Latin Alternative Music Conference- Day 1

I traveled to NYC this past week to visit Daliz, but also to attend the annual Latin Alternative Music Conference. I'm not one of those people who is quick enough on my blogging toes to write live from an event, so I've decided instead to give a day-by-day account, just after the fact. So pretend like it's last Wednesday and we'll start from there.

I started the day wondering just what "Latin Alternative" music means and hoping that with my $99 registration fee I was at least going to get something useful out of this conference. I juggled the conference and the world cup by watching the Spain-Germany match in the hotel bar and going upstairs at halftime to sign in and get my gift bag and conference badge. I wandered around and took some photos of the cool custom guitars they had out and then headed over to Central Park Summerstage for the evening's concert.

At the LAMC



Guitars:




It was HOT! On Tuesday the temperature reached 103 degrees (F) and Wednesday wasn't much cooler. Right away I ran into some friends, including a fellow graduate student, Oscar, doing his fieldwork on music as well. We chatted and half-paid attention to the first act, French-Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux, but to be honest she wasn't that impressive. She rapped in Spanish and had a DJ and another MC backing her up, and the only time the crowd got involved was when she played her most recognizable song "1977." This song starts with a sample of James Brown's "It's a Man's World," and the chorus is the title, she repeats "mil novecientos setenta (y siete)" over and over again.

Ana Tijoux



Next up was El Guincho, a musician from Barcelona who was joined on stage by two fellow musicians. He managed a little better, playing a rhythmic pop style. However, I overheard several people say that the live performance did not live up to the quality of his recorded material.

El Guincho




Finally night fell, a respite from the heat, and with it came the sounds of Nortec Collective Presents: Bostich+Fussible. Nortec brought a lot of energy and funk. I had seen them once several years ago as an opening act, but this time they had a greater impact. Two musicians manned computers (Ipads) while another two musicians, one on trumpet/sousaphone and the other on accordion, played along to the beats created on the computers. A video DJ flashed video and photo images on a large screen behing them in sync with the beats. It looked and sounded impressive; unfortunately I was only able to get a good photo of the accordion player.



Next: Day 2 of LAMC- way too much much to process...