Wednesday, May 5, 2010

La Mara Tomaza

So, I have this thing that when I find new music, I HAVE to do hours of research and find out everything I can about it. This translates to a new blog entry! Thinking about my workload tomorrow, I should definitely be asleep, but why should I sleep when I could be listening to El Hijo De La Cumbia? 

El Hijo De La Cumbia is a young Argentine producer/DJ who commands prolific knowledge over the vast extent of cumbia regardless of time or geography (cumbia sounds different in every region and have obviously evolved over time). He is dubbed the "Son of Cumbia," and this moniker suits him well as he is the product of hundreds of generations of cumbia before him, but his take on modern cumbia will make him the Father of nueva cumbia, or cumbia new roots. Cumbia has a deep regional characteristic, for example in Colombia the style is strictly percussion and vocals and sometimes accordion, and in his present day Argentina cumbia is of the light-hearted and somewhat goofy villera style. He is able to break away from the norms of cumbia and incorporates elements of instrumental hiphop, dub and dancehall, with a heavy amount of cumbia samples. The end product is nueva-cumbia, a high energy, psychedelic dance groove with lots of spaced-out accordion and obligatory cuts of cumbieros of yesteryear shouting in glee.


He has out a mix-tape and a few appearances on modern cumbia/dance compilations as well as his first full length, Freestyle De Ritmos which was released by the Spanish label, Soot Records, in 2008. This video is from the Freestyle album, but was released in February so I'm not sure if it's indicative of something new to come? Either way, I love this video for being everything that a typical indie-hiphop video is: tour of the hood (in Mexico City) with lots of local color, a trip to the record store and the necessary shot of gems, and then DJing the party. Great sound, hope to hear a lot more from him in the future. Hit up his myspace page and check out "Soy El Control," and tell me that track wont be making your trunk rattle for the next week. Also, check out the second video which has a live in the studio version of "Soy El Control" with his "band." CUUUUUUUUMBIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAA!


 

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