists. Digital happened to be way more effective and a less expensive way of promoting music.
