Caballo, an active producer, MC, and journalist for various blogs, is the man behind Latino Resiste, a label that pushes the boundaries of “authenticity”, through the digital fusion between culture and sound. Recently, Caballo released a remix EP, remixed by Mike Hatsis aka Banginclude and Barber Sonora, that explores the fusion of Afro-Colombian rhythms coming from the Pacific area of Colombia, with Moombahton. Putting our boundaries of culture pride aside, I think it is helpful that New York based producers are showing interest in this music. A very long story, short- the pacific area of Colombia is one of the most baron areas of Colombia. It was the least desired part of Colombia, in regards to colonial settlement. The music itself was always living in the shadows of Cumbia and Vallenato, which comes from the Atlantic area of Colombia. Its great to finally see this beautiful music breaking out of its once refined boarders within Colombia.

As mentioned by Caballo via Latino Resiste:

Ironically this album is released while Colombian people celebrate their battle of independence, while the minorities are struggling to exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over their territory.

Fortunately we could capture, compile, and share the whole movement; as it needed to be exposed outside the south american paradise, so it could be redefined by NY’s Banginclude and Barber Sonora.
The album drops 6 Bangers which flirt from dancehall to dembow, heavy bass and latin moombahton, while keeping the Pacific heritage of Gualajo, chirimia, marimba, and Choco’s rawness.

Lyrically conscious and musically rebellious!! Latino Resiste supports Minorities as we are part of them!!

You can grab the EP here! or Listen to it here

 

 

 

 

Wow, LAMC has officially begun, and man- there is so many amazing events popping off,  so here are a few of the many that friends, family and myself are apart of in one form or another-

This Thursday 7/12/12  @Bembe, we got Subsuelo coming through the monthly party Hot Sauce, throwin by my crew Cumba Mela. Subsuelo is a party based out of LA. One of the co-founders is a good friend of my Canyon Cody, who is currently working with Nacional Records. He is also running is own home grown label, Gnawledge.

Line up: Canyon, Gozar, Ethos, Thornato, 2melo, Atropolis

 

 This Saturday 7/14/2012 @Bembe // Que Bajo!?, we have the fresh and funky Xenia Rubinos, Gozar, and Captain Planet.  Check out Xenia Rubinos bellow, looking forward to seeing her live performance!  After that I am headed to Que Bajo!? LAMC throw down- its going to be crazy.

 

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/35375248[/vimeo]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/12098591[/vimeo]

“Green Bus Tour is a growing community project out to inspire a culture of conscious living through creative collaboration and by promoting a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.  We are an ever-expanding community of artists, musicians, healers, visionary thinkers and sacred activists that co-create participatory transformational events, featuring interactive art and live performances” (Green Bus Tour)

This Saturday, May 19th 2012, Thornato, 2melo, and myself, Atropolis, aka Cumba Mela Collective, will be joining the Green Bus tour to celebrate NYC annual Dance Parade.  This eventful celebration will turn NYC into one large dancehall, displaying music and dance forms from all over the world. We will be rocking it on top of the Green Bus, so if your looking to enjoy the day and get down to some heavy global beats come on down to Manhattan and join the fun.

This is going down from 12pm-3pm, we will be starting at Broadway and working our way down to Tompkins sq.

Click here for more info

 

 

 

Listening Archive Project

The Listening Archive is a non-profit art organization that “promotes the cultural importance of music through its mission to map the diversity and generational shift of ideas in musical listening”.  One of their goals is to open a conversation amongst producers, artists, scholars,  musicologists, sound engineers, and musical enthusiasts, to explore their artistic decision, influences, and processes.

In order to document these conversations, they are hosting a fund-raiser  this Saturday, May 5th from 7:30-11:30 at the ISSUE Project Room, to help with production costs.

The participants  behind this project include Dave Portner (Animal Collective), Eric Copeland (Black Dice, etc.), Lenny Kaye, Stephin Merritt, Pete Seeger, Leon Fleisher, Jon Hendricks, Judd Greenstein, etc. They are also working with the New York Public Library as well as the Library of Congress.

The line-up lives up to the mission statement of this organization, hosting Gregory Spears, a contemporary composer who blends romanticism, minimalism, and early music; T de Long, founder of PS1’s Warm- Up Series; and then the sounds of myself, Atropolis.

