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)

**

foto: choc quib town (via sxsw)

**

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!

**
¡abajo uribe! ¡arriiiiiba coloooombia!

hey little bird, fly away home

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

**

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.

**

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!!!

**



**

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

song for the viejitos

i used to work with (immigrant & working-class) viejitos in sf. and loved it! ancianos + political protest is a great mix actually. but sometimes issues do come up...i got this note from my former co-worker the other day, with subject line i channeled your spirit, regarding a demonstration he helped to organize against the ihss budget cuts.

[diabólica]:

At our rally the other day, it was very big and hectic a rather enthusiastic Russian senior kept rushing up on me (while I was a the podium) wanting to know if he could sing “God Bless America” because “ameerika is best county in world” and he wouldn’t leave me alone. I was getting really irritated and I thought “How would [diabólica] handle this?” so I held up my palm and said very directly and russianly “You are not allowed to sing that song here!” and I didn’t hear anything more from him.

thanks.

aw, thanks to you, james, for the compliment! and may i suggest the following song as an alternate hymn ;) very recognizable, lyrics available in multiple versions & languages...

the internationale : billy bragg



i wanted to post a really cool swing version of this song which plays during the ending credits of michael moore's capitalism : a love story but couldn't find it anywhere. so you can have billy bragg's anti-racist version instead, and catch the other one en el cine!



foto : grandmothers of the plaza de mayo. buenos aires, argentina. aside from the ones i used to work with in san francisco, some of my favorite viejitas militantes in the world.

best drag ever

shit! this is terrible news. grrrrr. heard via lil miss hot mess that charlie horse at the cinch is ending. this makes me very upset, not just because of all the good times, cheap strong drinks, and glamorous company that i won't get to enjoy there. but also because this is another nail in the coffin of a sf neighborhood that was not so very long ago proudly working-class & queer, and is now in the clutches of the devil known as gentrification. here's what lil miss hot mess has to say about it:

Today Anna Conda announced that Charlie Horse is over, effectively immediately. I can’t get all the facts straight but it has to do with the gentrification of the Polk — hell, the gentrification of the whole city — specifically yuppies who want to have their cake and eat it too, and developers who want to sell it to them. Anna thinks that it’s a combination of people complaining about noisy queens and the Polk St. Merchants Association wanting to get rid of the gay bars. The Gangway (nearby on Larkin) already shut down all DJed parties months ago due to complaints. It’s ridiculous!

Like I said, I don’t know the full story, so I don’t want to start the blame game or get too much into the specifics of it. But hello, San Francisco: this is what you get when you invite your city to become a dot-com yuppie playground. This is exactly how neighborhoods gentrify. It’s easy to point fingers at artists and gays as gentrifiers — and not to say that we aren’t part of the system — but the bigger picture is about government colluding with the wealthy using tactics like selective law enforcement and policies that favor development.

**



foto: the lovely anna conda (sf weekly)

i've been meaning to post about anna conda & charlie horse for so long and of course now i'm sorry i didn't sooner. basically it's the best drag ever.

i have a soft spot in my heart for drag performance, especially the working-class kind in tiny over-filled dive bars and especially latin@ drag like the kind at b&b or norma jeans, a very soft spot. but... admittedly, i don't find most of it all that entertaining, and i don't usually last very long until i get bored. we were talking about this one time and ms. anna conda was like, i know! it's like how many times can you listen to whitney houston greatest love of all before you want to kill yourself, you know? true.

but anna conda & co. on friday nights at midnight, now that's some drag!!! their weekly show charlie horse was this magical combination of messy punk rock, bizarre vintage glamour, and biting social critique. the hair was piled high, the girls wore (and sometimes took off) amazing outfits. the music was always good, or self-consciously awful, either way a delight. and the performers worked their asses off, a new show every week! soooo entertaining, so irreverent, sometimes made me hurt from laughing so hard. the other thing i really appreciated about charlie horse & anna conda was that they saw themselves as holding down polk street for the working-class queers against the forces of displacement & assimilation. polk street for the gays! marina girls go home! as she used to like to chant. plus, at this year's september 11th show anna conda punctuated her mistress of ceremonies routine with a rant about colin powell being a war criminal. not really your average drag show banter. oh, i really wish it wasn't over ;(

**

for a little tribute to the beautiful & noisy event that was, here are a few fotos from charlie horse, and song dedications to anna, who is roquera de corazón. thank you so much, ms. anna conda, it was wonderful. here's a little volumen cero & jesus and mary chain especialmente para ti...

