Pues ahora Osaka Monaurail nos sorprenden con una oda a los clasicos. Abarcando desde Hey Jude de Lennon, deificando a Jimi Hendrix con su Message to Love, enalteciendo el nombre del olvidado por muchos Isaac Hayes, conmemorando a Stevie Wonder hasta pasar por los indiscutibles maestros de Kool and the Gang. Esta pulcra producción documenta los años dorados y lo hace con un sonido digno, una verdadera obra de arte por parte de los ingenieros quienes consiguen transmitir ese sonido retro a pesar de tener una nitidez y una claridad en la que se puede disfrutar de cada instrumento.

Guitarras limpias en las que se aprecia con claridad la exactitud ritmica de cada una de las notas. Organos Hammonds B3 que espiritualizan cada pieza añadiendo su pizca gospel. Todo su arsenal de metales que potencían la fuerza de su sonido. Hasta el sonido de cada tom de la batería esta perfectamente pensado para que suene tal cual como sonaba en el pasado. Pocos logran, no solo acercarse, sino reproducir aquel mismo sonido que se escuchaba en los Music Halls del Nuevo Orleans de los sesentas y que ahora se puede grabar con total nitidez y como ejemplo este disco completamente instrumental: “Amen, Brother”.

Los dejo con unos videos de su presentacion en Madrid

Direktlink zum Video auf Youtube

Direktlink zum Video auf Youtube

Around Cape Culture

Music has a mysterious spell, which is possible to track down under a variety of phenomena: the forcefulness of the drum that anticipates the battle, the hypnotized body of the dancers, or the fervent singing launched to shake sacred spheres… This spell is capable of making the individual transcend and be spreaded through out the community; it makes us move, persuade, or make us talk to our gods.

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In the fourth century A.C., Plato and Aristotle warned about this peculiar power of enchantment meanwhile, used it to channel the education of citizens. For them, music was able to shape the character and instill values, hence its importance in politics. The echoes of this relationship between music and political power, have resounded through the history of cultures; they were heard in the powerful sound of tlalpanhuehuetl announcing the imminent battle, they are heard whenever we sing the national anthem, or every time we listen to a songs of protest.

Sometimes these echoes have been taken by force by radical voices, like the one with soviet aesthetics, with the aim of using the spell for their ideological purposes. They sought ways to require their composers certain parameters to perform their creative work. In the Second World Congress of composers and musicologists, organized in Prague in 1948, they delivered the line for Soviet music, setting certain conditions for “rescueing” contemporary music. Among them composers were asked to resign in their art to express subjective ideas and trends and ideals of the masses, to focus on the strengthening of national culture and serve with more concrete music so that it could reach people with ease, as the operas, oratorios , cantatas, songs, etc..

Everywhere, there are abundant samples of that subtle ability of music to add intentions to certain causes and ideologies as diverse or opposite as today’s subcultures can be , therefore the desire to regulate this capacity. Another good example for trying to control it so explicitly and consciously, is what we can find in Michael Moore’s “documentary” Bowling for Columbine. Here the facet of the musical spell can be actually touched, when in their search for clues about the slaughter, Moore finds that the fear of American society, has unleashed a wave of `suspicion´ that comes not only to anyone culturally different, but also to music. Once more radical voices are heard, when protests are organized by parents against the music of Marilyn Manson, because it is regarded to incite violence.

Both examples, of soviet aesthetics and the parents of the documentary, revive controversial and interesting issues, which also were around the thoughts of the greeks mentioned before, and whose response in each case has always been the affirmative: Is it legitimate to speak about music being ethically correct or incorrect? Is there some music that leads people to be good or bad? And therefore: Is it necessary to regulate the musical production for the benefit of an established social order?

Perhaps this should be the place to deal with these issues, however, this series of articles are meant to sketch a map of the musical experience, and to fullfill this goal, I will go back to these questions in the following article, to show that the social or political side of music, are linked to others, not less important.

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However, the spellbound produced by music is not only related to political power, its social conspiracy goes much further. The same Aristotle, puting it together with education, identified as another objective of music, the Katharsis; that sort of liberating and ecstatic experience, which detonates the emotional communion of a community. The one that cracks the bodies drunken with rhythm, which leads to the irresistible trend to join others in the feast of dancing. Since there is not any celebration or festivity free of the warm breath of music.

Now, another aspect of the subtle musical enchantment appears, on the relationship of cultural identity. Music is a shared practice that offers an aesthetic frame, artistic and sensory, that is ideal for facilitating the gathering of listeners and creators; of individuals with common customs, attitudes, language and rituals. Perhaps the best place to find this meeting is under its most cathartic form, in the spirit of the Party and the Dionysian character that links it with music, because it offers a common territory so that those bodies moving at different speeds and intensities, so seemingly distant and different from each other, at times acquire a certain harmony and sympathy that may lead them to lose their personal identity to join collective one.

