More info: nacionalrecords.com/blog/?p=952

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Though the self-professed “geek” spends hours, days even, in his “lab,” (the studio), Pernett took a short break to tell us how Colombia’s Caribbean coast has, and always will be, a part of him.

“My father taught me that if I wanted to make music enjoyable I had to find a way to have it mimic the feeling of being on the beach,” said the native Barranquillero, who now calls the western Colombian city of Cali home.

“We all love the sea and what it produces in us, and I’ve built my sound based upon that feeling,” he said. “The sea is huge and has many possibilities — endless, I think, and I hope its influence will stay with me until the end of my career.”

We’re willing to bet the end of Pernett’s career is a long way off, as all those hours spent in his lab are resulting in his soon-to-be-released fifth album, The Caribbean Computer (If you’re getting Radiohead vibes here, think deeper. Or better yet, read the story about how part one of this new album came to be).

The first single he produced for the record, “Cumbia Computer,” is an ode to his beloved costa:

Caribe suena mi canto, caribe me condición
Caribe mi pensamiento, caribe hasta la razón.

It features Pernett on vocals along with a host of instruments heard in folkloric Colombian music: the gaita flute, maracas, the guache and bass drums, and the keyboard.

A deep thinker, Pernett often posts pensive status messages on his Facebook page. Just the other day, he wrote that he considers himself to be much “more than just a DJ.” He elaborated on that status with Sounds and Colours:

“As things change, as phones and other devices have been advanced to provide more services, so, too, should artists. Technology allows us to interact deeper with people and expand our limits every day,” he said.

Pernett, whose family has organized one of the most popular comparsas (a folkloric dance group and band – watch here) in the carnival of Barranquilla for more than 20 years, grew up watching tonnes of live music.

“Shows in Colombia are just a bunch of bands,” he said. “I feel shows can be further enriched by using visual imagery, technology and sound contributed by Caribbean culture.”

Next up for Pernett: Performances in Bogotá on March 1st at the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo along with electro cumbia sensation, Sidestepper http://www.teatromayor.com/?pagina=obra&id=172, and on March 2nd at Teatro Metro with fellow costeños, Systema Solar. See all upcoming shows at hpernett.net/conciertos-2

Find out more about Pernett at hpernett.net

And watch the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPGk5I5_Mco

From Friday the 2nd to Sunday the 25th of March, there will be a range of short, feature and documentary films showing  as well as guest appearances and Q&As with some of the films’ directors and an exhibition from the the Mexican artist, Minerva Cuevas, showing her 2008 film, Landings, as well as conceptual collages which examine man’s ever-complicating relationship to nature.

Along with the best of new Spanish films —including Pa Negre, the first Catalan-language film to win the Best Film Goya— there is a large Latin American contingent which will be reviewed by us in the coming weeks in the run up to the festival.

Particular ones to look out for are Bonsái from the ¡Viva! 2011 veteran, Cristián Jiménez, and the Colombian animation, Pequeñas Voces, which uses children’s original drawings to tell a tale of the victims of war. Fortunately, there is some light relief in the Mexican comedy, Acorazado, which sounds like it could’ve been made by Alan Bleasdale, if only he was born nearer the Caribbean.

Here is a list of the Latin American films which will feature at the festival (in addition to the other Spanish language films) and be reviewed here on Sounds and Colours, full information for the festival can be found here, and you can start to book your tickets from the 9^th of February.

LATIN AMERICAN FILM PROGRAMME

2 – 25 March 2012

Acorazado (Dir Álvaro Curiel)

In the Mexican city of Veracruz, failed trade unionist Silverio is seen by his friends as a figure of fun whose earnest yet ultimately senseless public political speeches have made him a local laughing stock. Disheartened by his life and egged on by his drinking buddies, Silverio sets sail for Florida on a home-made raft in search of the American Dream.  His plan to claim asylum in the US, under the guise of a Cuban national fleeing Castro’s regime, backfires when a storm blows the hapless hero off course.