eres la queen... eres la queen... eres la queen...

la queen : volumen cero




i come around catching sparks off you...



head on : the jesus & mary chain



**

makes you wanna feel
makes you wanna try
makes you wanna blow
the stars from the sky

iranian cielito lindo

de la sierra morena
cielito lindo, vienen bajando
un par de ojitos negros
cielito lindo, de contrabando

**

cielito lindo must be like the most mexican of all mexican songs, no? a favorite of our people, it's often performed mariachi-style and even contains the very mexican expression: ay ay ay ay and very mexican advice: canta y no llores / sing and don't cry.

and look! other people like it too. here is our anthem sung by persian folk roquero mohsen namjoo. delightful.


cielito lindo : mohsen namjoo





image : cielito lindo by jesús helguera

**

leili joon! thank you, buen viaje, & sí, para la próxima yo voy contigo!!

no hay nadie como calle 13

at the mtv latin america awards last month calle 13 cleaned up! and not just music awards. residente (vocalist rené pérez) hosted the televised show and threw insults left and right, wiping the floor with various traitorous vendido latin american politicians: uribe (colombia), calderón (méxico), micheletti (honduras) & fortuño (pr) among others. he has a sharp tongue, that residente, and he uses it well! really, i can't think of another pop culture icon who has put such immense popularity to such good use. in addition to insulting the reactionary heads of state he also used the stage to advertise the massive general strike against unemployment happening that same day in puerto rico, and to honor the dead from the '68 massacre of students in mexico city and the south american disappeared.



the new york daily news has a good summary of some of the highlights:

Mixing foul language and stinging political commentary, Pérez said, “Latin America is incomplete without a free Puerto Rico” and called the governor of the island a “son of a b” for the controversial layoff of 25,000 public employees.

“I made him famous,” Pérez, 31, said of Luis Fortuño, the embattled governor whose belt-tightening measures have led to large protests, the likes of which have not been seen on the island in decades.

The five-time Latin Grammy winner also said the president of Argentina should “stop using Botox” and wore a series of T-shirts emblazoned with a variety of messages.

Among the highlights: President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia belongs to illegal paramilitary groups, Honduras’ interim President Roberto Micheletti “rhymes with Pinochetti,” as in the former Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and one shirt saying Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez has been “nominated for Best Pop Artist.”

The reaction was swift. In Colombia, Calle 13 was disinvited to a January festival in the pro-Uribe city of Manizales, and in Puerto Rico, the governor charged that Pérez’s words had “disrespected all Puerto Rican women and mothers.”

The mayor of San Juan, Jorge Santini, labeled Pérez a “tecato,” a drug user, and pulled the plug on a show Calle 13 was supposed to have in Puerto Rico last Saturday. In response, Pérez, who says he’s never used drugs, challenged the mayor to a drug test.

**

for tomorrow's latin grammy awards ceremony, calle 13 has received the most nominations and are likely to win at least a couple of them. they're also scheduled to perform la perla with rubén blades. that's potentially a lot of stage time! pérez said he'll be more tranquilo this time around. i hope not. you can see the awards, and any potential antics, on univisión. other performers include alicia keyes and the illustrious omara portuondo.

but hey ¡¡residente!! come on! some more left-wing travesuras tomorrow night? por favorciiiito?! atreve-te-te-te-te ;)

**

this song is from calle 13's first album. it was written and posted to the internet the day following the fbi's assassination of puerto rican independentista filiberto ojeda ríos in 2005.

here's the original version...

querido fbi : calle 13



and here is the tribute to the mothers of the plaza de mayo version. residente + visitante (brother) + pg-13 (sister) ...

querido fbi : calle 13

Muertos

It's Nov 2 again. Time to remember the grandparents, light some candles, and enjoy a piece of dead bread (pan de muertos). All of this is done best, of course, with some musical accompaniment...


__
la dibaólica:

a few months ago, se murió mario benedetti. he was a beloved uruguayan poet & leftist militant, whose work is still recited from memory all over the americas. here he is with his camarada, musician daniel viglietti, performing "refranivocos" as viglietti plays "the devil in paradise" by violeta parra. ¡viva benedetti!


refranivocos / el diablo en el paraíso: mario benedetti / daniel viglietti

___
La Cumbiambera:

The original plan for this post was to honor people who have in the last year gone on to the spirit world. Blame it on the baby, but La Cumbiambera just couldn’t get focused. So I went back to an old favorite – Quetzal – and this song “Limones Agrios,” which was composed after the passing of two of the band members’ grandfather. The song is dear to my heart because the old man lived in Oxnard, CA, which is just down the road from where my grandparents live, and because the song's central metaphor is the lemon tree. The area surrounding Oxnard is home to a huge agricultural industry, and in particular citrus orchards, so the metaphor is not random. Neither is my attachment to it as my family, beginning with my great-grandparents, has worked for many generations as laborers in the very orchards referred to in this song. Today I remember those who work the land. La tierra pertenece a quien la trabaja.


