1	Books Great summer reads from Dirty Girls to the business wisdom of billionaire Jorge Pérez. read more...
2	Film & TV How a Garcia girl made a movie; Nestor Carbonell runs Gotham in The Dark Knight. read more...
3	Music The Pinker Tones redefine Latintronica; Jorge Villamizar gets personal; and Esperanza Spalding makes her debut. read more...
4	Ask Julie Understanding the Gold Standard. read more...
5	Calendar Outstanding events around the country. read more...

Latin Forum

MUSIC

Pop’s Punk Provocateurs

By Lissette Corsa

Spain’s dynamic DJ duo The Pinker Tones blow the laces off the
Vans Warped Tour and defy (or maybe redefine) music genre.

BARCELONA DJs The Pinker Tones have just about mastered the art of the live set. Bolstered by the confidence earned by playing more than 300 shows in over 40 countries in the last two years on the strength of their second album The Million Colour Revolution, Mister Furia and Professor Manso have parlayed their zany personalities before an ever-growing audience.
In May, fans in Miami got a taste of their good vibe cocktail during the annual Transatlantic Music Festival. A mix of cool kids, middle-aged patrons, and even some seniors got their groove on under the night sky, a stone’s throw from the ocean, as Manso (Alex Llovet), Furia (Salvador Rey), and their trusty collaborator DJ Niño (known as the third Pinker Tone) funneled their irresistible sonic hodgepodge into the vortex of the moment.
Hispanic caught up with the pair backstage at the North Beach Bandshell, a few hours before their set as the festival’s closing act. The unassuming electronic music mavericks talked about their new album Wild Animals (Nacional Records), their euphoric live shows, what they think of their music being labeled Latintronica, and how they continue to break new ground. Most recently they became the first dancefloor-ready, electronic music outfit to be included in the lineup of this summer’s Vans Warped Tour, which would seem to be on the opposite end of the musical spectrum. In response to this last assumption, Manso, looking relaxed in baggy jeans, sneakers, and what looked to be an Urban Outfitters T-shirt, countered that today’s iPod generation tends not to categorize as much as previous generations insist on doing.
Truth be told, The Pinker Tones’ iconoclastic tendencies on stage and in the studio are a reflection of Catalonia itself. A resolutely nonconformist province from the time it was founded, its capital of Barcelona has long been a mainstay of innovation in art and music. By considering the most obvious examples of the city’s creative breed—architect Antoni Gaudí, and artists Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró—a context for The Pinker Tones begins to emerge.
“Barcelona functions on its own rhythm,” explains Furia, who along with Manso first registered on the radar as The Pinker Tones in 2003 with their debut, Pink Connection. “It’s apart from the music industry that’s centralized in Madrid, so there’s a sense of having nothing to lose, which is very healthy because it lends itself to great things.”
Add to this the eclecticism a burgeoning D.I.Y. scene, and it’s clear that The Pinker Tones’ genetic make-up has much to do with their genre-defying, stream of consciousness confections of pop, funk, soul, bossa, breakbeat, swing, lounge, rock and psychedelia. Live, they deliver their kaleidoscopic blend with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that is totally disarming and just right for the uninhibited act of getting down.
Come this summer, the madcap, indie electro-pop provocateurs will face the ultimate challenge as they attempt to conquer the Vans Warped Tour’s decidedly post-punk audience.
Last year, when Vans Warped Tour’s creator Kevin Lyman attended a Pinker Tones show at Austin’s SXSW music festival, he was so impressed with their performance that he questioned his perception of what punk is, concluding on his blog that the dynamic duo is as punk as the Beastie Boys.
“He explained that punk is a movement that by its very nature breaks with the establishment, and in that sense The Pinker Tones has been a band that has always gone against the current by searching for new ways of doing things,” Manso says.
Lyman invited The Pinker Tones to throw the ultimate party in 43 cities across the U.S. during this year’s Vans Warped Tour. It will be the first time in the festival’s long history that an electronic music tent will be erected. If The Pinker Tones succeed in getting the shoegazers and headbangers to shimmy—or at the very least unplug their hands from their pockets and wave them in the air like they just don’t care—it will be mission accomplished for the sonic crusaders.
Only then can The Pinker Tones claim their dancefloor revolution to be truly universal.

DISCOGRAPHY

With a wealth of singles and full albums, The Pinker Tones have given DJs all over the world plenty of incentive to spin their brand of cool.

Pink Connection, 2003

The BCN Collection, 2004

Mais Pourquoi? (Single), 2004

Viva La Jeventud (Single), 2004

The Million Colour Revolution, 2005

Sonito Total (Single), 2005

Karma Hunter (Single), 2006

Love Tape (Single), 2006

The Best of The Pinker Tones, 2006

More Colours, 2007

Wild Animals, 2008

Source: www.ThePinkerTones.com

Listen Up:

Jorge Villamizar

You know you’ve come upon a good album when it becomes the soundtrack to your life for a week, two weeks, even a month, says Jorge Villamizar. A former member of the pop group Bacilos, Villamizar believes his new self-titled solo album, which dropped in late May, will be just that.
While the songs still have twinges of the classic Villamizar sound, the album as a whole is decidedly more personal than anything fans have ever heard before from the musician. Villamizar was recovering from a tough time in his life (a divorce and the breakup of Bacilos) as he worked on the project. He described those three years as the craziest of his life.
“I started writing with a different point of view,” he says in a telephone interview from Cartagena, Colombia. “I stopped writing for other people, and I just got a little burnt out of the business. We let the Bacilos plane land slowly without any attempt to keep on flying. I knew I needed a solo career. All of those things influenced how I was feeling and thinking.”
Taking some time off to write in Paris, Villamizar says he found peace and inspiration there. He was able to meet new people, think and read a lot, which he says inevitably makes songs arise. Other times songs just welled up out of the blue in what he calls a random process.
Of the dozen songs that comprise Jorge Villamizar, his favorites, though he admits it’s hard to pick, are Enredadera and Como Vivir Asi.
“One of them is the first song I wrote for the new process and Enredadera is the last one, so it’s the beginning and an end,” he says, adding that his music was his way to cope. “I am over my divorce pain. When I wrote the first song, [that] was all I was thinking of, it was occupying the center of my emotional life.”
Though decidedly therapeutic, the album is far from a hermit’s enterprise. Villamizar collaborated with producer Richard Blair and co-wrote Dime Quien with Julieta Venegas, who also lent her vocals to the track. Bassist Chucho Merchán, guitarist Teto Ocampo and musicians Roberto Campos also provided support. With such a varied musical team on board, the result is an album that breaks from past Villamizar projects.
“I didn’t want to bring a prescription, I wanted a new recipe,” he says. “I always wanted to be in uncharted territories and try to go where no one is going.”

Esperanza Spalding

by Lissette Corsa

Esperanza Spalding is the new face of jazz—prodigious, multicultural, hip and young. As such, the 23-year-old vocalist/bassist/composer actually stands a chance at bridging the gap between jazz and her generation.
Spalding’s ascent in music began when she was just 4 years old, teaching herself to play the violin and later switching to the bass. Spalding, a Portland native, became concertmaster of her local community orchestra in her early teens and by 16 launched her career as a working musician in the city’s jazz club circuit. She graduated from Berklee College of Music at 20 and soon thereafter became the conservatory’s youngest faculty member.
Her self-titled sophomore album and international debut, Esperanza (Heads Up), melds neo-soul pop structures, straight ahead jazz, lilting Brazilian grooves and rhythmic Afro-Cuban swing. The 12 tracks include compositions she penned and others she culled from among American and Brazilian standards. The album doesn’t run short of luminaries that shared Spalding’s eclectic vision. Flamenco guitar virtuoso Niño Josele, Cuban drummer Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez, percussionist Jamey Haddad and saxophonist Donald Harrison are part of an A-list crew of session players that deftly craft a narrative from which Spalding multi-tasks—anchoring the sound with her low-pitched instrument and soaring with her multi-lingual singing and mellifluous scatting.

SoundBites

Whether live in concert, hot on the Internet or dropping a new album, the summer is rife with music. These picks are just some of the season’s best.

Wisin y Yandel
Puerto Rico’s hottest reggaeton duo takes over New York and Florida with their June concert dates on at Madison Square Garden in New York City, at Orlando, Florida’s House of Blues, and once again at Miami’s American Airlines Arena.

Ozomatli
The multi-cultural motley crew, known for their big band approach to their blend of Latin, hip-hop, world and rock, blows through no fewer than 10 cities in June and July starting in Vail, Colorado in early June.

Juan Luis Guerra
The Dominican Republic’s favorite son, Juan Luis Guerra, with his band 4.40, performs in July in Miami before heading to Orlando, Duluth, Georgia, New York City
and Santa Ynez, California.

Rodrigo y Gabriela
Ireland-based Mexican guitar heroes Rodrigo y Gabriela, who have turned classical Spanish guitar upside down with their infusion of rock, make a stop in England in June before bringing their sound stateside to Michigan and Colorado in July.

Camila
The Mexican pop rockers and new Latin Grammy Award winners jam out in June in Miami Beach, New York City, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Fresno, Irvine, Las Vegas, Tuscon and Phoenix.

Los Lonely Boys
It seems the three brothers never get tired of touring. With 12 stops starting in Monterrey, California in June and stretching through July in Colorado Springs, there will be plenty of opportunity to enjoy their brand of soulful bluesy rock with a Mexican American twist.

Title: Mar Dulce
Artist: BajoFondo Tango Club
Genre: Electro-tango
Why buy: Critically and commercially acclaimed, the perfect teaser to their summer show dates.

Title: The Rough Guide to Brazilian Street Party
Artist: Various
Genre: Various
Why Buy: Capture the sounds of samba to reggae to funk Brazilian style in one CD.

Title: Encanto
Artist: Sergio Mendes
Genre: Samba/Covers
Why Buy: Brazil’s answer to Madonna, Mendes can’t help but reinvent himself and keeps getting better with age.

Title: Fuerza
Artist: Alejandra Guzman
Genre: Rock en Español
Why Buy: The Mexican rockera’s voice is at its deep and sultry best.

Title: Haiku
Artist: Yusa
Genre: Cuban Soul/Funk
Why Buy: Hear firsthand this musical meld of traditional Cuban song and hip, funk styling.

Title: Complices
Artist: Luis Miguel
Genre: Spanish pop/Mariachi
Why Buy: You can never get enough of this iconic interpreter.

Title: A Man and His Music
Artist: Eddie Palmieri
Genre: Salsa
Why Buy: Palmieri keeps fanning the flames of Fania fame.

Title: MTV Unplugged
Artist: Julieta Venegas
Genre: Rock en Español
Why Buy: Venegas rock/pop rhythms lend themselves perfectly to acoustic.