Given that, any group identity is built on the recognition of an accumulation of shared experiences, music, by allowing the cathartic encounter, becomes a strong cultural emblem attached to recreation and strengthening of the invisible ties that keep the union the group. In the unique current of sounds that each nation creates, the worldview of each culture is expressed, the glories and joys, shared sorrows and miseries, fing channels of relief in it.

The vicissitudes of Tango may show, that cathartic identity that music produces. Born on the outskirts of marginalized River Plate cities, the Tango, since its origin, is a sober expression of melancholy, sensual and poignant, passionate and tragic, the very same social environment which saw it blossom. From the dark suburbs of funds, brothels and shelters of the underworld, through the ballrooms and academies of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, to its global, worldwide launch; for melancholy runs through the open veins of tango for those for whom life is nothing but a tango that has not yet been played. As Borges said in his poem Tango: “(Behind the suspicious walls / South keeps a dagger and a guitar.)” “[...] The tango creates a cloudy / unreal past that in some way is true, / a memory impossible to be dead / fighting, in a corner of the suburb. ”

Before the sore lyrics soaked Tango, it was pure music and dance, not by chance it emerged in entertainment places in the suburbs, in the establishment for relief, the catharsis, of the groupal escape of hostile reality, the emotional identification at every turn, each “ochito,” “cut” or “ring” … Is there a more Dionysian place than a brothel with live Tango?

Tango became more popular and started growing with instrumental enrichment, the passionate voices of great performers like Gardel, the boom of the dance academies around the world, the intrepid revolution of composers such as Piazzolla, or the hypnotic fusions of Gotan Project. Under this process, the cathartic identity of the gender has been expanded to become the cultural emblem of a vast region of the southern cone and also a source of pleasure and relief to those in many parts of the globe, fans have glimpsed tango, this “forgotten memory,” this tragic and emotional footprint that hides since its origins.

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Enchantmens have been used for musical ludic catharsis, but also its momentum towards the identification of any group have been placed in temples and rituals, to recreate the community linkages with the sacred world. All of the world’s major religions use music in their rituals, or as a vehicle to indoctrinate. It is in these sacred nooks where we can clearly perceive the union of the facets described above, both: the cathartic identity, and the ideological persuasion.

An example of cathartic religious identity, can be found in Tibetan music. This music, soaked in spirituality and dumped into sacred circles, shows its cathartic appearance in its form and in an aesthetic impact, as a result of marking religious symbolism that carry with them the instruments and voices that make up the assemblages that accompany rituals of diverse character.

The Tibetan Buddhist music, which interpretation is reserved only to monks, assignes certain sounds, relations with both aggressive and peaceful deities. Because the instruments of different families, such as percussion and winds, are meant to be the voices of certain deities, the result of each sound interpretation depends, not so much a musical predetermined form, but to the progress of the ritual, the moment in which it is allowed for a certain divinity to speak, according to the internal interpretation of the monk who leads the other through changes in tempo as he plays.

This seeks to achieve states of mind of meditative trance, for they believe that there exists a relationship between the sounds of the instruments and the sounds certain lamas listen internally, when they reach advanced levels in meditation. This tells us that music, for this culture, works to create an ecstasy state in the listener which will bind him with the sacred, that is, the essential and unharmed which is supposed to base ‘All’. Music, whilst linked to meditation, beeing the most remarkable Buddhist practice, is the way to find the “awakening” (Nirvana), towards the reality that lies beyond the world of appearances, where the “I” lies to be found.

The journey continues mapping its course, the ship has abandoned the territories laden with rivers and mummbling bays, so we may go into uncharted harsher places, where powerful currents tend to push the boat ashore. From afar, inland, from the thick jungle, we may listen a heavy knock warning with a constant pattern; clear sign of the presence of humans. However, the sound, far from attracting the sailor cartographer and the crew, it frightens them, and instead of them stopping to investigate, they keep on going. They move outlining the coast to the south and days after the region of the frightening drums, a starry night, they find some bonfires on the beach, and around them, beautiful naked women and drunken men, dancing to the sound of a catchy melody. Crew members cant stand the desire to lower anchors and join such a party, but are persuaded by the cartographer to continue their journey, who also wished to join the revelry, but remembers the effect the sirens’ may have, and frightened before the possibility of succumbing to his mapping task, he prohibits stopping. Days passed and the compass gradually indicated a deviation to the East and then to the Northeast. Right there where its course turned North, in a sunny afternoon, they beging to hear some songs from the land, but this time do not want to move away or closer, but just take a breath, relax with a distant and hypnotic sound, and move forward, forgetting now all that what the journey has brouht to them, without any desire to know where the undertaken tour leads them. Days later, the sailor manages to unite his strokes and falls into an account that the inhabited region is only a Cape of the territory to which he has not found the end yet, so named by him Music. To that Cape he then decides to call Culture …

Al parecer se espera un éxito rotundo, pero nada como las giras que hacían hace ocho años, 2000 y 2001, en donde se abarrotaban los estadios, foros y palacios en donde tocaran y la entrega del público era total, de ahí que se dijera que eran más famosos y queridos en México que en Argentina.
Esperemos no sea como esa serie de reencuentros de bandas de culto que solamente dejaban ver sus precarios estados de cuenta y que se valían de su fama pasada para poder cambiar el coche, jaja.

