Filed under: Chicano, Latin America, Latinos, Music | Tags: Latino, Music, Sound and Vision
Over at Super Sonido, nuestro carnal aural Joseph Franko is indulging his visitors with digitized cuts from his massive collection of forgotten, though tenderly curated, Latin American and Latino music. Franko’s latest blog project, 28 days of 45s, has him and guests such as DJ Lengua posting–among other things–yeh-yehs, Chicano beats, cumbias, metal riffs, rebajadas, psych freak-outs, and Tejano Soul throughout February. What proceeds is an intensive course on the sounds of Our America(s).
Image: Pedro Lasch, Latino/a America, 2003/ongoing [Pedro Lasch, con gracias al Profesor Mignolo]
Filed under: Chicano, L.A., Latinos, Los Angeles, Photos | Tags: L.A., Passings, Photos, Sleepy Lagoon, Zoot Suit
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, news came of Alice McGrath’s passing. Luis Valdez dramatized her work as an activist in the Sleepy Lagoon defense in his play Zoot Suit. Her L.A. Times obiturary is here.
Information on the photo from Calisphere below:
Title: Alice Greenfield McGrath, portrait, Alice Greenfield McGrath, back in the Bradbury building, where her work on Sleepy Lagoon defense began
Creator/Contributor: Los Angeles Times (Firm), Publisher; Barnard, Tony, Photographer
Date: May 2, 1978
Contributing Institution: Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, 405 Hilgard Ave, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575
Filed under: Latinos, Music, Rock, Video | Tags: Adan Jodorowsky, Echeck, Estoy Mal, Music, Recent Find
From Adan Jodorowsky, son of auteur and tarot authority Alejandro, is Echek, a tiny portrayal of love’s enchantment. The short’s compact format calls to mind the description of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” as a ‘pocket symphony’. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call this a piece of pocket film.
Noting the intersection of film and music in this post, it’s perhaps worth noting that Adan Jodorowsky is a musician and actor in his own right. According to very preliminary research, he’s released records with the band Hellboy and some more under the solo moniker Adanowsky. His film debut was in his father’s 1989 film Santa Sangre, which despite the obvious nepostism, is still not too shabby to claim. And yes, that was him discussing the demerits of a certain female pubic hair style with Adam Goldberg in 2 Days in Paris. (0:55 in the linked clip)
As usual, posts to the blog will continue to be sporadic, but thanks for sticking around. We’re contemplating some possible changes, but nothing certain yet. There’s still the matter of getting out of the grad school application weeds. Stay tuned for updates.
In the meantime, tirado/thrown will be paying attention to Adan’s work. Here’s another short tidbit of Jodorowsky, singing his track “Estoy Mal” (I’m Ill) in the midst of the swine flu outbreak, respirator and all.
Filed under: Latinos, Music, Places to Go | Tags: DJing, Events, Music, Rare Grooves, Sound is Blog
Radio silence could best describe the recent state of affairs here at tirado/thrown headquarters. Your staff has been negligent in its thinking and typing duties, and instead brushing up on high school algebra, cramming vocabulary, and learning strategies to tackle the monster known as the Graduate Record Examination. All this preparation, of course, is in the service of mounting a pending graduate school application campaign in the fall.
However, we’ve managed to cut through the thick wall of static generated by anxiety, study, exhaustion, and the repeated multiple choice questions to assemble some tracks and offer them up for the listening pleasure of the kind people who come to River Gods. On Monday June 29, as a part of the Weekly Wax series, DJ Tirado (yes, of this here tirado/thrown) will be teaming up with fellow traveler DJ Manny to showcase rolas from America Latina and Latino America spanning the decades. Inspired by the efforts of L.A.’s unparalleled Mas Exitos, we’ll be dispatching sounds like descargas, ballads, cumbias old and new, funk, psychedelic, and perhaps some electronic. All of it will come from Nuestra America.
Do come and join us for the dinner, drinks, and beatdowns that River Gods promises its patrons on Monday nights. The fare and the bar’s offerings are outstanding, and the locale is the perfect venue for a listening party. The sounds start at 8 p.m. and go on until midnight. Feel free to hit us up in the comments section for more information.