Zero Hour (Dir Diego Velasco)

When outlaw Parca takes a bleeding and pregnant girl to the local public hospital he finds it closed due to a strike. His solution is to rally his gun toting gang and head for another, this time private, hospital that services the idle rich. Once there he takes both the doctors and their wealthy patients hostage as a tense political siege ensues. Starring the unlikely named Zapata 666 as Parca, this looks to be an unrelentingly fast paced Venezuelan thriller.

The Prize (Dir Paula Markovitch)

Fearing the oppressive government forces in 1970s Argentina, seven-year-old Ceci and her mother move to a new town where no-one knows them. Life in their isolated, ramshackle hut on the windswept Argentine coast is difficult for the young Ceci and she struggles to keep family secrets that she doesn’t fully comprehend. A beautifully shot directorial debut from Mexico-based Argentinean Markovitch, co-writer of Duck Season.

Hermano (Dir Marcel Rasquin)

Venezuelan teenagers Daniel and Julio share a love of football and when their talent and passion for the game offers them a way out of the slums the two boys must pull together to succeed.

Pequeñas Voces (Dirs Jairo Carrillo, Óscar Andrade) UK Premiere

An enchanting and deeply moving animated documentary based on interviews with children displaced by the violence in rural Colombia. Using their original cartoons, the film brings to life four 8-13 year olds’ hopes and dreams with poignant naivety. The award-winning Colombian animator and director Jairo Carillo’s diverse experience includes leading an interactive digital animation project with the London Symphony Orchestra.

The Invisible Eye (Dir Diego Lerman)

Buenos Aires, March 1982. A zealous young teaching assistant trains an ever-vigilant watchful eye over her pupils as she endeavours to uphold the strict code of conduct at the elite Colegio Nacional. Gradually the combination of sexual repression and obsessive surveillance create a claustrophobic atmosphere that threatens to combust. Lerman’s film is an atmospheric adaptation of Martín Kohan’s novel Ciencias Morales, a moral fable set in the final year of the Argentine dictatorship, which is the implied reality beyond the high school walls.

Bad Intentions (Dir Rosario Garcia-Montero)

Peru, 1982. Cayetana, a nine-year-old girl, grows up in a privileged household in Lima, where she is raised by maids. Her mother is abroad for several months with her stepfather, studying. Finally, the couple returns and Cayetana learns that her mother is pregnant. Her vivid imaginary world, in which she had secluded herself, collapses, and she becomes convinced she will die the day her brother is born.

Bonsái (Dir Cristián Jiménez)

After the success of Ilusiones Ópticas at last year’s ¡Viva!, the Chilean director returns with his second feature film. Julio meets with Gazmuri, an established writer who needs someone to type up the manuscript of his latest novel. He ends up not getting the job. Instead of confessing this to Blanca – his neighbour and lover – he decides to make-believe he is still transcribing Gazmuri’s presumed novel, which he is actually writing himself. In need of a plot, Julio turns to the romance he had eight years earlier with Emilia when both were studying.

More information at cornerhouse.org/viva2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmNZSDbxtqI

Video produced by Ana Olivia Godoy

Concert Produced by 2 For The Road Productions

Fruko is just one of the big names in Colombian music that Quantic and Mario invited to this project. The idea was to make an album of “tropical” Colombian music, playing styles such as porro, currulao, banda, chirimía and cumbia, styles that have become unpopular among the majority of the Colombian population who are drawn towards Western music. Ondatrópica is the chance to change that, uniting the old guard of Colombian music with the new generation, and showing all that this music is vital.

It could be easy then to make a comparison with Buena Vista Social Club, yet Mario swears this project has a different focus: “it’s an exchange between old and new musicians which is not what Buena Vista was about.” It seems the older musicians involved – 10 of who were over 70 years old – were willing to do anything to get involved. No-one that was invited turned down their invitation; Juando Valdez came straight from three days in hospital to play his part. Even musicians who lived nearby decided to pop in and contribute after hearing that something special was happening.

