Originally posted by Fico:
Originally posted by Barcelona:
Fico, did you get into rock music in the Dominican Republic or in the US. Not a criticism (actually I liked a lot the country and its people, I´d like to work there again), but there is not much rock music in the Dominican Republic. However, I remember a rock music bar in downtown Santo Domingo called Proud Mary, in the old neighborhood, close to all the historic monuments. Great bar. They played mostly rock from the seventies.
Yes I did...as you know "rock en español" had it's heydey some 10 years ago with Soda Stero from Argentina and Caifanes/Jaguares from Mexico being the Beatles/Stones of spanish rock respectively. For some reason (and I've found it to be the latin case in general)bands like the Cure, the Police, Rush, the Smiths, New Order, U2, etc.. seemed to be massive in our spec of the woods..aside from these bands it was growing up to whatever was on MTV or FM radio...hence my poor knowledge of indie-music/college radio rock... Proud Mary is still there, actually some 2 years back my friends spotted Chris MArtin having dinner there (he was en route to Haiti for some Make Trade Fair ordeal)...I'm not sure when was the last time you were there but the city has changed a lot...the old city (Zona Colonial) has had a huge uplift and it's very hip nowadays...international DJs seem to be spinning every weekend and they opened a great small rock club which 9:30 aside blows away any DC venue.. as far as local acts Toque Profundo may be the only one around from your heydey back in 'Mingo...but some bands such as Auro&Clemt, Gonzalez, Sonico and Tribu del Sol have kept things really interesting... Assuming yer from Barcelona have you heard of a band called Aina?? they are from that area and they came to DC once with Burning Airlines and just left everyones jaw on the floor.. was never fond of Heroes del Silencio, Jarabe de Palo, Oreja de Van Gogh, etc... Mecano tho' is one of my guilty pleasures....and I absolutely luv Pedro Guerra.
For those reading this thread and curios about the bands I've mentioned:
Soda Stereo: seek Sueño Stereo, Dynamo or El Ultimo concierto I&II (live discs from their last show)
Caifanes/Jaguares: Caifanes: El Nervio del Volcan, Historia (Greatest Hits). Jaguares: Bajo el Azul de tu Misterio (live disc included), El Equilibrio del Jaguar. [/b]
I will check Aina, don´t know them, have been living around Latin America and US for the last six years. However, a new band from Barcelona who got a good review in the NYT and is being listened by people I know in Latin America is Ojos de Brujo. Below is a review from the NYT. I was never into Spanish rock from either Spain or Latin America, but i know Soda Stereo. As for Mecano, I guess they are amongst the bands I dislike the most.
The last time I was in Santo Domingo was in December of 2002. I want to go back there, will check the zona colonial, I like that city a lot.
By the way, what did you think about Vargas Llosa's "La fiesta del Chivo"? don't like him too much, but the book might be one of the best books I have ever read, or the best.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/24/arts/music/24OJOS.html A Hybrid From Spain Connects Past and Future
By BEN RATLIFF
Published: July 24, 2004
Ojos de Brujo, a nine-piece punky flamenco-reggae-hip-hop band from Barcelona, looks and sounds unbearably appealing. Like a lot of bohemians from that part of Spain, the members seem something like traditionalist anarchists, growing up with the prickly temper of the Catalan separatist movement and the mute weight of a multimillenial history.
From that apparent contradiction can come an artistic breakthrough. Connecting a culture's vernacular past with its vernacular present and future is an attractive philosophical ideal, and these days doing this means diversifying into other cultures, too. Street music everywhere has become mongrelized.
So far, so good. And on Thursday night at S.O.B.'s, Ojos de Brujo sparked a crowd with sweaty energy, revving it up with buleria rhythms, dancing, background visuals, improvised turntable-scratching and the blizzardy strumming of the flamenco guitar style. The band appears again this weekend, headlining tomorrow afternoon's bill at Central Park SummerStage.
And yet the strong hippie vibe about Ojos de Brujo makes blurry relativism of the project. The band's mixtures seem historically inevitable, but they're not easy. Ojos de Brujo has a lot of elements to balance: two women in front (one, Marina La Canillas, a good Gitano-style belter, and the other, Elisa Belmonte, a good flamenco dancer), two guitarists, a trap drummer and two percussionists, a bassist and a member on turntables and samplers.
Finally, the band isn't quite control-freakish enough to make imposing flamenco, angry enough to make imposing punk, cool-headed or vulgar enough to bring off the playfulness of hip-hop and dancehall. And the flamenco at the core is the new sort, in which the fast, popping precision of jazz-fusion chops are all important; the purely professional touches somehow lessen the street-realism.
But this band worked hard, playing in front of film montages showing police barricades, street protests, nuclear reactors, death heads, and morphing Guernicas — a sort of Catalan Rage Against the Machine video.
And here and there the musical juxtapositions achieved their intended power. One song, "Zambra" (the name means a kind of song and dance for a Gypsy feast or wedding), cultivated a minor-key drone, solidifying it through concentration, then broke it open at its climax with a hip-hop groove and a wordless, improvised rap. The crowd did what it was supposed to: it erupted.
