Besame Baby!! A TRIP Through The Musical Barrio

Randy and Scott Rodarte of Ollin at their August 30th show in honor of the journalist Ruben Salazar(RIP) at the Airliner in Lincoln Heights. These boys played a smokin’ set that took us from 40’s Big Band Lalo Guerrero bluesy corridos, to swingin’ Richie Valens songs, to Cumbias, Pogues covers. (Ollin is the Chicano Pogues!) and ending the set with their punk “Tale of Two Cities”. They can seamlessly move across musical time, space and geography with mad musical skills and a true punk fire that ignites rather than tames the musical style they’re playing. I first saw Ollin when we all had moved back from Berkeley soon after the riots. They were learning to play Jarocho music. At that time I was going through some growing pains trying to find, create a space back home where I fit after wrestling with the world of academia for 5 years, witnessing my generation decimated by Iran-Contra imported crack, and experiencing the pocha in Mexico dilemma during a year of studying and traveling in Mexico. It was healing to go to Ollin gigs at 50 bucks, backyard parties in CT, Al’s Bar, the Clubhouse, Aztlan Cultural Arts Foundation, and the Peace and Justice Center where they sonically fused these different worlds that at that time seemed irreconcilable. Looking back, I am proud of my generation and I can very humbly see the vibrant marks that we have left on the political, cultural and social landscape of this city. So, it is affirming and grounding to go to an Ollin gig 13 years later, having witnessed their evolution and see them today still at it (even if they don’t get the recognition that they deserve) and pushing the work in many directions.
http://myspace.com/eastlosollin

Puppetistas in Boyle Heights

Jessica Gudiel performing her puppet show to a beautiful crowd of ninos at the Caracol Marketplace at Proyecto Jardin in Boyle Heights. This puppet show inspired b Gudiel's visit with her family in Guatemala touches on water privatization in Guatemala and housing evictions in LA through the stories of Gata Negra and Agua Azul.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=18573895

Such a Little Man

Writers Luis A. Vega and Harry Gamboa at their summer play reading at the Ford Theatre. August 26th.

"In the 1960s there was no oasis in the urban desert. The still lifes were painted among the still dead. No one cried over spilled paint. Children finger painted/pointed as their older brothers and sisters danced in the shadows of global atrocities. Napalm bombes were no match for the palms that lined the streets of L.A. Blank-faced mobs surfed on heat waves that crashed onto concrete shores. Police clubs kept the beat to a repressive rumba Love beads got lost among the hate mial. Many could not float upstream on the dry bed of the L.A. River."
(excerpt from Harry Gamboa's essay "In the City of Angels, Chameleons, and Phantoms: Asco, a Case Study of Chicano Art in Urban Tones (or Asco Was a Four-Member Word)" in the CARA catalogue. LACMA is curating a show called "Phantom Sitings" that will open in 2008. The show's name comes from Gamboa's notion of a Phantom Culture. People!!! Read the essay, do your homework. Prepare so that this "phantom culture" (whether you accept the term or not) is justly represented inside and outside of the official show.
http://www.harrygamboajr.com

More Graff/Street graphics

View of Sao Paolo and Centro

Graff

There´s a unique style of lettering in Sao Paolo that I´ve never seen anywhere else. The words are coded and their meaning only known by those who know the language. This style of lettering is all over Sao Paolo, on the top of 30 story buildings and other spaces that are really difficult to get at. Im told that these tags are done with rollers and not aerosol cans and that´´s why the straight, linearity of the style.

Collectives

Daniel from Frente do Tres de Diciembre, Jen and Rodrigo from Bijari. Went to Bijari´s awesome studio in Villa Magdalena.Bijari is a collective that~s been working for 10 years. Most of them have architectural backgrounds. They do design work to pay their bills and fund their more political interventionist work. They´ve been doing a lot of work around the issue of gentrification and use a variety of strategies go engage the public in a dialogue about this issue. They are also very conscious of the distortions around such issues are disseminated through mass media, and do much work to use mass media and find ways to insert counter messages in the media.From conversations with Daniel from Frente, Geandre and Rodrigo from Bijari, artists/activists workilng in collectives and doing interventionist work in Sao Paolo is very alive and parallel to what is going on in Buenos Aires. Some other collectives to check out are The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Contrafile

Street Graphics in SaoPaolo

Signs\flyers in Sampa 2

Sampa

Im in San Paolo. Brazil definitely ´has got some funk. The city looks lived in in a way that Buenos Aires doesn´t.Some amazing architecture. Brazilian colonial, standing next to skinny towerlike 40 story functionalist buildings next to 70~s style futuristic minimal block concrete mall structures. The first night we stayed in a funky hotel in the centro. So many people have warned us about the dangers of being a foreigner in this area at night but as far as I can see it ain´t as harsh as parts of downtown L.A. The sure don~t have the money that the Avenida Paulista has it reminds me of Broadway where the working class shops, hangs out in the day and the streets become a sort of ghosttown at night. Right next to the hotel we stayed in the first night I stumbled upon one of these dank malls filled with hip hop, reggae, skate, graffiti shops pumping out some dope music. Here´s some pics of some of the store signs. I love the black nationalist brazilian flavor.