I am looking forward to sharing this space with these performers, it is going to be a really great event filled with a unique selection of musical performance, food, drinks, and a silent auction.

 This Saturday (3.10.12), the Cumba Mela Collective, the crew I started running with a couple years ago is finally shaping up our act and putting together a really fun all night dance party in this old and really cool vacant bar in Long Island City. For those of you who are wondering what ever happen to Cumba Mela and that project they did in Colombia, just know things are slowly coming together, and material will be surfacing hopefully by fall of 2012.  Sometimes we need to take a step back to understand whats the next step to take when working collectively and creatively.

So if you are looking to escape the over priced NYC drinks, and really let loose, this is the spot to hit this Saturday. Take the N or Q to 39th ave QUEENSBOUND, walk east on 39th ave from 31st to 29th street. Trust me you won’t miss it.

RSVP ON FACEBOOK

$10 Cover

DJs: Atropolis, Thornato, 2melo

MCs: Brooklyn Shanti, POLO

ALSO don’t forget, SWEAT LODGE TOMORROW NIGHT at THE COVE. SPECIAL GUEST DJ RIPLEY w/ of course: Matt Shadetek, Geko Jones, and Lamin. Scroll down for more details

 

 

Xango Shola is a dear friend of mine, she is the creator of the album art for my self-titled  LP with Dutty Artz.  Among other creations, Shola is a fashion designer, event organizer, as well as an artistic leader responsible for uniting various creative communities throughout the vast and chaotic landscape of New York City.

 

This Saturday, February 25th Xango will present her Spring collection at 94 Jewel Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Doors are at 7:30pm,  show at 8:30pm. $20 entry fee.  Come early for delicious food, Kombucha by Beyond Kombucha. Beat boxing Cellist, Cello Joe will start the evening with music before the fashion show. The night will be topped off with a live Colombian folkloric group featuring live gaitas and tambor players.

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0VvWtKc_7o[/youtube]

 

For more info visit

 

NYE in NYC is known amongst club owners/promoters  as amateur night, a night of ripped off all inclusive deals,  drunkin debauchery, served with a side of nonsense.  Sorry to sound bitter, but if your coming into NYE in NYC without knowledge of the club/bar scene you can either have the worst or best night of your life.

That said, I am super excited and thankful to have been invited to perform at Dreamtime 2012; an underground warehouse event curated by friends and circling bodies of communities I’ve performed with/for throughout the years.  This event is the meeting ground for  music, fashion, healers, art galleries, organic catered food, yoga, workshops, installationsfilm screenings and more.

LOCATION/ DETAILS/ TICKETS:

It will take place throughout a 2 floor/10,000 sq ft warehouse located in Williamsburg, at 75 Frost Street (Walking distance from the Bedford L stop).  You can purchase tickets here.

For me, it is events like these that really speak to me when thinking what New York has to offer to artists, performers, and creative thinkers. NYC artistic landscape is constantly evolving and shifting throughout the boroughs and at times NYC seems to have lost its edge due to stricter policies enforced over the past 20 years.  I do feel that NYC has choked the performance space to death with rules and regulations, which has lead to underground warehouse events hosted by courageous individuals and groups of people that are willing to invest and possibly loose a few bucks if the 5-0 comes to break up the fun.

So if you are in search of something fresh, exciting and innovative; and you are looking to experience an event bought to you by local artists of all crafts, this is the place to be on New Years.

The folks responsible for this event are Unitribe, Get Your Dance On, Evolver, Beyond Kombucha,  City Life Wellness, and more.

Links to hear and see some of the performing acts of this Event:

CLICK LINK BELLOW TO HEAR SKYTREE’s LATEST ALBUM:

Crystal Consciousness (name your own price DL on Bandcamp) by Skytree

EARTHRISE ft. SRIKALA

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/24744581[/vimeo]

As an impulsively random blog reader I find myself constantly and randomly skimming, reading, and searching through my long list of bookmarked blogs. Among those blogs, I seem to always find some kind of material contributed by Caballero, whether it be music, criticism, some kind of compilation he put together, and everything in between.  He is a writer for Mad Decent, Generation Bass, Tropical bass, Hat & Hoodies, Folcore and many more. He is one of the founding members of Latino Resiste aka The Rebel Records, which has put out some tasteful compilations over the past few years. He always has something cooking thats for sure.  So keep an eye out for Mr. Caballero.

