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Droppin’ Some Knowledge, Part 3 - Musicology

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

cumbia.jpg   

¨When I Die I Want you to Play Cumbia¨ - by journalist Cristian Alarcón

There are lots of unpleasant ways to have your precious sleep interrupted in the morning, though having “Winds of Change” involuntarily forced upon you, as I did last week, is particularly cruel. In Winds of Change, you’ll recall, quintessentially bad 80’s pop-metal band the Scorpions wail out for a time ¨when the children of tomorrow
dream away,” and do it all over a German accent.  Sex, drugs and social reform?  Good heavy metal should never dare pine for such lofty ideals; mega hair-band Warrant knew this, instead (appropriately) waxing lyrical about “Cherry Pie” and other crude metaphors for sex.  

The perpetrator of this most inhumane offense was none other than my neighbor, who lives one floor down from me in my crumbling 30’s era apartment building.  I’ve never spoken with the guy and I’ve only caught glimpses of him in passing, yet I feel like I know his story.  You see, in Buenos Aires, like most places, there is a fairly well defined social structure based strongly upon music preferences.  This neighbor happens to fall easily into the group known as the “metaleros” – the metalheads. 

 

Consider: not only does he blast Monster Ballads whenever the feeling moves him, he also drives a motorcycle – a beat-up, skeletal hunk of metal that he straps down to the lamppost in front of our building each night – and even rocks ass-long hair and a leather jacket to boot.  Thus is the prototypical “metalero;” though my neighbor, who’s in his mid-late 30’s, probably falls on the older side of the clique, having listened to Megadeth back when they were actually cool as opposed to a gawky adolescent now. 

 

The metaleros are far from the only quasi-social group here defined by music taste and style; ones I’m familiar with include: rappers, rollingas, chetos, and the cumbia villeros, perhaps the most authentically Argentine of them all.  Considering Buenos Aires is part of Argentina, of course there’s a glaring omission here – the Tangueros, or people into the tango scene.  Because there’s already been so much written on this topic and I’m far from an expert on it anyway, I’m not going to touch on this.  But what I will do is elucidate on some of Argentina’s lesser known scenes.     

[read on]

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Droppin’ Some Knowledge, Part 2 - Argentina vs. Uruguay

Sunday, May 14th, 2006

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You love every second of it don’t you Tony, you old dog you
  

   

This past Friday leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean arrived in Vienna, Austria to meet with their European counterparts and discuss trade, among other issues, at the EU-LAC summit. (Yawn). That’s the boring part. The fun part is this: just as the Presidents were lining up for the photo shoot, one black suit after the next, a bikini-clad girl bursts onto the stage and throws up a sign, as you can see above. The girl though, Evangelina Carrozzo, is no ordinary chica - she’s the crowned Carnival Queen from this year’s celebration in the Argentine city of Gualeguaychu, an otherwise undistinguished city accept for two facts:
  • It’s home to Argentina’s largest and most important Carnival celebration, so she’s no small-time beauty, mind you
  • Sitting just across the river from Uruguay, it’s currently ground zero for one of the fastest growing political solidarity movements in Argentina: opposition to the building of two enormous paper mills (the place where wood gets made into paper, pencils, etc.), on the grounds that the mills - which would sit on the Uruguayan bank of the river - will drastically contaminate the river
Thus, her sign - and intentions - should make perfect sense. One of the more interesting twists to the whole fiasco though, aside from the lascivious look in Tony Blair’s eyes (front, far left), is that Greenpeace paid for her flight to Vienna and orchestrated the whole show. Greenpeace has long been known for their outrageous publicity stunts, but this one could’ve hardly been executed better; Evangelina managed to get through security (posing as a reporter for a small town Argentine newspaper), strip, and do her little dance all before security caught up to her. My guess is she counted on the security guard having to, uh, “adjust himself” before he could accost her, buying herself a critical few extra seconds to get the point across.
 
Relating this to the title of the post, Argentina and Uruguay have been sparring over the issue of the paper mills (”papeleras”) for awhile now, though relations have really been deteriorating as of late. Historically and culturally almost identical - Uruguay used to be part of Argentina, and their people share almost indistinguishable ethnic backgrounds, eat almost the same food (lots and lots of meat), and have the same unique Spanish accent absent in the rest of Latin America - the two countries have usually enjoyed excellent relations. Hell, even Carlos Gardel, perhaps the most famous tango singer of all time and an Argentine icon was born in Uruguay.
 

 

For Uruguay, the papeleras are as far from petty sibling rivalry as you can get; they’re pinning an enormous amount of economic hope on the project. With foreign investment estimated at 10 % of the current Uruguyan GDP (around $1.7 billion dollars), the two mills (one is being built by a Spanish company, the other a Finnish one) are expected to employ thousands of people and jump-start the economy. Uruguay says the mills are safe and won’t contaminate the river; Argentina, especially those living in Gualeguaychu and the surrounding area, begs to differ. In fact they’re doing more than begging: they’ve actually been, in the long Argentine political tradition, taking matters into their own hands.
 

 

For the past few months protestors have been physically blocking the road from Argentina into Uruguay through the Gualeguaychu region, effectively halting all trade and tourism into the country of just over 3 million people. This actually affected me on a personal level - when my family came to visit in February we wanted to go to Uruguay for the day, but there were no seats available on any of the ferries running between Buenos Aires and Colonia, Uruguay because all of the tourists that would ordinarily pass through Gualeguaychu instead were directed through Buenos Aires.
 

 

The effects of this whole “kilombo” - the perfect Buenos Aires street-slang term to describe the situation, which means “a big mess” - are significant: Uruguay is threatening to pull out of MERCOSUR, the regional quasi-functional economic alliance between Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Even worse, Uruguay’s President, Tabare Vazquez was just in Washington last week, shaking hands and smiling with *gasp* Bush and discussing the possibility of signing a free-trade agreement with the U.S. In this part of the world, Brazil and Argentina are the big dogs, and no, they definitely don’t appreciate it when somebody disrespects their author-i-tay, snubbing them in favor of Washington. Right now Argentina’s President, Nestor Kirchner (red tie, front center), is requesting that the whole matter be sent to the Hague for review.
 
Critics of Argentina (and some non-Uruguayans) say possible river contamination isn’t the real issue here; it is, to best sum it up, just old fashioned “player - hating.” Basically, they say, Argentina’s jealous that it’s little brother, who it’s used to dictacting terms to, if not bullying around, landed such lucrative contracts on its own. Were the tables reversed and Argentina had the rights to these mammoth projects - especially considering its improving but still difficult economic situation - the health and welfare of a local river would be the last thing they make a fuss about. Regardless, the Uruguayans deny any susbstantial contamination will result, and say the mills will be unharmful to Argentina.  
 
While the extent of the paper mills’ contamination may be debateable, one thing´s for certain: the conflict won’t resolve itself amicably anytime soon. Next year is an election year for Kirchner, so it’s extremely unlikely that he’ll let this issue - which is proving to be a politician’s dream, as it’s one of the rare themes Argentines of all walks of life can actually agree upon - pass along without exploiting it for political gain.  
   

 

  

 

  

 

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Droppin´ Some Knowledge - The Madres La Plaza de Mayo

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
OK - I know I haven´t posted in awhile, and for that I apologize. Samson, I´m sorry. The thing is, there just really isn´t that much to write about - well, probably nothing that you´d find especially interesting or amusing. As ... [Continue reading this entry]

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