*Image: Hat tip to Joseph Franko at supersonido.net for the amazing pic. We couldn’t pass up using it for the flyer.
Filed under: Autobiographical, Ideas, Latinos, Philosophy, Politics | Tags: Authoritarianism, Autobiographical, Christ, Kaibil, Liberation Theology, Slavoj Zizek, Theology
A comment of Slavoj Žižek’s at his talk in Cambridge a few weeks ago brought to mind a harrowing memory.
In an aside during a meandering, though no less interesting lecture (tangentially related to his new book The Monstrosity of Christ), Žižek mentioned CIA documents from Latin America noting that liberation theology was perceived as a greater threat than communism.
On the one hand, such an assertion seems entirely unsurprising. Liberation theology threatened the legitimacy of Empire, Church, and State alike, to the point that officials at the highest levels of the Catholic Church ardently labored to suppress it, in an apparent collusion with neo-liberal and authoritarian interests (with a few exceptions). The State, with imperial support, did the less savory work, carrying out the infamous atrocities on laity and clergy alike. That much is well-known.
On the other hand, his comment brought to mind a discussion with my stepfather during Christmas of 1998. In the 70s and early 80s he had spent time in Guatemala as an officer, training and fighting alongside the most lethal of Latin America’s elite forces: the Kaibiles.** To note his fervent anti-communist almost goes without saying. To his mind, a liberationist eucharist would probably have resembled the scene below.
During my last year of undergraduate education and my first years of graduate stuidies in philosophy, I was enthralled by Catholicism and struggled with the idea of becoming a Jesuit. That I attended Jesuit institutions during those years only made my questioning more palpable and immediate to me at the time.
On my first night back from Boston for winter break, my step-father and I stood by the Christmas tree in the modest Calabasas apartment he and my mother shared with my younger brother. Within five minutes of our conversation he asked me, “So, are you still thinking about becoming a Jesuit priest?”
“Well, I’m still not sure. I’ve thought about it, but…”
“You know, some of those Jesuits died with AK-47s in their hands…”
I couldn’t adequately, nor quickly, respond at the time. From what I knew about my stepfather, I could only sense that he would not have hesitated to deal a fatal shot were I a cleric at the other end of his rifle muzzle. Žižek’s comment only made that episode almost eleven years ago that much more vivid- and chilling. Perhaps the most monstrous fantasy of Christ an authoritarian could imagine was one whose wrath was directed at the oppressors of the poor or the abusers of power who did a shabby job of justice.
** Since the end of the nearly four-decade civil war in Guatemala, the Kaibil have come upon relatively slim times. Still in existence, their numbers have been curtailed to some extent, but their fate has mirrored the fortunes of post-dictatorial Latin America. Active Kaibil continue to work in various capacities: mired in the fight against drug trafficking, taking on projects against “juvenile delinquency”, and taking part in UN peacekeeping and combat missions. Some ex-Kaibiles have found work leveraging their skills as security or muscle for narco cartels, recruited into groups such as Los Zetas. Still others have entered into private security industry as mercenaries. Spanish-language video reportage of the Kaibil are available here, here, and here.
Filed under: Aesthetics, Books, Chicano, Ideas, Latinos, Literature, Mexico, Philosophy, Politics, Publications, Uncategorized | Tags: Agamben, Aura Estrada, Badiou, Benjamin, Bernard Steigler, Biopolitics, Books, Foucault, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Journal of Theives, Literature, Mexico City, New Blogs, Photography, Pochismo, Science
- From Mexico City, Intersections returns from its hiatus with an update on recent events honoring writer Aura Estrada as part of an effort to create a literary prize in her memory. The prize will offer promising Mexican women writers an opportunity to hone their literary chops.
- Intersections follows up with a post on recent programming at Mexico City’s Center for Contemporary Culture. Maras y la Cultura de la Violencia focuses on La Mara Salvatrucha, among the most widely-publicized and feared street gangs in the US and El Salvador. The show raises a host of questions, especially about the way in which museums and cultural institutes address highly charged contemporary issues. Is the show an instance of the ongoing ‘museumification of the world’? Is it an attempt to deal with a matter usually placed under the sign of public safety/police/crime journalism with the resources of humanistic reflection? Or is it just a foolish, useless, and unsympathetic expedition glorifying a way of life marked, or perhaps defined, by cruelty, aggression, and ruthlessness?