Limones Agrios: Quetzal

Más Allá

This post has been plagued by technical difficulties, so by now it might be old news that last Wednesday evening a man threatened to jump from the Crown Hotel on Valencia Street in S.F. In response, the police halted all foot and vehicular traffic along block between 16th & 17th Street on Valencia, thereby causing people to pool at the street corners to see if there was anything to see.

I was one of the passersby who stared up at the haunting skyline as the man sat at the edge, hunched over, legs dangling, with the October breeze as the only buffer between himself and the sidewalk that lay five stories below. Meanwhile, people stared. And took pictures. And called their friends. And said horrible things. As someone who has stood on that edge before, I was overcome with immense sadness and was reminded of a time when I was comforted by this song:


"Más Allá", La Ley

"Tengo ganas de brillar / I want to shine

y mi luz esta apagada / but my light has gone out

no tenía a nadie a quien culpar / I didn’t haven anyone to blame

y nadie culpabilizaba / and nobody blamed me

Hay algo más o algo menos / There is something more or something less

me da igual si mas o menos / I don’t care whether it’s more or less

dejé morir, dejé vivir / I’ve stopped living, I’ve stopped dying

Estoy hundiéndome en la oscuridad del mar / I am drowning in the darkness of the sea

aquí no hay aire pero al fin podré llegar / There’s no air here but I will finally arrive

Más allá …/ Beyond…"

"Más Allá" was written after La Ley's lead singer Beto Cuevas was informed of a young fan who took her life supposedly because she was obsessed with Cuevas and could not get close to him. I say “supposedly” because the purported reason a person chooses to end her life is never the real reason. The decision to commit suicide cannot be explained by the severity of a person’s particular set of challenges, but rather how that person’s brain reacts to the stresses in her life. This is why some people see their entire families get murdered during war and some of these people choose to keep on living. And why a person living a comparatively privileged life might go through a bad break-up and choose to kill herself then. I have done a lot of reading on this subject, have tried vairous types of therapies, have spoken intimately about this subject to many depressed and non-depressed people, and as far as I can tell, the bottom line is this: some of us are blessed with brains that have stable chemical balances. Others of us are not so lucky.

P.S. For insight on this topic, I recommend “The Mood Cure” by Julia Ross. Whether you are struggling with your own depression or have been impacted by the inexplicable behavior of someone you love, Julia Ross' easy to understand explanations of brain chemistry and its effects on mood shifts is enlightening.

pixies

perhaps the economic crisis has hit hard the fallen alt-rock star community, causing them all to go back to work? obviously band reunions are nothing new, but in the last couple years even bands long long long gone like gang of four are doing reunion tours. really?! after all this time? my bloody valentine, echo & the bunnymen, the jesus & mary chain...i'm serious.



foto : ::katey::

which brings me to the pixies. or rather, pixies. three dates at the oakland fox. it's a bit out of the language-scope of the upcoming shows we list here (psst. there on the right!) but if you want to shell out to see them it will cost you $70 minimum (economic crisis?!) and you better get your tickets fast because 2 of 3 shows have sold out.

too much! but i am prompted to think for a minute about the greatness that was (umm... is?) pixies. there's just no one like them. kim deal singing softly over frank black's screaming is just brilliant. isn't it? also the bassline hooks kill me. still.


debaser : pixies



wave of mutilation : pixies



and of course...

here comes your man : pixies

Just Because

Just because I’ve been listening to a lot of Andrés Calamaro lately.

Just because this song makes me happy.

Just because this video features viejitos and kids of color hanging out on city streets.

Just because this video features musicians taking over the sidewalk.

Just because.

Andrés Calamaro, Corazón en Venta

"Feliz navidad sangrienta..."

