SOUNDTRACK: HIT LA ROSA-GlobalFEST Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #134/144 (January 12, 2021).
GlobalFEST is an annual event, held in New York City, in which bands from all over the world have an opportunity to showcase their music to an American audience. I’ve never been, and it sounds a little exhausting, but it also sounds really fun.
The Tiny Desk is teaming up with globalFEST this year for a thrilling virtual music festival: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST. The online fest includes four nights of concerts featuring 16 bands from all over the world.
Given the pandemic’s challenges and the hardening of international borders, NPR Music and globalFEST is moving from the nightclub to your screen of choice and sharing this festival with the world. Each night, we’ll present four artists in intimate settings (often behind desks donning globes), and it’s all hosted by African superstar Angélique Kidjo, who performed at the inaugural edition of globalFEST in 2004.
The second band on the second night is Hit La Rosa from Peru.
Kidjo says their music is like a psychedelic surf-punk cumbia. That’s true, but in a rather restrained way. The music is cool and a little wild but it never gets out of control. They play three songs and again, the musicians’ names aren’t given.
From the candle-lit home of their lead singer, Hit La Rosa comes in hot and doesn’t stop until the final measure. The band explores the many facets of Peruvian cumbia music, infusing it with pop music, folklore, jazz and dancehall to produce its distinctive grooves and hooks. The band’s precise-yet-dreamlike music and punk sensibility all come together to make music that explores life’s shadowy sides. Despite living through a political crisis in Peru, the band brings a message of hope and joy in the midst of struggle and upheaval.
“La Montañita” has a latin drum opening with a weird echoing surf guitar intro. Sliding bass and trippy keys propel this danceable song along.
“La Marea” opens with a mellow keyboard and slow bass and guitars. After a coupe of minutes,a drum fill introduces the faster part of the song. An echoing vibrato-filled guitar solo and trippy synths are accented with Peruvian percussion and drums and it all works really well together.
“Salvia” is trippy and moody with more of the vibrato guitar soloing. I really like at the end of the song the juxtaposition of the looping guitar melody and the bouncing bass.
[READ: December 14, 2020] Simantov
This story (originally written in Hebrew and translated by Marganit Weinberger-Rotman) was a combination police procedural and eschatological novel about the end times.
I read the summary of the book at work, but the summary really doesn’t indicate just how supernatural the book is going to get.
It would greatly help to have a solid foundation in Biblical lore to fully understand what’s going on in this book. I mean, the first chapter title contains a footnote:
The First Day of the Counting of the Omer*
*According to the Torah (Lev. 23;15) Jews are obligated to count the days from passover tp pentecost. This counting is a reminder of the link between the Exodus and harvest season.
Things are supernatural right from the get go. Elijah the prophet comes to Earth to prepare for its smiting (it’s quite an elaborate introduction). Elijah lands in Israel and leaves a trail of destruction all the way to Shamhazai’s mansion.
So, obviously it helps to know who Shamhazai is (I didn’t–Shamḥazai and his companion Uzzael or Azael are fallen angels of Nephilim). The Nephilim are literal giants in the Bible–often taken as fallen angels. That’s a lot of background for the first 9 pages.
The next chapter reminds the reader of the first humans created by God–Adam and Lilith. Shamhazai was gaga over Lilith.
Incidentally, after reading the book I was looking at what other readers had thought. One reader on Goodreads said she had to stop reading the book on page 10 after this sentence:
[Lilith] was dark and comely, her eyelashes fluttered like turtledoves, her perky breasts like two erect towers.
I’m going to admit that I found this simile to be really awkward (translation problem or just poor writing?). I mean, even if Lilith were a giant, her breasts wouldn’t be like towers, right? It’s hard to know even where to begin with a simile like that. But I pressed on.
The book tells us that when the Nephilim told Lilith their names it enabled her to rule over them. This bit about naming is important in terms of being able to conquer angels.
I was a bit nervous to go further, thinking that was going to be seriously biblical in nature. But things become far more mundane in the next chapter.
We meet Mazzy Simantov, a police officer and her rather less impressive husband Gaby. [This story also puzzled me because there are at least two men with what I consider female names: Gaby and Elisha]. The two are at a seder with Mazzy’ mother Rachel. Rachel is an intimidating presence and even though Mazzy’s daughter Noga should be a focus of the evening, all eyes are on Rachel.
This is because all of the guests at Rachel’s seder are readers and seers. There are a lot of supernatural goings on at this meal. And these supernatural goings on will be a massive part of the story.
The seder table was also conspicuously non-kosher, which upsets Gaby who is a doctor and is very serious.
Up next we meet Chief Inspector Yariv Biton.
Mazzy and Biton were once partners–and lovers–but once she started getting better results than him (through some supernatural means) she advanced and he treaded water.
The love triangle (Mazzy, Biton and Gaby) is a little forced–the tension between Mazzy and Biton feels genuine, but the actual romantic moments are rather stilted.
Biton has just been given a missing persons case. Missing persons was his old department–something he had moved beyond, or so he thought. Despite the lame job, he was chosen because the missing person was Hizzoner the Judge’s daughter. The judge’s daughter Estie was fourteen and had been clubbing when she disappeared with some guy.
The force is pushing Biton to solve this quickly. They suggest using The Soothsayer. The Soothsayer is Mazzy’s division.
Mazzy’s division consisted of a cartomancer (one who reads cards), an anthropomancer (one who reads entrails) and a numerologist. The numerology stuff is so weird and ridiculous I cant believe anyone ever considered it in real life.
Before anyone can do anything about the missing girl, though, a woman is stolen. From a car park rooftop. CCTV shows her just vanishing.
Then actress Milks Umm-Alzabian vanished while on stage in front of an audience–no one could explain it–they thought was all just wonderful special effects.
After some leads (and supernatural assistance) the detectives find a man (actually an angel) who fits the description of those who could see anything. Really, the only clues are the small objects they leave behind; a whip, a feather, a lock of hair…
They soon start to realize, with Rachel’s help, that these abductions signal the start of a war between the daughters of Lilith and the Nephilim.
The detectives are able to piece things together and determine who the next victim is likely to be, but how can you stop angels from doing what they want?
This book is very confusing. There were many many times that I just stopped trying to figure out what was happening and just kept reading until it made sense. At some points it feels like Ashery is deliberately withholding information for dramatic effect. At other times it feels like you need to know a lot of stuff ahead of time to really understand what he’s talking about. At other times it seems like maybe the writing (or translation) is poor.
Despite all of that, I rather enjoyed the story. The ideas were clever and exciting and the whole conceit of cadres of angels feuding was pretty cool. There were also plenty of scenes where I understood what was going on just fine. And indeed, some of the scenes were really exciting. The whole idea of battling angels was also very cool. So even if I missed out on various details, the overall story was worth reading.
The execution was clunky but sometimes a good idea can push through that.
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