SOUNDTRACK: iLe-Tiny Desk Concert #874 (August 3, 2019).
It’s not very often that you hear a song that is all percussion. But the first song of this set is only percussion and (Spanish) vocals.
iLe is a singer in the Puerto Rican band Calle 13. Her most recent solo album Almadura:
is filled with metaphors and allegories about the political, social and economic conditions in Puerto Rico.
When vocalist Ileana Cabra Joglar and her band visited the Tiny Desk, they’d just arrived from the front lines of the historic demonstrations taking place in Puerto Rico. Two days earlier, they were part of a crowd of tens of thousands who were on the streets calling for the resignation of embattled Gov. Ricardo Rosselló. (Rosselló recently stepped down, effective August 2.)
Right from the start, it was clear what was on iLe’s mind in her song “Curandera” — “I am a healer / I don’t need candles to illuminate / I bring purifying water to cleanse / Removing pains so they never return” — as congas and percussion shook the room with an Afro-Caribbean beat.
This is the song in which all of the band members play percussion–primarily congas although Ismael Cancel is on the drum kit. While everyone plays congas, it is Jeren Guzmán who is the most accomplished and who plays the fast conga “solo.”
In the chorus of the slow-burning “Contra Todo,” iLe sings about channeling inner strengths and frustrations to win battles and remake the world. Her lyrics are rich with history, capturing the spirit of the streets of San Juan even as she stood, eyes closed, behind the Tiny Desk. Her entire performance is a startling reflection of this moment in Puerto Rican history.
“Contra Todo” has a rich deep five string bass from Jonathan Gonzalez and two trombones (Joey Oyola and Nicolás Márquez). Two guitars (Bayoán Ríos and Adalberto Rosario) add a kind of percussive strumming and a quiet song-ending riff. Jeren Guzmán plays the congas with mallets, something I’ve never seen before.
By the time iLe and her band launched into “Sin Masticar,” they’d already captured the full power of protest, as their musical arrangements raged with the intensity of a crowd joined by a shared cause and pulse.
“Sin Masticar” has a super catchy chorus, perhaps the best way to get people involved in a protest.
[READ: August 2019] Midnight Light
Two years ago Dave Bidini co-founded The West End Phoenix, a newspaper that is for people in Toronto’s West End. It’s print, it’s old school, and it’s pretty awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever been to the West End, but I find the writing and the content to be interesting and really enjoyable.
It’s no surprise that Bidini has worked in journalism and loved and hated it.
I’ve always loved newspaper: the smell of the ink and the rough of the newsprint weighted in my hands, their broadsheets flapping like Viking sails. When I was a kid, our family read them all–the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Sun, and before that The Telegram–at the kitchen table with each person drawing out whatever they needed: comics, sports, business, entertainment (and yet never Wheels, the Star’s automotive supplement).
He started writing before he picked up a guitar. When he was 11 he submitted a poem about a hockey player to The Sun‘s “Young Sun” section. It was accepted and he won a T-shirt.
In 1991, he was asked to write a regular column for a Star satellite weekly called Metropolis. The day his first piece was to be in print he waited at the nearest newsbox for the delivery man.
But he had no stamina and fewer ideas and he was eventually let go. Which led to writing books. But he still wanted to write for the paper and then he remembered: Hey, Yellowknife had a newspaper.
This book is about journalism. But it’s also about the Canadian North. And while the journalism stuff is interesting–and the way it ties to the North is interesting too, it’s the outsider’s perspective of this region of the world (that most people don’t even think about) which is just amazing to read about–the people, the landscape, the conditions. It’s fascinating. (more…)
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Two years ago I saw Sunflower Bean open for Pixies. I thought they were great live and I wanted to see them again. Since then, they have put out a second album and another EP.