During the sessions, which lasted for three weeks in January, 34 tracks were recorded, a mixture of new compositions from Quantic and Mario, along with classic tracks by the musicians involved, and new tracks that were composed in the studio or once the musicians realised they had a chance to record original material with a top band. That band included notable Colombian musicians such as Aníbal Velasquez, Michi Sarmiento, Wilson Viveros, Freddy Colorado and Jorge Gaviria, as well as Mario Rincon, one of the original engineers/producers at Discos Fuentes. In addition, there was Alfredito Linares, a Peruvian pianist known as one of salsa’s true greats.

Among the new generation were members of Frente Cumbiero, the group led by Mario that has become one of the leading lights of Bogotá’s alternative music scene. Many of Quantic’s Combo Bárbaro also participated in the recording with singer Nidia Góngora bringing her own particular style from Colombia’s Pacific Coast. Perhaps though the biggest name from the current crop of musicians to participate was one of the few not to hail from Colombia, that being Ana Tijoux, the Chilean MC whose new album La Bala has been getting rave reviews across the board.

The general consensus from everyone around the project is that “history” has been made. If there’s one aspect of the Buena Vista project that Ondatrópica would like to be compared to, it will surely be it’s success, and from the music that I heard and that everyone is buzzing about, that may not be too lofty an ambition. Currently there are no details of when the album will be released, though it should be in the first half of 2012.

Ondatrópica will also become a live concert, trimming down the musicians involved to a group of 11 or 12 that will be known as Los Irreales de Ondatrópica. They will be playing a number of concerts in Colombia before heading to London for the Olympics, where they will be part of the River of Music Festival on July 21st/22nd. Make sure you don’t miss it!

There is currently an abundance of great information on the project at ondatropica.com. At the moment this is in Spanish but an English version will soon be launched.

Here are some of the photos from the sessions, taken by B+

See all the photos at flickr.com/photos/ondatropica

In the end the show focused mainly on music from Colombia, Brazil and Chile. We had to cut a few songs as we ran out of time and unfortunately it happened that those songs were from some great artists in Uruguay, Peru and Ecuador. However, this just gives us another reason to takeover the show again in the future!

The songs featured were by artists including El Sueño de la Casa Propia, Conector, Bixiga 70, Criolo, Ekundayo, Ana Tijoux, Las Pirañas, Alcolyrikoz, Pedro Piedra, Passo Torto, Mucho Indio, Fauna and Astro.

You can listen to the podcast at soasradio.org/content/movimientos-%E2%80%93-sounds-and-colours-takeover

Direct Download for the podcast is here

Download

For more from Conector:
soundcloud.com/conector-1
facebook.com/conectormusica

Skip a beat to 2012 and Ana Tijoux has a new album. La Bala, or “The Bullet” is Ana’s shot at the power-hungry leaders of an inequitable society. Whereas her first album was a poetic journey that showed off her talents as an MC, La Bala is a political statement that combines tones of marching anthems and reflective poems.

The album commences with the title track, set to a military-style snare drum beat. I picture myself painting “La Educación es una Derecha” on my Chilean flag as I prepare for a world-famous Chilean student protest. As I awake the next morning, and round up my group of young social activists, the song, “Shock” is played on repeat, hanging on every word, for today is the day Ana, myself, and the thousands of teenage students will change political and social structures.

The emotion and anger that consumes Tijoux as she begins this album is a testament to her passion for her music as a means for social change. This continues on “Desclasificado”, a comment on the classist stereotypes that harm society and gaps in economic levels that plague a rapidly growing country.

However, the entire album is not political. In fact, the second half of the album shines a light on Tijoux’s brighter side. Jazz, soul and R&B offer downtempo melodies for her unwinding, feminine side. “Sacar la Voz” featuring Jorge Drexler presents a refreshing, singing voice to complement Ana’s smooth rhymes. “Quizas” featuring Mónica Blaire flows into poetry about an unsure path where our futures will take us, and the relationships we hold important to one another.