¡felicitaciones!

my parents got married 40 years ago today :) feliz día to them!!

a couple years ago we were sitting around talking and my dad caught us all by surprise when he recounted to my mom the exact outfit she was wearing when he first saw her in his 10th grade english class. can you imagine? good god!

here they are on their wedding day. so cute.



felicidades, for sure. and now, because i know they like them, a little maná as a regalito for this occasion...

de pies a cabeza : maná



hoy te quiero mas que siempre
hoy te adoro mas que nunca

:)

wiki guinea pig

i was a guinea pig for wikipedia last week! basically i went in and they asked me to make a "contribution" on wikipedia and then asked me lots of questions to evaluate that process. before i went i knew i was going to have to write something and of course i got nervous and started thinking, oh my gosh i don't know enough about anything! my mind would go completely blank when i tried to think of a topic. especially because i didn't know if i was going to have to make an entirely new entry or to contribute to a topic already in there. as it turned out it could be the latter, but still i didn't really have any ideas until i sat down in the research office.

well, el gran silencio to the rescue again. that's what came to me. i cleaned up a bit the english-language entry on those guys and really i think wikipedia, no the world, is better for it ;) jejeje. in appreciation for giving me something to write about i am posting this video which i don't think we've ever posted here, of their collaboration with celso piña. it's a great song and the video is another with some beautiful footage of working-class monterrey, mexico.

cumbia poder : celso piña & el gran silencio

Racist Halloween

I don’t even know what to say about this:

Unfortunately, This "illegal alien [sic] costume" is only the beginning. Amazon also has a host of other racist costumes for sale. Thanks to the good work of CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles), Target has pulled the above item from its on-line store (yay!), but a whole slew of other websites are still selling it. The UFW has an e-mail campaign to get the costume pulled from Walgreens, Toys R Us, and Amazon (although internet rumors have it that Toys R Us has just pulled the item, too).

An even funner way to join the campaign is to go to one of the following sites and submit a customer review that reads something along the lines of “THIS PRODUCT IS A RACIST PIECE OF SHIT.”

amazon.com

buycostumes.com

If you need inspiration, you can read the mierda in support of the costume here.

see also

ok, so i guess i'm kind of on a roll with all these recommendations. will return to regular programming here soon. but in the meantime there's the arab film festival in sf (& la), october 15th-25th. directed by michel shehadeh, it's really one of the best in the bay area (which has some film festival or other running at almost all times of year). ziad was on the jury for this year's awards. he highly recommends:

ein shams / eye of the sun : ibrahim el batout (egypt)



casanegra : nour-eddine lakhmari (morocco)



i will take him at his word & also throw in...

laila's birthday / eid milad laila : rachid mashrawi (palestine)



salt of this sea / milh hadha al-bahr : annemarie jacir (palestine)



...two very good films that are playing now which i've seen before.
ok ya, ándale pues.

whip it good

hey, did we really need another coming-of-age film about a young woman overcoming adversity & her parents, and defying cherished societal gender roles in the process?

as it turns out, yes! we did! ooohh, everyone i know who has seen whip it has loved it. drew barrymore's directorial debut is based on the novel derby girl and it's really good. our heroine, bliss, finds herself drawn away from the world of texas beauty pageants and irresistibly towards the injury-producing warehouse contact sport of women's roller derby. yes!!! roller derby, of course, involves fishnet stockings & short skirts, lots of eyeliner, and roller skates. plus trying to knock the hell out of your opponents as you crash past them with great agility at a very high speed. something for everyone, in other words. anyways it's so sweet, so funny, and a very quick two hours of a movie!

here's a trailer :



thankfully the (waaay overused for decades) devo song is nowhere to be found in the film. but the soundtrack, like the ladies of roller derby, kicks ass. here are some selections... enjoy! and vete al cine!


cannonball : the breeders



heart in a cage : the strokes



kids : mgmt



sheena is a punk rocker : the ramones



pot kettle black : tilly & the wall


**

and because it is again that holiday, a brief public service announcement: fuck columbus!!!!!

Huichol Musical / Feliz Día de la Raza

Meet (if you haven’t already) Huichol Muscial, five chamacos from Nayarit who play completely unplugged music using traditional Huichol instrumentation. Y hasta cantan en su idioma (see YouTube for the “Cusinela” video, which I could not find an embedding code for). In the interview below, HM gives props to las cusinelas – las mujeres - for the work that they do. And in the new video – “Que Feo Se Siente” - they hold it down for life on the rancho.






