Enjoy Music from Nortec Collective's "Tijuana Sessions Vol 3" Cd
Indigenous in the News Featured Artist Review Nortec Collective - Tijuana Sound Machine By:
I get to hear the innovative work of many musicians similar to the Nortec Collective but those works just aren??™t as much fun as Tijuana Sound Machine. Working from Tijuana they are Kraftwerk gone Latin. Their latest release puts together ???A combination of Norte?o (???from the North???) and Techno, documenting the collision between the style and culture of electronica and traditional northern Mexican music.???
Nortec Collective is Bostich (Ramon Amezcua), Clorofila (Jorge Verdon), Fussible (Pepe Mogt), Hiperboreal (Pedro Gabriel Beas) all of whom also work on other musical projects are into something that is primal and cultural. These artists create a unique musical blend that sets them apart. Their CD Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3 was nominated for two Latin Grammys.
???In cities like Tijuana, you can find Nort?no trios performing in restaurants; they wear cowboy hats, boots, and big belt buckles, and usually carry a guitar, an accordian and a huge bass called a Tololoche.??? In order to understand it you would really need to dig deep into the progression of how Bohemian and Czech immigrants brought the German polka south of the border to Sinaloa, Mexico. That??™s another review.
The CD Tijuana Sound Machine starts off with a song titled The Clap with a funky down home polka feel to it, I can see the men in their boots and Stetsons, their women in those low cut frilly flowing dresses swirling into their two step moves. It is perhaps an ode to that pernicious STD.
Just when everything hurts, I??™m exhausted and thirsty, the third song on the CD, The Brown Bike re-energizes me and the singer sings, ???It??™s funny how things work out when you want ???em to work out right.??? and ???I rode and I rode and I rode and I didn??™t stop for lights.???
The title song, Tijuana Sound Machine swings its way across my mindscape and features a hook that will hook you right out onto the dance floor.
In a certain sense, the song ???Shake It Up!??? is a real rocker. There??™s a rockin??™ jam goin??™ on here and features a thundering rhythm section that??™s sure to get you tappin??™ your feet.
This music is steeped with a multiplicity of syncopated rhythmic patterns and the traditional minor seventh, minor ninth chord structures that are so prevalent in Latin music are blended way down into the fabric of each song. They??™re not obvious but they??™re there. This CD includes vocals and wind instruments, trumpet and tuba and is totally consistent with the Norte?o music that originally came out of northern Mexico.
I absolutely love the use of the tuba in the song Mi Casita (Little House). This song is so much fun, there??™s a dance goin??™ on in my soul and there??™s such joy in my heart, I smile to myself, the tuba solo just blows my mind.
I ride diggin??™ the trac Mama Loves Nortec as I cut through the Medical School plaza proceed to roll on down East River Road. The trumpet solo elevates me and the rhythm is driven over jukebox edge. This song is a bicycle rider??™s pump rhythm and it pushes and it pushes hard. This song will make any dancer sweat and hop.
Still more tuba on the song Ciruela Electrica or Electric Plum which means, what?
The song Jacinto features a very nice guitar hook with some absolutely beautiful accordion playing. Something here a little bit more romantic than the dance material that dominates the CD, Tijuana Sound Machine.
The second to the last trac Reten is something of a Beatlesque painting with sound. Somehow it sounds a little like the ticking of a wall clock on the wall of the Yellow Submarine.
Straight on through to the end of the CD, the rhythm, the accordion, the decidedly electronic sound of it, moves me and I cross the bridge on my way to the safety of my office, hot shower, hot bowl of oat meal. We are riding the wind. I am the wind.
Nortec Collective features four artists:
Bostich (Ramon Amezcua), Clorofila (Jorge Verdon), Fussible (Pepe Mogt) and Hiperboreal (Pedro Gabriel Beas).
These producers create and perform a style of music called Nortec - a fusion of Norte?o ("from the North") and Techno, documenting the collision between the style and culture of electronica and traditional Mexican music.
Their Latin Grammy-nominated Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3 leaned more toward the techno half of their sound, but here Bostich and Fussible get closer to their Nortero side. It??™s far from an acoustic album, with loops, vocoders, and synths throughout. But the accordions get turned up higher, the horns become brassier, and acoustic percussion plays a bigger role.
The beats still draw more from techno, though traces of Nortero??™s polka-bounce remain, as on ???Shake It Up.??? Some songs lean more toward electronics (???Rosarito???) than others (???Brown Bike,??? which includes vocals), but everything is efficient, nothing clocking in even as long as four minutes.
They're not hard-core Nortero??“no Mexican corridos about life on the border, say??“but definitely closer on the family tree.
What is TENORI-ON (Both Pepe and Ramon use the TENORI-ON)
CONCEPT
Media artist Toshio Iwai and Yamaha have collaborated to design a new digital musical instrument for the 21st century, TENORI-ON. A 16x16 matrix of LED switches allows everyone to play music intuitively, creating a "visible music" interface.
