Goodbye to 2011, goodbye to a legend.

Cesaria Evora passed away yesterday. The singer from the West African island nation of Cape Verde lived a hard-drinking life in a tiny port town, until her discovery by a French record producer in 1988 – she was already in her late 40s – led to unlikely international stardom. RIP.

Holy Mountain: The weird, wired world of Alejandro Jodorowsky

It is an odd feeling when you live your whole life without ever noticing something – and then suddenly, it is everywhere. The Holy Mountain is a film from 1973, but I only became aware of its existence this week. I noticed it last week in a DVD store in my local mall and I was intrigued. Its not the kind of thing you expect to find in a middle of the road residential shopping centre in this, the  least bohemian of cities.

A few days later, a friend commented about the movie on Facebook.

Another friend, it turned out, had seen the film too and recommended it to me.

By now, I had decided that I had to watch it.

The film was directed by an avant-garde Chilean director of Jewish-Ukrainian descent, Alejandro Jodorowsky. He was a fascinating figure – a Paris-based surrealist who believed in the “over-conscious” (rather than the unconscious) which was formed in each soul by the layers of deceased ancestors (he believed).

This film, a counterculture masterwork, was funded by a million dollar grant from John Lennon (a fan) and filmed in Mexico. It followed his first major work, a Western (which I have yet to see) called ‘The Mole” about an outlaw who (wikipedia says) ” is killed … and resurrected to live within a community of deformed people who are trapped inside a mountain cave.”

Jodorowsky’s next work was to have been “Dune” featuring Salvador Dali as the Emperor, Orson Welles as the villain and designed by HR Geiger, the Swiss artist who set-designed “Alien”. Sadly the project imploded after millions had been spent and not a single frame shot, and the only films the director has made since are mostly considered  inconsequential minor works.

Instead he has put out an acclaimed series of sci-fi comic books and hosts free psychic workshops in Paris cafes.

Marriage material

 

Marlon Teixeira for Mexican Vogue

New musical crush

 

I just discovered Barbara Eugenia (via her track on the free-to-download “New Sound of Sao Paulo” album.

She really stands out. Much as I love MPB (musica popular brasileira), it can get a bit same-same; female artists all have similar (lovely) crystalline voices and gentle samba-ish rhythms and often cover the same canon of 1970s Brazilian songs. So it is really fresh to hear Barbara mix it up with an almost Amy Winehouse-ish/Janelle Monae 1960s sound, a pronounced (and effective) vintage store hipster look, and occassionally English lyrics. And of course, she is gorgeous.

What is with all the smoking though?

… and more Barbara.

Another Melbourne chance missed…

I was walking down Gertrude St for probably my last time today, when I passed a really cute little cafe. It was closed. Still, I was inspired to google it, thinking it might come in handy as a venue for a super-last-minute get-together, only to find that it closes at 4pm daily which rules me out.

I also discovered that “Sonnida” is run by a Colombian couple and specialises in arepas, continuing Australia’s recent vogueish infatuation with Latin cooking.

Here are some pictures I stole off other people’s blogs.

Apparently it does a great breakfast. Cool website here.

Chile celebrates 200 years of independence – at Sandown Park.

Little noticed in Australia, 2010 has been a banner year for much of the developing world. Half of Africa celebrated (or not) the fiftieth anniversary of independence - Cameroon, Togo, Mali, Senegal, Madagascar, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cote d’lvoire, Chad, Central African Republic, Congo, Gabon, Mauritania and regional giant Nigeria all held celebrations this year.

China had its expo.

And meanwhile, a good many Latin American countries were marking the bicentenary of their freedom from Spain. Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela all remembered their independence (or at least the start of the struggle for it) in 1810.

Chile too, fresh from the worldwide explosion of joy over its freed miners, is celebrating its 200th year as a nation, and in Melbourne the Chilean community is planning its largest ever cultural event. The Chileans make up the city’s largest Hispanic group, stemming from refugees in the 1970s, and some 25,000 people are expected to attend the Chilean and Latin American Fiesta at Springvale Community Centre on November 18th. I would go too – except that I would be on public transport and don’t really want to hanging around train stations at the ghettoish outer suburban location, (the local station Sandown Park is where revheads rioted earlier this year after a promised car race was cancelled, and the next stop Noble Park also has a bad reputation for bashings).

