nazi-pope tackle

25-year-old susanna miaolo's christmas present to the pope has provided a more or less endeless supply of entertainment around here these days. of all the many times we've seen this replayed, my family has decided we like this version best:



;)

colombia tierra querida

cantando cantando yo viviré...
: colombia tierra querida (tradicional, lucho bermudez)

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foto: choc quib town (via sxsw)

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colombia has given us so much good music. an entire constellation of pop stars, but also some rock buenísimo and of course our beloved cumbia colombiana.

lately i can't get enough of choc quib town & systema solar. part of the new school emerging out of coastal colombia (pacífica & caribe, respectively), these are some of the best elements of latin american dance music right now i think. systema is a sound system collective, latin-dub + electronica, with an affinity for cumbia and vallenato. and choc quib town is the work of female mc goyo and her compañeros, mc tostao & mc slow ... modern hiphop colombiano, with traditional indigenous & afro-colombian sounds mixed in for good measure.

love-ly. sshhh. listen...


chico de mi barrio : systema solar



alguien como tu : choc quib town



both, happily, have songs that champion the working class, and call for unity against oppression & exploitation. it is so time for some more music that's popular and popular, isn't it? even better if you can throw down on the dancefloor to it.

here is cqt's beautiful anti-colonialista & pro-revolt oro (gold)...

oro : choc quib town




como dicen los colombianos... ¡está bacano!

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¡abajo uribe! ¡arriiiiiba coloooombia!

hey little bird, fly away home

... your house is on fire, children are alone

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one of the best prison break films of all time is jarmusch's 1986 down by law, no? and this, for sure, is one of my favorite opening film sequences ever...

down by law : jim jarmusch

radio para niñ@s insurgentes

gracias to cailey who sent this along in response to the songs for the baby roquer@s post! it's a clip from the children's show of radio insurgente (zapatista radio) and oh my, it's so super cute. this episode moves back and forth between children singing the zapatista hymn and their favorite julieta venegas refrains, interspersed with saludos solidarios to niñ@s en todas partes. enjoy!

juega soñando (radio show) : radio insurgente





fotos: ssba on amadito's bedroom wall

cementerio de hormigas

recently, there was what can only be described as an elaborate ant funeral cortege in my apartment. at all hours i would see the ants a couple at a time dutifully retrieving their dead and carrying them to the windowsills, piling them up in ant graveyards of sorts. i don't know why all the dead ants, perhaps a change in the weather. but the meticulousness of their efforts in piling up the bodies of their fallen compañeros was impressive. and it reminded me of a curiosity i've had since i was little. why do they do that?

this question and a desire to find info in a place with a little more authority than yahoo answers lead me to my new favorite website, madsci network, which is like an archived scientist q & a (so cool!). as it turns out, that particular ant behavior most likely evolved as a precaution against potentially harmful bacteria on the dead ants infecting everyone else in the nest. or ... if you ask my sister (not a scientist) it's simply a matter of honor. either way it's a pretty amazing level of organization, the ant society.

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in other insect news, the episode also reminded me of alejandra, who once made me listen to a similarly themed song which had so moved her by its beauty that she found herself listening to it over & over & over again. i emailed her about it and she knew exactly what i was talking about! she found it, and sent it to me (see below). thank you, querida alex! besos!!



foto: teamwork by macropoulos

lo feo : gema y pavel (letra, teresita fernández)



alita de cucaracha
llevada hasta el hormiguero.
alita de cucaracha
llevada hasta el hormiguero.
así quiero que en mi muerte,
así quiero que en mi muerte,
así quiero que en mi muerte,
me lleven al cementerio.

i am ... a revolutionary

when i leave you can remember i said with the last words on my lips, that i am ... a revolutionary, and you are going to have to keep on saying that.

: fred hampton

fred hampton
30 august 1948 – 4 december 1969

today is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of fred hampton. hampton, chairman of the chicago black panther party, was a talented organizer & skilled orator, widely recognized and loved for his ability to inspire in people a sense of their own revolutionary potential. at just 21 years of age he had already called for and achieved a gang truce in chicago by arguing that instead of fighting each other poor people of color should unite and fight their true enemies.

fred hampton was assassinated in a hail of bullets as he slept in his bed, early morning of december 4th 1969. deborah johnson, hampton's partner who was 8 & 1/2 months pregnant at the time, was at his side. the raid on hampton's apartment was a carefully orchestrated operation carried out by the chicago police department & fbi. bpp member mark clark was also killed, and four other members were seriously injured.

chairman fred hampton's revolutionary spirit lives on.

all power to all the people!! long live fred hampton!!!

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power anywhere where there's people : fred hampton (speech)

We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

...

You know, a lot of people have hang-ups with the Party because the Party talks about a class struggle. We say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution always said that a revolution is a class struggle. It was one class - the oppressed, and that other class - the oppressor. And it's got to be a universal fact. Those that don't admit to that are those that don't want to get involved in a revolution, because they know as long as they're dealing with a race thing, they'll never be involved in a revolution.

songs for the baby roquer@s

i like having political discussions with amado, who is 4. sometimes they are tricky. we've talked about the police, for example, a zillion times. he knows they hurt & kill people. but he also really likes vehicles & uniforms & sirens, which complicates things. in general, though, he really impresses me with his political analysis. a few months ago i was talking to him on the phone, telling him about my day and that i had been at this mission anti-displacement coalition event. land use issues are pretty easy to talk about with kids. i told him, we want them to make this parking lot into housing for poor families and a community center. i asked him what he thought, and he said he thought it was a good idea.

then there was a pause in the conversation and then he added:

y tambien queremos que cierren todas las cárceles
and also we want them to close all the jails ...

y tambien queremos que todos los policias se vayan muy muy lejos
and also we want all the police to go far away ...

y tambien queremos libertad
and also we want freedom ...

verdad, nina?
right, nina?

umm... sí! that about sums it up.

it's a delicate operation, raising leftist children. you want to encourage their critical thinking skills, and at the same time you want them to develop a deep sense of what we believe and why. but you can't tell them what to believe, unless you want to see them end up like one of those ex-red diaper babies who is now an adult reactionary or self-indulgent pain in the ass.

cultivating little roquer@s, and proper appreciation of good music in general, is kind of similar i think. just enough, not too much. they'll come along :) i remember when amado was a baby, we were in the car and fabulosos cadillacs revolution rock was playing. i turned around to say something to him and found him with his arms in the air dancing around in the back seat. no encouragement needed. eso!





foto: the other day amado came downstairs to ask for help with his hair, out of the blue, to make it "parado". oh man, i love this kind of tia responsibility!

ok, so here are a few songs for nayahuari, la baby cumbiambera, & mayari, amado's new little sister (born november 18th!), the two littlest roqueras (and future izquierdistas) de la familia rsf... to get them off to a good start!

amado likes these, as well as classical music (??!) and the star wars soundtrack.


que calor : pibes chorros



ooh child : nina simone (original the 5 stairsteps)



trenes camiones y tractores : árbol



luna negra : los cojolites