July 2015

Desfile de Éxitos 8/8/15

Receiving an epic death bump on last week’s Hot Latin chart was singer-songwriter-guitarist-producer-equestrian Joan Sebastian, who recently succumbed to cancer at age 64:

On Hot Latin Songs, 11 of Sebastian’s tracks enter[ed] the chart — the most concurrent titles an act has ever had on the list. And, all of them are in the top half of the tally, including four in the top 10. One of his most memorable hits, “Un Idiota,” re-enters at No. 2 powered by 1.9 million weekly streams and 2,000 digital downloads sold in the week ending July 16 (up 2,306 percent according to Nielsen Music). “Un Idiota” originally peaked at No. 22 in 2001.

Note that none of these songs showed up on the Regional Mexican Songs airplay chart; Sebastian’s songs likely received more airplay than usual, but that bump didn’t coalesce around any one song. “Un Idiota” would have been a good candidate: two verses and choruses of gentle acoustic remorse, including spoken passages and a big “te AAAAAmo” chorus, it captures Sebastian’s knack for sounding traditional and poppy at once. (Alacranes Musical’s version displays a similar knack, although, as with every duranguense song, it requires that listeners shed any preconceptions about the emotional capacity of peppy synth polkas.) Listening to the smattering of Sebastian’s re-charting songs, it’s hard not to be impressed by the breadth of his catalog — the man could create pop ballads, uptempo synthpop, pedal steel country, mariachi, and Tejano with equal authority. His songs have begun drifting off the Hot Latin chart this week, so click on a few before they’re gone.

When we last encountered Duelo’s not-at-all-sexist tale of a heartless, icy, poisonous, murdering, dream-killing mujer, I wished it sounded more venomous. I have since shed my preconceptions about form following function and direct you to “Veneno,” this week’s Pick To Click and an excellent Tejano midtempo with a killer opening riff. (I can’t be the only one who hears Def Leppard’s “Hysteria.”) Singer Oscar Ivan Trevino regrets the venom flowing through his veins but sounds resolved to suck it out. Don’t try that at home.

Other nubes include a fine Tejano ballad from Conjunto Primavera ft. Intocable’s Ricky Munoz, although singing in the vicinity of Primavera’s Tony Melendez remains a fool’s errand; a fine Tejano midtempo from Intocable themselves; and Trakalosa’s “La Revancha,” whose melodramatic eight-minute video has things to say about Fate and Class and What Makes A Man Start Fires, or at least Beef Up And Kill Other Dudes. Driven by airplay and a new video with lots of slow-motion horses, Ariel Camacho’s elegiac “Te Metiste” climbs to #2 Hot Latin. Could he score his second posthumous #1?

In sadder news, Calibre 50’s latest boring ballad, already a big hit in Mexico, enters both charts. If history is any guide we’ll be changing the station on it for a while.

These are the top 25 Hot Latin Songs and top 20 Regional Mexican Songs, courtesy Billboard, as published August 8.

1. “El Perdón” – Nicky Jam & Enrique Iglesias
2. “Te Metiste” – Ariel Camacho y Los Plebes del Rancho (#1 RegMex)
3. “Propuesta Indecente” – Romeo Santos (105 WEEKS OLD)
4. “La Gozadera” – Gente de Zona ft. Marc Anthony
5. “Ginza” – J Balvin
6. “Fanatica Sensual” – Plan B
7. “Hilito” – Romeo Santos
8. “Un Idiota” – Joan Sebastian
9. “Malditas Ganas” – El Komander (#2 RegMex)
10. “Me Gustas” – Joan Sebastian

11. “El Amor De Su Vida” – Julión Álvarez y Su Norteño Banda (#6 RegMex)
12. “25 Rosas” – Joan Sebastian
13. “Mi Vicio Mas Grande” – Banda El Recodo (#3 RegMex)
14. “Pierdo la Cabeza” – Zion & Lennox
15. “Me Sobrabas Tu” – Banda Los Recoditos (#5 RegMex)
16. “Sigueme y Te Sigo” – Daddy Yankee
17. “La Mordidita” – Ricky Martin ft. Yotuel
18. “Perdido En Tus Ojos” – Don Omar ft. Natti Natasha
19. “El Perdedor” – Joan Sebastian
20. “El Cholo” – Gerardo Ortiz (#4 RegMex)

21. “El Taxi” – Pitbull ft. Sensato & Osmani Garcia
22. “Me Voy Enamorando (Remix)” – Chino & Nacho ft. Farruko
23. “Solita” – Prince Royce
24. “Aunque Ahora Estes Con El” – Calibre 50 (#9 RegMex)
25. “Duele El Amor” – Tony Dize