Brazil: Same same but different?

Meanwhile, Brazil forges along its path to the glorious future of which it has always dreamed.  This year, both Australia and Brazil both got their first female leaders, and both enduring unusually drawn-out election campaigns to get there. But in the end Dilma Rousseff triumphed in this week’s second round of the Presidential elections and now moves into Brasilia’s Palácio da Alvorada, vowing to uphold the policies of the hugely popular and – by any measure – successful President Lula. Still, his are big shoes to fill.

Rouseff is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant who grew up in Belo Horizonte, and was tortured by the military police in the 1970s as a Marxist student activist, before earning her reputation as a level-headed technocrat.

Good luck to her, and Brazil!

New directions in Japanese pop

After last year’s Korean phase, I seem to have returned a bit to listening to Japanese music; the sombre latenight jazz of Maki Asagawa (below), the funky, funny hip hop of Chinza Dopeness, (check his superb website here). And I made a few other discoveries too.

Tomari is an Osaka duo who have created a lovely album of retro throwback pop. Their quavering vocals, acoustic guitars and accordians recall the ballads of the 1930s and ’40s. The Japan Times, in its review, asked “is it too early to call this the best early Showa era record of 2010?” (a reference to the reign of Emperor Showa from 1926 to 1989).

Listen here

Meanwhile, one of J-pop’s enduring cult figures, Nomiya Maki (formerly of the Pizzicato 5) has a new album out too, pushing her music in another, different yet interesting direction. The star of the 1990s “Shibuya” music scene she has teamed up with Nikkei Brazilian singer Fernanda Takai (who is wonderful!!!!!!) for an album of duets recorded on both sides of the Pacific (and the Andes). It is called Maki Takai “No Jetlag”.

MORE HERE

Julieta Venegas – Bien o Mal

Julieta Venegas came to my attention through my friend Junior in Rio, after she had a hit there with her lovely Marisa Monte duet “illusion”. And now she is back, with a typically left-of-centre little melody and a bizarre, cute and funny clip.

Latin Chilli, Indonesian Peppers

Saturday was the Johnson Street Fiesta, Melbourne’s annual Hispanic community street party. I had been warned by a Latin-lovin’ friend that the event was disappointing and I should go with lowered expectations; and I can kind of see what she meant. I didn’t exactly feel like I’d stepped into Havana.

But taking it for what it was – a medium-sized community event on a Melbourne street – I enjoyed it. It was interesting to be in a Melbourne where suddenly Spanish was the main foreign language (I wonder what area of the city these Latin American and Spanish people live in?)

The event was centred heavily around food – roasted beef on skewers, paella, churros, chicken hearts, arepitas … I hung around for a bit with my friends Eric and Linda, there were upscale local residents walking their dogs through the thick crowds, smoke and beer, plenty of Asian and black as well as Latin faces, and some cheesy touches like sombreros and feathered samba girls. At one end of the street was a stage with salsa lessons and reggaeton, although by late afternoon a torrential rain had started and people were fleeing from the scene, except for a few impressive die-hard dancing in the rain.

Here is the Venezuelan breakfast, with which I had started the day; black beans, scrambled eggs with onion and tomato, cheese and arepita bread;

As I scurried back through the city, the rain and wind whipping up more and more, I sought shelter in the cosy little laneway-turned-undercover-restaurant-strip next to the old Post Office. There, in the warm, cosy gloom, a little concert was underway; a few hundred Indonesian people had gathered for a community celebration, to eat and drink and watch a Red Hot Chilli Peppers cover band. They were really good!

The stealthy South American invasion continues

 

Melbourne’s Latin community continue to grow, by stealth. Its expansion is being powered not by immigrants, but by overseas students from countries like Argentina, Brazil and especially Colombia, coming to the country to work and study for a year or two.

Already you hear more Spanish (and sometimes, Portuguese) on inner city streets and anecdotally at least, the cleaners in many city tower blocks now come as often from Bogota as from Bangalore ( or Brisbane).