Ana Tijoux does a great job in showcasing many different styles in one album as some lyricists realise in a career.  La Bala continues to bounce from hardcore rap with scratches and rips to soft verses draped over piano, guitar, and psychedelic riffs. Themes of love, struggle, outrage, and voice unite the album as Ana Tijoux has created a work of art that unifies a country and a local movement. 

Though singing in Spanish, her ideas are portrayed through raw emotion and the flow of the tracks, giving the music international appeal. In a period of great social uprising and clash, Ana’s hits will be played from the streets of Santiago de Chile to Cairo, Egypt and even possibly Occupy Wall Street NY.

La Bala has been available in Chile and South America since last year but is released in the US and UK on January 31^st 2012.

You can check out more Ana Tijoux on her website and purchase La Bala on Amazon and iTunes

Download “La Bala”, the lead track from the album below:

Listen to all of Chico Unicornio’s recent releases at chicounicornio.bandcamp.com

It would be illegal under Ecuadorian law for the appellate court to grant Chevron’s unusual and unprecedented request to waive the bond requirement, said Pablo Fajardo, the lead attorney for the indigenous and farmer communities who brought suit against the oil giant for the dumping of billions of gallons of toxic waste into the waterways used by several indigenous groups and farmer communities.

“Chevron has every right under the law to seek an extraordinary appeal to the highest court as long as it can cite a proper legal basis,” said Fajardo. “But Chevron is yet again seeking a special exemption under Ecuadorian law when it claims the bond requirement should not apply to it, while it applies to every other litigant in the country.”

“Chevron behaves in Ecuador as if it is above the law while thousands of people continue to suffer the devastating effects of the company’s toxic contamination,” said Fajardo. “This abuse of the judicial process must end.”

For execution of a court judgment in Ecuador to be suspended pending appeal to the highest court – called the National Court of Justice – the losing party must post a bond that is usually calculated at roughly 8% of the amount of damages awarded (roughly $1.5 billion in this case). Chevron is seeking to have enforcement suspended even without posting a bond even though the indigenous and farmer communities continue to suffer grave health effects engendered by the company’s delaying tactics, said Fajardo.

Karen Hinton, the US spokesperson for the Ecuadorians, said in a statement that “for almost two decades, Chevron has stood in the way of a comprehensive cleanup of billions of gallons of crude oil and toxic waste water it deliberately dumped into the pristine rainforest of Ecuador.”

“Thousands of people have died or suffered from illnesses as Chevron and its army of lawyers have waged a campaign to distract attention from the overwhelming scientific evidence against the company,” said Hinton. “Chevron has always believed that Ecuador’s many laws prohibiting environmental contamination should not apply to its misconduct.”

The bond requirement, typical in countries around the world including the US, is intended to protect the winning side from unnecessary delays during appellate review. Ecuador’s first-level appellate court already affirmed the trial court judgment that the company is required to pay $18 billion for a clean-up, a relatively modest amount compared to BP’s estimated $60 billion liability for the smaller Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Fajardo also said that an arbitral order cited by Chevron as justification for its request for a bond waiver is not binding on the rainforest communities as they are not a party to that proceeding, which is held in secret pursuant to a US-Ecuador investment treaty.

In any event, the arbitral panel never ordered- and under the law cannot order – that Ecuador’s courts take steps that would “clearly violate” Ecuador’s Constitution and international treaties binding the government to protect the fundamental human rights of its citizens, including the right to life and the right to seek legal redress in national courts, said Fajardo. Further, the arbitral panel has never even held an evidentiary hearing on Chevron’s claims that a remediation contract with Ecuador’s government released it from liability.

“We believe Chevron clearly is misinterpreting the scope of authority of the arbitration,” he added.

“We want to reiterate that Chevron has every right to appeal to Ecuador’s National Court of Justice, but it has no right to special treatment during the pendency of the appeal,” Fajardo added.