¡Adios!
“Hablame de Ti” – Banda MS (#5 RegMex) (snoooooozzzzzz)
“Nota de Amor” – Wisin + Carlos Vives ft. Daddy Yankee
“Contigo” – Calibre 50 (#9 RegMex)
“Mi Verdad” – Maná ft. Shakira
“Back It Up” – Prince Royce ft. Jennifer Lopez & Pitbull
“Como Antes” – Tito “El Bambino” ft. Zion & Lennox

—————–

7. “Cuál Adiós” – La Bandononona Clave Nueva de Max Peraza
8. “Piénsalo” – Banda MS
10. “Un Desengaño” – Conjunto Primavera ft. Ricky Muñoz

11. “Bonito Y Bello” – La Septima Banda
12. “Unas Heladas” – Grupo Máximo Grado
13. “Debajo Del Sombrero” – Leandro Rios ft. Pancho Uresti
14. “La Revancha” – La Trakalosa de Monterrey
15. “Suena La Banda” – Los Tucanes de Tijuana ft. Código FN
16. “Cajita de Cartón” – Intocable
17. “Confesion” – Arrolladora
18. “Veneno” – Duelo
19. “A Lo Mejor” – Banda MS
20. “Vete Acostumbrando” – Larry Hernández

¡Adios!
“Que Tal Si Eres Tu” – Los Tigres Del Norte
“Si Te Vuelvo a Ver” – La Maquinaria Norteña
“Como Tu No Hay Dos” – Los Huracanes del Norte
“Calla y Me Besas” – Enigma Norteña

July 31, 2015 1

Los Pakines de Perú Lose Your Mind

This week’s videos presented NorteñoBlog with a tough choice: Trakalosa’s big-budget mini-novela about the perils of the accidental cocaine trade, or something that looks like Ed Wood’s cocaine-fueled fever dream? NorteñoBlog being a blog of largely puerile interests, you know which one I chose.

Los Pakines de Perú started in the ’70s as a groovy cumbia band, and have since added vocals and smoothed out their sound. Their latest video “Vacia” opens with a guy — we’ll call him Young Man of Perpetual Scowl (Scowl for short) — breaking up with a girl. Scowl tries to climb on top of her car as she drives away. This bold act fails to win her back, so he returns to his apartment, where visions of the young lady’s ghost keep penetrating his furrowed brow. As we’ve seen with other bands of a certain age, notably Los Cardenales, nobody wants to see old dudes learning the ways of love, so the video cuts back and forth between young Scowl’s torment and the seasoned band’s cheerful performance of a tropical cumbia, resplendent with coordinated supper club dance moves. In the next scene Scowl sits at his table smoking a cigarette and talking to a cheap stuffed bear who wears a “love” t-shirt. The nightmare begins: A doctor delivers a cruel diagnosis of “thumbs down.” A Rasta smokes a blunt. An exorcist violently expels some guy wearing a devil horns and a green goblin mask and playing a trumpet. Cut to the delirious band swaying away. Now we’re thrust into Scowl’s kitchen for the most garish sight of all: he and the ghost of ex-girlfriend have a cutesy encounter with frosting. I would rather have the devil inside me than frosting smeared on my face. I’m sure this betrays the privilege of the never-possessed, but there we are. Los Pakines’ founding guitarist takes a solo; the ghost couple takes selfies out on the lawn. We leave Scowl to scowl alone in the grass while the band smiles for the camera, refreshed by musical camaraderie. As J. Hoberman has written, “The objectively bad film attempts to reproduce the institutional mode of representation, but its failure to do so deforms the simplest formulae and clichés so absolutely that you barely recognize them.” As J. Hoberman has not written, VALE LA PENA. Literally.

July 29, 2015 2

Dance Komanders

Over the weekend NorteñoBlog met up with the redoubtable Bilbo’s Laptop to see Bomba Estéreo play Chicago’s Concord Music Hall. The Colombian electro-boogie band only wanders within NorteñoBlog’s purlieu insofar as the genre tag “Latin music” says anything coherent, but we’ve enjoyed them here before, and new album Amanecer (Sony) is VALE LA PENA. Carefully honing a tight set from four(!) albums worth of material, the Bombas gave us seven or eight massive jams, most of them new, and little changed from their recorded templates besides some extended intros and party-hearty crescendos at the ends. Where improvisation appeared, it was rhythmic. Bomba Estéreo prizes rhythm over all. Drummer Kike Egurrola played rock-solid beds of beats — dembow, cumbia, others I can’t name — providing a foil for the contrapuntal jabs of guitarist Julián Salazar and bassist Simón Mejía; during songs like “Somos Dos,” they were the grooviest little indie rock band on the planet. Salazar and Mejía spent roughly half their time at their electronic sound banks, keeping the details of their recordings while thickening the sound. “Soy Yo” was already the most ridonkulous song on the new album. Live, with its Colombian flute and sampled voice mixing with deep, body-shaking bass and frontwoman Liliana Saumet’s explosive gestures, it sounded like banger of the year.

