SOUNDTRACK: YASSER TEJEDA & PALOTRÉ-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert Meets SXSW #188 (April 6, 2021).
Every year, NPR Music participates in the SXSW music festival, whether it’s curating a stage or simply attending hundreds of shows at the annual event in Austin, Texas. Last year, the festival was canceled due to the pandemic, but it returned this March as an online festival. We programmed a ‘stage’ of Tiny Desk (home) concerts and presented them on the final day of the festival. Now, we present to you Tiny Desk Meets SXSW: four videos filmed in various locations, all of them full of surprises.
Yasser Tejeda, a New York-based guitarist from the Dominican Republic, started his musical career on the Dominican cuatro (a folkloric guitar-like instrument) and has incorporated guitar stylings that have made him a “go-to guy” for Dominican artists looking for passionate elegance in their sound.
They play three songs in fifteen minutes. And as with much music from this part of the world, the drums (Victor Otoniel Vargas) and percussion (Jonathan “Jblak” Troncoso) are unstoppable.
Yasser Tejeda and his band Palotré begin their set behind a home desk with “Amor Arrayano,” weaving a vaguely Caribbean feel with a killer R&B hook.
“Amor Arrayano” is a smooth love song gently echoing guitars and a smooth grooving bass.
After a brief introduction of his bandmates Tejeda launches into “La Culebra,” the track that caught my attention from their album Kijombo. Palotré is a powerful groove machine behind Tejeda’s virtuosic guitar playing and his playful dance moves.
“La Culebra” (The Snake) opens with percussive rattlesnake sounds from “Jblak.” Kyle Miles plays a bouncy bass while Tejeda plays a cool virtuosic lead. This (mostly) instrumental rocks on in various tempos for the duration of the song.
Tejeda has stated one of the goals of this project is to explore the crossroads between Afro-Dominican musical traditions with anything else that pops onto their radar. Their final song here,”Nuestras Raices,” [Our Roots] has become one of my favorites because I hear the essence of Africa mixed with jazz and maybe a hint of heavy metal, as Tejeda steps on his distortion pedal to kick the band into overdrive with guest tenor saxophonist Mario Castro in tow.
“Nuestras Raices,” opens with a ton of drums and Castro playing the intro melody on the sax. The songs shifts gears to a quiet verse and then Tejeda stomps the distortion pedal for a brief foray into ripping guitar before pulling back for another quiet verse. After some faster sections, the song slows down to a kind of moshing feel with all kinds of wild time changes, jazzy sax and heavy metal chords.
It’s pretty fantastic.
[READ: March 30, 2021] Charlie Thorne and the Lost Island
This is the first book in the Charlie Thorne series. I read the second one last month. I don’t like to read things out of sequence, but it didn’t really impact this story all that much. The only thing that I “knew” was that Charlie escaped at the end of the story. But that’s pretty obvious since there was a second book.
This book was also good for some of the background information I was seeking. Although, it turns out that Gibbs didn’t include a ton of background info on Charlie. We learn just enough to understand how she is the way she is without getting bogged own in details.
The story starts with a Prologue set in Princeton, NJ in 1955. It’s the evening of Einstein’s death and after being given some (unwanted) painkillers, he starts muttering something. By the end of the night the secret service are all over his small house trying to uncover whatever it was he muttered (in German) about.
The book properly starts at CIA Headquarters as Dante Garcia is heading a team. He is insisting that they call in the help of Charlie Thorne, a super-smart 12-year old girl with a potential criminal past. His boss is skeptical but trusts Dante, so she agrees. he also says he wants to work with Milana Moon, one of the best agents in the force.
Cut to a ski slope in Colorado where we are introduced to Charlie and her amazing mathematical mind. She is able to picture the angles and speed she needs to conquer Deadman’s Drop.
The way she does it is pretty cool and it also sets up the first exciting chase. She recognizes Dante and his partner as agents. She doesn’t know why they are here but she knows she needs to evade them. This leads to the first of many exciting chase scenes. (more…)
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S. took her Girl Scouts to see Acrobuffos and said it was great. I had actually wanted to go to the show but was on a Scout hike that weekend.