The trial court decision, issued in February 2011, found that Chevron systematically dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon, poisoning waterways that local inhabitants use for drinking water and causing increased cancer rates. Damages were set at $18 billion. In 2002, the case was shifted from US federal court to Ecuador at Chevron’s request.

The trial court in Ecuador also repeatedly sanctioned Chevron’s legal team for filing frivolous motions intended to delay the proceedings, and for threatening a judge with jail if he did not rule in favour of the company. These actions led to a punitive damages award that accounts for roughly half of the total judgment.

Chevron has roughly two more weeks under Ecuadorian law to determine if it will publicly apologize for its misconduct, which would allow it to eliminate the punitive damages component of the award.

As support for the contention that Chevron believes it does have to adhere to the law in Ecuador, Hinton cited a comment in a 60 Minutes interview where Chevron attorney Silvia Garrigo – pressed as to why the company said it would never pay any adverse judgment in Ecuador – said: “We don’t believe we should be in any court, much less the courts of Ecuador.”

The 188-page trial court judgment is undergirded by a wide body of scientific and testimonial evidence submitted during eight years of proceedings that prove Chevron designed a system of oil extraction that deliberately discharged toxic oil waste into the environment to keep production costs to a minimum.

Chevron also has been heavily criticised for trying to defraud the Ecuador court and sabotage the proceedings.

In briefs submitted to US and Ecuadorian courts, the rainforest communities submitted evidence that Chevron technicians staked out “clean” spots at contaminated well sites to test prior to court-supervised judicial inspections; sent dirty soil samples to a secret lab to prevent their disclosure to the court; and doctored a “judicial playbook” document so two academic experts in the US would endorse the company’s misleading sampling protocol, among other charges.

A separate ruling by a New York federal appellate court marks Chevron’s third consecutive legal setback in its effort to block enforcement of the Ecuador judgment.

In September, a federal appellate panel blocked Chevron’s attempt to seek an unprecedented worldwide injunction blocking enforcement. In January, a federal district court judge denied Chevron’s illegal attempt to freeze the assets of the plaintiffs. And on January 3rd, Ecuador’s first-level appellate court confirmed the validity of the trial court judgment.

Esperando el Tsunami documents TransFolk duo Lulacruza’s journey across Colombia with the celebrated independent film-maker Vincent Moon. The idea behind their journey was to discover Colombia, and especially the music, documenting that experience in the form of a new album and a film that they composed and created on the road.

The screening will be complemented by performances from special guest musicians (TBA).

WHAT: Movimientos and Sounds and Colours Presents Esperando el Tsunami
WHEN: Tuesday 28th February, Film at 7.30pm, Live Music at 9pm
WHERE: Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA
TICKETS: £5 adv / £7 door – click here to buy tickets

One of the most important urban centers on Colombia’s coast, Barranquilla is a vibrant port city whose carnival embraces folkloric and popular culture with a variety of multiethnic music from the entire region. And in that world famous music — cumbia, salsa, porro and more — you’ll find plenty of references to carnival.

Though its very early history is a bit fuzzy, carnivals in Colombia — a descendant of the festivals of Spain — sprang up in Cartagena, Bogotá and Popayán more than a century ago. The raucous celebrations allowed people from all classes to let loose. This didn’t sit well with colonial authorities, which banished them from the major power centers, in turn, shifting them to small villages far from the ruling elites. A then much smaller Barranquilla and fellow villages along the Magdalena River took the tradition and ran with it — uninterrupted party style. And it’s been going on, growing and evolving ever since.

Officially, Los Carnavales kick off on January 20th with the “pre-carnival” Lectura de Bando, which features a traditional reading of the declaration of carnival. The party continues every weekend and, as residents will tell you, the electricity of carnival is ever present in the atmosphere. Parties are planned, tickets are sold and the annual theme begins popping up in songs, advertisements, merchandise and even candy.