Saumet’s job, at which she excels, is to cut through the bass and mobilize the crowd. She sets a good example: her unfussy dancing gave us a nice repertoire of rippling body movements, perfect for a crowded floor of hipsters holding cups of beer. That said, the main mobilizer was Saumet’s voice. Her high whine can come off as strangled on romantic melodies — even “Somos Dos,” which Saumet humbly introduced as “beautiful,” went a little long — but usually it’s a fourth rhythm instrument, punching and goading along with the others. This is true of her raps, of course, but Saumet also builds her melodies for rhythmic impact. Hearing her voice and its syncopations emerge from the electro-throb, the mass of bodies understands its implicit commands: Dance. Love. Clap. And Saumet’s most crucial, Dr. Seussian directive: Shout loud at the top of your voice! SOY YO!

On the drive down I listened again to El Komander’s latest album, Detrás Del Miedo (Twiins). It’s as effortlessly charming as you could hope, but of course that lack of effort is an effect — YOU try lassoing a four-or-five-piece band into the stop-start precision of the title song. Komander’s released about half these songs as singles already, and I’ve been skeptical of his ballads, but even they sound better in the middle of his faster tunes. The guy can write melodies! His singing has improved, too; as Komander grows into his timing, he convinces us that “El Papel Cambio” emerges straight from his mind. Él es él. Plus, any album containing both “Malditas Ganas” and “Fuga Pa’ Maza” would have to work pretty hard to avoid a big VALE LA PENA.

July 28, 2015 2

La Buena, La Mala, y Las Feas

NorteñoBlog went on vacation at the worst possible time, because while I was gone, IT ALL WENT DOWN. Not with the music. Except for El Komander (¡VALE LA PENA!), very few notable albums came out in the past few weeks; we’ll catch up with albums and singles in the coming days. No, I’m talking about las personas en las noticias:

LA BUENA:

Joan Sebastian’s discography is a mile long. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist not only wrote over a thousand songs, from ranchera to synthpop, but he wrote and produced entire albums for other singers. This is how NorteñoBlog has encountered him in the past: as the man behind Vicente Fernandez’s irresistible “Estos Celos” and Graciela Beltrán’s “Robame Un Beso.” Sebastian was famously “el poeta del pueblo,” riding his horse on stage and representing for his gente, and that meant giving the people what they wanted, mixing up regional styles with pop sounds from El Norte and acting in the novela Tú y Yo. And then there’s this delightful factoid about the man born José Manuel Figueroa:

Mr. Sebastian’s Facebook page says that he changed his name to Juan Sebastian in 1977, and that he turned the “u” in “Juan” into an “o” on the advice of his sister, a numerologist.

Maybe a commenter can explain how that math works?

I’m still catching up with him, and probably will be for a long time. RIP

Also while we were gone, Banda El Recodo became the first banda to play on Spanish TV. If I’m surprised they hadn’t done so already, does that reveal my cultural chauvinism? This is just more evidence that the term “Latin music” makes absolutely no sense as a genre, because it tells us nothing useful about the music in question, what it sounds like, or who listens to it. Surely somewhere in the world, someone is lumping together Wiley and George Jones as “English music” — but that doesn’t make the idea any less nonsense.

LA MAL:

Put on your corrido-writing pants, it’s time for an update on El Chapo!

But the music production and distribution business has changed dramatically since El Chapo’s last escape [in 2001] — meaning times have changed on the narco-corrido front, as well. Forget six months; within six hours, bands and singers had rushed songs of El Chapo’s second escape onto YouTube and FaceBook. By Sunday afternoon, bands were recording their just-written Chapo tunes in the studio, playing the songs in front of enthusiastic live audiences and releasing elaborate videos with news coverage interspersed with dramatic reenactments of the tunnel escape.

Here are Los Alegres del Barranco:

These corridos are mostly gleeful, because El Chapo is now even LARGER than larger than life, and because of the Mexican government’s uncanny resemblance to Keystone Cops.

This musical expression points bluntly to collusion and to Mexico’s failure to run a government of law and order.

As many analysts have pointed out, the escape is a major embarrassment for President Enrique Peña Nieto, who in an interview with Univision after El Chapo was captured, said that allowing another escape would be “unforgivable.”

There’s also a Frontline documentary on El Chapo, if you’re so inclined, and Cartel Land, a documentary about the autodefensas and their less defensible U.S. counterparts, the border ~~yahoos~~ militias. NorteñoBlog has seen neither, but I’ll report back.