Amigos, caballeros, melómanos, letrados y elegantes cibaritas, no quiero hacer predicciones, pero le deseo a esta gran agrupación argentina un éxito devastador en esta tierra que conquistaron desde hace varias décadas, pero… Los precios son un verdadero insulto al aficionado a la música, perdón, pero 900 pesos no vale ir a ver el Carnaval Toda la Vida.

It’s as simple as magical. Its creation was a major breakthrough in music technology exerting a huge influence on subsequent productions. We speak of the first synthesizer in History which is also the first instrument that is played without touching it. There is a before and an after, a breakthrough in the industry since the birth of that first ‘Theremin’.

Invented in 1919 by the Russian physicist Léon Theremin, the device that bears his name to highlight its futuristic and shocking proposal. It is difficult to get to know the instrument and not surrender to its qualities, particularly the virtue of stealing from you a smile when you watch a musician in full interpretation. See it and you’ll find astonishing that something like this can tear this level of art and that today it still remains unique. It is not that today´s new and advanced devices are not capable of reproducing the sounds of a Theremin, but by trying out their sound you may listen to mechanical and plain soiunds, while on the other hand, the sounds coming from a real Theremin will have the particularity of being always organic, alive and animated.

It will be why, artists of different eras have had to make good use of this unique instrument, artists such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Mars Volta or Radiohead on some occasions, with greater or lesser virtuosity, they earned the stunning proposal of the Theremin to translate their thoughts to the musical language.

Its shape is simple. It consists of a box with two antennas. One of them straight and vertical in charge of controlling the frequency of sounds, and another horizontal and oval, used to control the volume. Its execution is also simple in theory, it consists on moving away and closer the hands to each of the antennas, without actually touching them. Incredible as it may seem, in this humble little box hides an unfathomable universe of sounds and sensations.

Perhaps few have had access to one, but everyone at some point are delighted with their sounds perhaps without knowing it came from a Theremin, since it became popular for musicalizing numerous scenes of films and television series. And it is that everything in this apparatus is peculiar, who sees it for the first time considers it futuristic even for our times. Who would say it is nearly a century old?.

In the opinion of experts, the sound produced by a classic Theremin wanders among the timbre of the human voice and a cello. The impact that the device has had in the history of music is undeniable. It quickly became a novelty and useful tool for the genius minds of many artists, it is a device that not only interprets but also inspires the creation of new music and also, new instruments. Someone fully capable of mastering the Theremin may interpret virtually any song and it seems that its use, far from being in oblivion, today regained its popularity and demand is growing.

Direktlink zum Video auf Youtube

Direktlink zum Video auf Youtube

We applaud the date on which the world met the greatest invention of that Russian physicist, the date when the music stopped being the same and laid the foundation for what we enjoy today. From the ambience of a soundtrack, to the electronics of a crowded Rave festival. Let the untouchable Theremin continue offering music, giving inspiration and life.

Este 13 de octubre el ex comandante de Los Rodríguez se presentará en el Auditorio Nacional de la Ciudad de México como parte de la gira de su último disco, La Lengua Popular. Después de más de veinte años de carrera es la primera vez que se presenta oficialmente en ese recinto y esta ciudad, pese a que existen datos que revelan que ha estado con anterioridad en tierras novohispanas, como en la canción que dice… Y si nadie me quiere en Argentina, voy a volver a San Cristóbal de las Casas.

Al parecer como única fecha, el cantautor probará al público mexicano para contemplar otra presentación o una posterior visita. Dado que la comunidad argentina en la capital es grande, seguramente sus paisanos lograrán un lleno total en el Auditorio Nacional, y como es bien sabido, que el público gaucho es el más apasionado del mundo, seguramente Calamaro tendrá una merecida recepción y entrega antes, durante y después del evento.

A tres años de comenzar giras imparables y una compulsiva producción de discos, su destino es la próxima semana México, país en donde tal vez no se tiene idolatrado a Calamaro como en Argentina o España, pero que también tiene una cantidad enorme de seguidores que le quieren y le llevan en lo más profundo de sus corazones.

Escribir de más sería aburrirlo a usted, amigo lector, querida dama, entrañable ebrio desarrapado y ocurrente berraco, ya que convertiría este anuncio en prácticamente un publi reportaje para tan magno caballero argentino. Así que sólo me queda invitarlos y esperar que nos deleite con grandes canciones del Tinta Roja y otras joyas escondidas que no son precisamente los éxitos más conocidos, pero que son para sensibilidades altamente más allá del ponche de tejocote.