Subsequent weekend events leading up to carnival are Toma de la Cuidad, the crowning of the Carnival Queen and “El Rey Momo,” the children’s Carnival procession and the gay parade. This leads to one of the most important pre-carnival events on the Friday before Ash Wednesday — La Guacherna, a night parade of dances and masquerades.

Carnival Saturday, perhaps the most well-attended and significant of the four-day event, sees the daylong Batalla de Flores (Battle of Flowers), a grand parade of wondrous floats and hundreds of dance troupes, musical acts and elaborate and simple, yet clever, costumes.

Sunday is for “the Great Parade.” Monday features a special parade for the dance troupes and later, the Orchestra Festival with hundreds of Caribbean and Latin bands. Tuesday signals the end of the carnival, announced by the burial of “Joselito Carvajal”, who is mourned by everyone in grand (and comedic) fashion at a parade at Plaza de la Paz. But don’t mourn for too long, as Joselito will overcome his “death by exhaustion and hangover” and rise again on the following carnival Saturday.

Many rites from Spain’s Saturnalia, which were practiced to bring fertility and ward off evil, can be witnessed throughout carnival. But like everything else in the celebration, Colombians throwing flour, water and eggs, and banging pots and pans are not warding off anything. They are simply having fun. Carnival is chock full of enjoyment and solace through music and dance. “What distinguishes the Carnival of Barranquilla from others in Latin America is the variety of cultural expressions that are part of the party, resulting from the mixture of ethnic Indian, African and Spanish cultures,” says Carla Celeia, Director of the carnival’s foundation.

The dances, which draw from African and Amerindian cultures, are: La Cumbia, El Garabato, El Son de Negro, El Congo, El Mapale, El Caiman, El Paloteo, El Gusano, Las Farotas, De Relacion and Las Pilanderas.

Just as there are many dances, there are a variety of costumes. Among them, la cumbiambera, decked out in a vast and flowing skirt trimmed with yards of lace and a close-fitting bodice squeezing the waist, which helps emphasize hip movement. Cumbiamberos, sporting white shirts and pants with a red or yellow handkerchief, court the defiant – yet flirty – cumbiambera in this beautiful dance.

Another very popular costume which can also be found on vehicles and other objects (such as a mailboxes and garbage cans) is La Marimonda, a hooded figure with a long nose and floppy ears meant to emulate or elephant’s trunk or whatever comes to the onlooker’s mind.

The El Congo costume, with its tall colorful hat, is an ode to the slaves who gathered in Cabildos (slave associations that elected their own carnival queen) in the early carnival of Colombia. Other costumes are: El garabato, El Africano, Dracula, El torito, El Monocuco, Los Cabezones, Las Muñeconas, and El Tigrillo.

Samper Martinez said it best: “Carnival occupies a place of honour, an invaluable opportunity to witness in all its splendor, the Caribbean people’s way of being, thinking, behaving and feeling.”

Older Costeños will tell you carnival isn’t the same because of the newer music (yes, reggaeton, hip hop and pop artists can be found eliciting loud cheers when they pass by on those parade floats), its commercialisation and blatant marketing (sponsors are splattered all over the place). Yet they find themselves at carnival events each year. Next thing you know, they’re shaking their shoulders to the infectious rhythm of los tambores. For while carnival is in the air, rhythm invades and it’s nearly impossible to resist.

Barranquilla Carnival Gallery

Here are some photos from Barranquilla Carnival in 2011, just to whet your appetite (photos by Gina Vergel)

Girl in carnival costume dances in Joselito’s funeral parade

A young cumbiambera

Children, throwing maizena (corn flour) on each other

Joselito is paraded down la via 40 (a street in Barranquilla)

Cumbiamberos dance on la via 40

A young princess on one of the grand floats (carrosas) in the Batalla de Flores (Battle of Flowers)

A marimonda doll adorns a car. This popular carnival ‘character’ originated in Barranquilla

Man in drag. Carnival is a time for fun and this includes inappropriate skits and costumes