Que feo se siente, / How bad it feels

Ya se está secando el rancho, / The rancho is drying up
Las vacas ya no dan leche / The cows have no more milk
Las gallinas no dan huevos / The chickens don’t lay anymore eggs
No hay chamba para la gente. / There is not work for the people

Que feo se siente, que feo se siente / How bad it feels, how bad it feels

Antes llenabas la traj / Before you could fill the trailer
Con maíz y con frijol / With corn and beans
Ahora está llena de olotes / Now it’s full of corn cobs
Fue lo que la milpa dio / That’s all that the cornfield gave…


If you haven’t done so already today, take a moment to honor your ancestors and commit at least one good anti-colonial act of resistance.

nobel war prize

speaking of ineffectual, delusional, & apologist international "peace" entities, the nobel prize committee has awarded the peace prize to u.s. president barack obama.

some reflections on that...

afghanistan 2009:



iraq 2009:



palestine 2009:



fotos : posted at current tv, the independent, electronic intifada


search and destroy : iggy & the stooges



i'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm
i'm a runaway son of the nuclear a-bomb...
somebody gotta save my soul

tango love

hay milonga de amor
...este tango es para vos



foto : salon tango finals, world championship in buenos aires, august 2009. by natacha pisarenko (ap)

apparently tango made it onto unesco's "representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity". whatever. the compiling of such a finite list of deserving cultural "elements" and allocating protected status & funding on that basis is ummm, problematic. and ridiculously far away from such realities as war & imperialism. and of course unesco, like all un-related entities, is sketchy to say the least.

but dios! tango is sooooo beautiful, isn't it? originating in the poor immigrant neighborhoods of buenos aires & montevideo, it was most likely first danced by (& between) young men who worked in the río de la plata ports in the early 1900s. that's a bit of distance from the glammed-up ballroom version that people tend to imagine as tango today, but you know how it goes...



foto : buenos aires. young men dancing (among men) and listening to tango, circa 1900. (from the museum of tango, buenos aires)

tango music & dance have experienced in recent years a sort of resurgence owing to modern pop cultural reinterpretations. those arguably do more to rescue them from declining into obscurity than the unesco designation will. and maybe are also bringing back a bit of the more street-level consumption, no?

**

siento un dolor / i feel pain
muy dentro de mi corazon / so deep in my heart
si amarte es un pecado / if to love you is a sin
yo me quemo pues / i'll burn then
en el infierno junto a vos / next to you in hell

: tango del pecado (calle 13)


tango + electronica =
pa' bailar : bajofondo



tango + reggaeton =
tango del pecado : calle 13



tango + mas electronica =
mente fragil : tanghetto



tango + mas electronica + argentine hiphop =
mi confesión : gotan project w/ koxmoz



tango + rock en español =
mareo : bajofondo w/ gustavo cerati



tango + popular revolt =
queremos paz : gotan project

Mercedes Sosa RIP...Que Descanze en Paz....

Mercedes Sosa, cantante de canciones de lucha y movimientos, fallecio hoy a los 74 años de edad en Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mercedes Sosa era conocida por sus canciones acerca de liberacion, guerra, vida, amor, y muerte. Su voz era una de las mas reconocidas por los movimientos revolucionarios en Sur y Centro America, especialmente por sus canciones acerca del poder del pueblo y de las condiciones inhumanas del los obreros y pobres. Aunque aveces nos quebro el corazon, por 40 años compartir su voz y talento con el mundo.

Que descanses en paz Mercedes, y gracias a la vida, que nos dio el regalo de tu voz....


* * * * * * *


Mercedes Sosa, singer of timeless songs about struggle and movements, passed away today at the age of 74 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Mercedes Sosa was known for her songs about life, death, war, liberation, and love. Her voice was one of the most recognized by revolutionary movements in Central and South America, especially for her songs about people power and the inhumane conditions of the workers and the poor. Although she sometimes broke our heart, for 40 years she shared her voice and talent with the world.

Rest in Peace Mercedes, and thank you to life, that gave us the gift of your voice.....

"Solo le Pido a Dios"/ "I only ask for God"

Solo le pido a Dios/ I only ask for God
que el dolor no me sea indiferente/ that I do not feel indifferent to the suffering
que la reseca muerte no me encuentre/that the withering death does not find me
vacia y sola sin haber hecho lo suficiente/ empty and alone without having done enough


Mercedes Sosa y Pablo Milanes: Nos Vamos Poniendo Viejos


Mercedes Sosa: Gracias a la Vida


Mercedes Sosa: Solo le Pido ha Dios



Mercedes Sosa: Corazon Libre


Mercedes Sosa: Razon de Vivir