My first attempt at “eating Latin” was foiled when the venue I had been recommended turned out be a regular city greasy spoon diner that ran occasional Colombian events, rather than the Colombian cafe I had been promised. But the other day, up on the “English language school” end of Lonsdale Street I noticed this sign at “El Gran”cafe – that’s more like it!

This looked fun too:

Hit!

Shakira La Loba Estreno 2009

If there is any justice in the world.

Latin American Urban Art

Artist Santiago Garcia Pilotto’s cityscape of Buenos Aires, currently my PC screen’s wallpaper…and I love it.

Above: artwork by Ameva, from Chile.

Below: striking new “wallpaper  installations” by French artist JR. Having previously worked in Kenya, Cambodia and France, he has now descended on Rio for his largest project yet; wallpapering eyes on the rickety buildings of the hillside slums, or favelas, so that they peer down over the city. He has also plastered local residents’ faces over the iconic Aqueduct of Lapa (of course I was there last year and must’ve just missed the beginning of the project ) and the French-Brazilian Cultural Centre downtown. Cool stuff.

 

Amazingly cool viral marketing campaign for new Shakira single

She Wolf Claims Second Victim in Brussels

The single “She Wolf” will be released soon!

New World Order

Last weekend it was grey and rainy – hardly beach weather. But none the lessI hung out for a bit in the yuppie/druggie/backpacker/Jewish/Slavic seaside suburb of St Kilda. And I was interested to see – for the first time in Australia – someone juggling at a set of traffic lights. Until now I had only seen it in Latin countries. I remember being shocked and surprised by it in Chile just last year. Perhaps the craze is hitting Oz? If so, St Kilda would be the place. It happened on the same block as a Russian internet cafe, an Indian grocery store, an Israeli face and this poster for an Aramaic and Hebrew  hip hop concert. An Aramaiac language rapper? That sounds like something Mel Gibson would be into. Give me a break!

Julieta Venegas – Lento (Video Oficial)

Mexico X Japan. Natsukashii the opening train station jingle!

Natalia Lafourcade – Un Pato (Video Oficial)

I decided to check out Mexican singer Natalia Lafourcade after seeing her referred to as the Mexican Lily Allen. In some songs she does sound a bit like her, and there is even a slight physical resemblance ; except in this song. Where she looks like a duck.

El Guincho – Palmitos Park

El Guincho is a Spanish “new folk” singer from the Canary Islands, interested in re-interpreting old Spanish pop from the 1950s and 60s in modern style. His latest project is an album of “island music” – songs from islands all over the world – and he is here in the world’s biggest island nation to promote it.

Transsexual celebrity beaten almost to death; media disinterested

I recently came across a shocking piece of news. The famous transgender TV star “Miriam” was brutally attacked and almost killed in 2007. Mexican-born Miriam starred in the British reality show “Theres something about Miriam” in which a group of heterosexual men competed to “win” the beauty’s attentions, unaware that she had been born a man. When the twist was revealed, several of the men tried to sue the production company for “defaming” them , as they had been broadcast saying they found her(“him”)  sexually attractive.

She then went on to be a guest star in one season of Australia’s “Big Brother”.

Strange then, in  these-celebrity hungry times, that when she was beaten with  a hammer, had both arms broken and was thrown out of a 4th storey window in Feb 2007, the media barely reported it. This, in a day and age where Britney Spears sister having a child is front page material.

Its hard to see this as anything else but the media’s continued silence (and tacit collusion?) in anti-gay hate crime. One of my friend’s boyfriends once wrote a book about it, filled with startling examples like guys who were beaten to death with spanners or literally beheaded in homophobic attacks, which then didn’t even make evening news. Then some straight person steps on a nail and its “hold the front page”. The crimes, often startling in their level of unnecessary violence, are  under-reported not only to the police, but in the newspapers too.

More to the point, why have  gay newspapers and magazines virtually ignored the story? Trans-phobia? If she was a famous(ish) gay man, it would have been “Miriam is our Martin Luther King” on the cover of the Advocate.

A poster on one one blog I saw commented that he had read an article on Miriam that spent all of two sentences on the attack, in a 2 page spread concentrating on the “controversy”.

Poor Miriam survived, but has apparently been suicidal ever since.