A few weeks ago he shared this track he did with Dany F, a Colombian based producer. Both being from Colombia, Caballero and Dany F fused elements of deep funky house, with champeta and some beautiful vocals.  The dog bark you hear in this track is typical champeta sound. While in Colombia I had the honor to hang with Champeta man aka Lucas Silva’s (founder of Palenque records). Lucas has his nickname for a reason. Anyway he shared with us the history behind the use of this sound. Basically,  a cheap casio keyboard was a popular instrument amongst the Afro- Colombian champeta community. This dog bark is a sample that comes with the keyboard, and it is used quite often as a solo sound that musicians rock out on throughout a champeta track.

Check out Caballo’s collaboration. And be sure to keep up on his compilation releases:

Dany F & Caballo- La Nave (only 100 DL) by caballo

Champeta-Man Interview

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byaiE5dbOPI&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

(check out Chief Boima’s post on Chamepta, he offers a mixtape the incorporates this style of music mixed with highlife, soukous, and kwaito, . He also shares some brief history behind the development of the genre)

Tomorrow night I will be performing in Boston at Beat Research, alongside of the hosts Wayne and Wax, and DJ Flack (Anthony Flackett).  It is an honor to be a guest at this event. Canyon Cody, founder of Gnawledge records, first introduced me to Wayne’s blog, Wayne and Wax, a couple years ago. From that moment onward I became a loyal reader to Wayne’s in depth ethnomusicological explorations into the contemporary global forms of music.  Truly solid material, a more academic perspective to what is going on today.

Beat Research is an exploration of sound, an emphasis on experimenting/fusing various styles.  It was started in March 2004 at the Enormous Room, which was just recently closed! It has relocated to Good Life, 28 Kingston Street- Downtown Boston. For more information visit: Beat Research.

For those who are unfamiliar with Wayne and Wax, be sure to check out his blog.

The event starts at 9pm and ends at 1am

 

 

Wizraeli, a blogger from Generation Bass sent me the link to Balkan Beat Box’s new video, Political Fuck, and after watching it I had to post it. As a long time fan of Balkan Beat Box, I am always impressed with their fresh productions and political voice.  I will never forget the first time I saw them at Central Park with Antibalas-Afrobeat about 5 years ago. They absolutely killed it.  Considering all the world wide noise thats going on today, this song is a strong representation of the global movement that needs to occur- putting the power back into the peoples hands.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYvg8RetDeg&feature=autoplay&list=ULmaXXhLmbc74&lf=mfu_in_order&playnext=4[/youtube]

 

I started teaching at Dubspot in August, thanks to Matt Shadetek. Before I began teaching I was a teacher assistant for DJ Kiva for about a month, and it was during this period that Kiva gave our class a sneak peek of his project 1000 Sunrises, which he finally put out last week.  It always awesome to hear a project during its earlier stages, and then hearing it completed.  Definitely worth checking out.

DJ Kiva will be dropping this freshness November 10th at Le Poisson Roug with Africa Hitech, and he will be rocking Webster Hall with Matt Shadetek November 12th.

The following material was pulled from the Dubspot blog, which Lamin wrote:

Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist producer and musician DJ KIVA returns with a superb new solo album 1000 Sunrises out October 18 on his  Adios Babylon imprint via Destroy All Concepts.

Navigating beauty and pain with deep, mesmeric, off-centered beats, soulful, dub-wise electronic impressions, twirling synthlines, and reinforced sub-bass, 1000 Sunrises is a perfectly balanced album. The six tracks presented here are meticulously and lovingly put together, and they move with an unhurried, reassuring pace. From the opening “Feel It,” with its extra-bouncy thump and unrelenting, catchy synthline to the meditative “Tayyib,” which maintains a solemn and contemplative mood with eerie voices but holds a propulsive groove, and the staggeringly beautiful, mind-expanding title track “1000 Sunrises,” DJ Kiva remains remarkably self-reliant and uncompromising in aesthetic throughout the entire album. Album closer “City Of The Dawn” is the uplifting, post-future, and soulful electronic music you can only get from an experienced and self-assured electronic music producer, whose style and range go far beyond arbitrary and trendy sub-genres. Electronics, melody, dub, and soul come together – same as it never was.