EL FEO:

July 22, 2015 1

NorteñoBlog’s Top Singles of 2015: Abril – Junio

This quarter’s list contains fewer radio hits than last quarter’s — only four out of 11 — but don’t worry! Both radio and Youtube continue to inundate us with all kinds of great music under the banner of “regional Mexican.” Below we’ve got cumbia from the underrepresented state of Nayarit, violin-driven dance music from the underrepresented state of Oaxaca, a brass banda from Jalisco who dresses in indigenous garb and doesn’t play corridos but sometimes plays piano pop, Linda Ronstadt-style pop country from Nuevo León, Chicago’s hometown heroines Los Horóscopos hitting Mexican radio and giving everybody cuernos, aaaaand (as usual) a whole lotta Sinaloa. NorteñoBlog has apparently been sleeping on the states of Chihuahua and Zacatecas, though, as I’ve dug up zero hot new singles to represent their puro sax styles. Better luck next quarter!

1. Banda Cohuich – “Son Kora Kau Te Te Kai Nie Ni (Dialecto Huichol)” (Pegasus)
Huichol is an indigenous Mexican language, and “Son Kora” is a relentless jerking propulsion machine with brass, gang vocals, and a slippery synth line (I think).
hasn’t charted

2. Laura Denisse – “Sigo Enamorada” (Fonovisa)
Denisse has a big clear voice in the vein of Linda Ronstadt, and she’s been singing a mix of banda and pop since she was a kid in the ’90s. The big brass riff here is simply a series of repeated notes, but the players articulate and syncopate like swaggering jazz cowboys.
hasn’t charted

3. Ariel Camacho y Los Plebes Del Rancho – “Te Metiste” (Del/Sony)
This gorgeous love song sounds just as strange and sparse as “El Karma” when it plays on the radio.
U.S. radio hit

4. Grupo El Reto ft. Alta Consigna – “La Parranda Va a Empezar” (Gerencia 360/Sony)
This quartet belongs to la corriente escuela of corridistas who sing about corruption while their corrosive tubists imitate machine gun fire. Corre! The quartet Alta Consigna also has a tuba in the band, so you’ve got two tubists and a requinto (I think?) playing furiously over everything.
hasn’t charted

5. Banda Cuisillos – “Cerveza” (Musart/Balboa)
This isn’t even my favorite Cuisillos song of 2015 — that’d be this swinging piano-driven non-single — but these Jaliscanos do indulge several of NorteñoBlog’s weaknesses: two different singers trying to outdo one another in the passion department, brass alternating with guitar, and deplorable sexism.
Mexican radio hit

6. Leandro Ríos ft. Pancho Uresti – “Debajo Del Sombrero” (Remex)
This not-so-humble ranchera ballad takes as much pleasure in the act of rhyming as any random song by Sondheim. Although, going through my Spanish rudiments, I’m disappointed the song doesn’t take place in enero, and why doesn’t our heroic caballero own a perro?
U.S. and Mexican radio hit

7. Banda Costado – “Pinotepa” (Talento)
This is a way different sound than we usually enjoy here: lots of percussion, tuba bassline, wild violin, and singers. Many independent lines and very little chordal harmony, in other words.
hasn’t charted

8. Banda Culiacancito – “Lastima de Cuerpo” (Del/Sony)
If you’ve read this blog long enough, you know one of my favorite musical effects is rapid fire barrages of syllables that never seem to end and make me feel totally inadequate about my grasp of español. Prolific songwriters Geovani Cabrera (Regulo Caro, Calibre 50) y Horacio Palencia (todos) deliver. Knock yourself out with a trombone slide!
hasn’t charted

9. Los Gfez – “Hasta Tu Dedo Gordito” (Remex)
I implore you not to google images of dedos gorditos unless you get off on toe injuries. No judging. I should mention that the quartet Los Gfez, last seen joining Diego Herrera on a likable Mexican hit, start their search for the mystery dedo fast and, through the magic of time changes, find a way to get faster.
hasn’t charted

10. Noel Torres – “No Andan Cazando Venados” (Gerencia 360/Sony)
Torres’s arrangement of “Venados” sounds like he’s adapting Ariel Camacho’s unusual instrumentation. He takes stripped down passages of requinto guitar solos over lurching tuba, the same dynamic you find in Camacho’s repertoire, and alternates them with full banda sections. Horns replace rhythm guitar. The result is both serious and silly (ay, esos clarinetes), a fitting tribute that also fits with Torres’s swagger.
hasn’t charted

11. Los Horóscopos de Durango – “Estoy Con Otro En La Cama”
Mexican radio hit

10 more good ones:

Miguel – “Coffee”
AB Soto – “Cha Cha Bitch”
Sam Hunt – “House Party”
Markus Feehily – “Love Is a Drug”
Honey Cocaine – “Sundae”
Chemical Brothers ft. Q-Tip – “Go”
Brandon Flowers – “Can’t Deny My Love”
Haley Georgia – “Ridiculous”
Bobby Brackins ft. Zendaya and Jeremih – “My Jam”
Vanbot – “Seven”

July 1, 2015 2