[youtube width=”525″ height=”355”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc4K_CdiG40[/youtube]

 

Next Friday 10.21.11, Matt Shadetek and I, Atropolis, will be holding it down at Public Assembly with an amazing line up: Trouble and Bass will be in the front room, and we will be in the back room with Toy Selectah and Mexican With Guns– these two cats will be rocking their new collaborative project Gun Selectah.

This event is presented by Dutty Artz/ Bond Music Group and Trouble & Bass


This Friday, 8.26.11, me (Atropolis) and my DJ collective Cumba Mela (Thornato and 2melo), will be holding it down at Cielo to help support an amazing project that the Ale Ale’ community has created.  The Ale’ Ale’ community is a group of drummers, artists, and talented performers that was founded by JustinJustin Toca.  This crew has been holding down a monthly at Cielo for some time now, and they are using their event to help raise money to bring a team of Capoeira instructors to teach the children of Managua, Nicaragua the values and art form of Capoeira, dance and music.  Capoeria has been a strong force throughout the favela’s of Brasil, it has served as a pathway to give children hope; it has provided them with a way of life that inspires creativity and helps prevent these children with getting involved with violence or crime.

This Friday come and join this global celebration to help support this cause.

How to Donate

Info on the event


the Dutty Artz familia keeps growing. Welcome Adam Atropolis, lifelong New Yorker and next-level beatmaker and songcrafter. Right now he’s in Colombia with his Cumba Mela crew, cooking up all sorts of very cool, very considered collaborations with local musicians (“we’re working with the king of kings of vallenato today,” begins a typical email), from the nu-skool electronic heads to, well, squeezebox lord Hugo Carlos Grando, king of the kings of vallenato.

but better to have Atropolis explain. He’s been there for two or three months now, and is coming back soon, so expect to hear a lot more from (and about) Atropolis real soon. – Jace Rupture

—–

It’s been too long since we posted anything. Just to update the world, to those who are actually reading, part of the Cumba Mela collective has been doing a mini-tour through Colombia for the past two-months. There is a lot of great footage and music to come. For those who don’t know, we are producing a compilation with artists that we are collaborating with throughout Colombia. We are also performing and producing a documentary that illustrates our journey.

Please click the following link to learn more about our project: The Colombia NYC Project

So far we have worked with a handful of artists. Once we return to the states February 1st. we will have more solid posts, previewing the work we have done here so far.

For now, I would like to share with you our experience in Palenque ; an historic village in Colombia with a massive heritage of preserved African traditions. Benkos Bioho, an escaped slave who aided many other slaves to live freely in this community, founded Palenque in the 17th century. Today, the traditional language of Palenquero can still be heard among the streets. The language was formed due to the diverse African tribes that lived together. Therefore, the native language of this area is a mix of several forms of African dialects with Spanish.

We were in Palenque during a champeta festival, which was really crazy. Since we have been in Colombia, we performed in Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Cartagena, and Barranquilla. And of all the places, we found the craziest and loudest sound system I have ever heard (no joke), in this small remote village, with wild pigs, goats, and chickens running around.

Anyway, during our 3-day visit we had the honor to be in the home of Raffael Cassini, one of the members of Sexteto Tabala. His group is regarded to be one of Colombia’s most highly regarded and important Afro-Colombia artists. It was amazing to see how such a highly regarded musician is living such a humble life-style in the quaint village of Palenque.

On the following day we had a beautiful experience with Las Alegres Ambulancias. We set up our mobile studio in their home and recorded a track with them. A remix of this track should be out hopefully in the next year. The completion of this entire project will hopefully be finished in a year.

Be sure to check out the short documentary bellow on Las Alegres Ambulances.

On our last day we worked with this young hip-hop crew. It was the first recording this 16-year olds have ever done in their life. We will be posting this track with some remixes soon, as well as some footage of the production behind this track.

Once we returned to Cartagena we met up with two more artists from Palenque. Viviano Torres, one of the fathers of Champeta, and Son Palenque. We got the honor to record with both of these artists. So stay posted to hear our collaborations with them.

As of now, we are in Taganga. Since we have been in this chilled out beach town we met up with Juan Carlos and Walter Hernandez, from Systema Solar, in their beautiful home studio. So keep posted to check out whats to come!