- The MIT Press is holding its Winter White Sale until January 31, which is the press’s coolest discount book buying opportunity next to their loading dock sale. If any dear readers wish to donate books to the tirado/thrown staff (ahem…), please feel free to ask how you can send Ruben Gallo’s Mexican Modernity and/or Adam Sharr’s Heidegger’s Hut. Generosity will be compensated with a treatment of received book on this blog and recognition from a grateful beneficiary.
- Perverse Egalitarianism reflects on Bernard Steigler’s Acting Out. The call to philosophy and the discipline required in its practice, which, at the risk of oversimplifying, is part in parcel with getting on in this existence of ours.
- Why has No Useless Leniency not been in my reader? Why were three outstanding posts missed here at tirado/thrown? In the interest of making amends, first some notes on Badiou’s The Meaning of Sarkozy, highlighting some useful precepts. Second, a post reflecting on the ontology of the interval, with some hints for further reflection regarding the conquest and creation of the New World. Third and last, some notes on Walter Benjamin’s essay Capitalism as Religion, an essay that Agamben riffs heavily on in “In Praise of Profanation.”
- This Recording’s recent “Science Corner” entry, aside from being colorful, is an example downright cool science blogging for the barely initiated. And now we are a little more familiar with the mating habits of the banana slug.
- I Cite shares with readers some notes on Foucault’s 1978-79 lectures on the genesis of modern biopolitics. Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
- Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who has helped bring pochismo into the cultural vernacular, is The Mexorcist. Yes, xenophobia is a spiritual disorder. An interview with the Tuscon Citizen elaborates. (Note: Gómez-Peña will be giving a talk at USC on January 28. For more context, his article in The Journal of Visual Culture from 2006 titled El Mexorcist lays out the basic idea.)
- Rhizome calls our attention to the brick being thrown at us. Buffalo Head: Media Practice, Media Study, Media Pioneeers 1973-1990 is the 800-plus page , 10 pound book documenting the work of SUNY Buffalo’s Center for Media Studies.
- tirado/thrown receives a greeting from Journal of Thieves. Not at all safe for work, or for those who are easily offended. We were definitely charmed by the assault on sensibility that makes easily reproduced spectacle and images of extreme ambiguity render pornography inoperative. tirado/thrown thanks JoT for making us think. We welcome you to the blogroll, with open, er, you get the point.
- Please, click through the link at the end of the bullet . You’ll find your computer to be interesting and fun again. http://www.zigzagphilosophy.com/
Image: Screenshot of zigzagphilosophy.com, (2009). Digital work by Angelo Plessas, found at Rhizome.
Filed under: Latinos, Rock | Tags: blogs on hiatus, campaign roundup, cholos, Kafka, political posters, Psychoanalysis, sexualities, voting
This post was originally going to be some sort of late-summer/early fall roundup of things worth re-blogging. But a handful of great things popped into my reader that just made me want to post these. In the spirit of brevity, here’s an abbreviated pre-election roundup of items of incidental bearing to today’s events. By Wednesday morning, perhaps we can finally look forward to conducting the people’s business come January 20, 2009.
- As a way to pay the bills and float his literary production, Franz Kafka spent his professional life as an attorney for the Workingman’s Insurance Institutue in the Czech Lands of the Austrio-Hungrian Empire. Through his work, he managed to write some of the most ominous, compelling, and prophetic literature of late modernity. A number of Kafka’s professional writings are now available in translation through Princeton University Press in a book entilted, Franz Kafka: The Office Writings. Oh, and I think I just found a new favorite blog. [ Zolius/Princeton University Press]
- Supervalent Thought wades into the problematics associated with sexualities, the instiution of marriage, and the most recent repressive incursion into sex, Proposition 8. What follows is a journey into spacing, intimacy, vulnerability, and of course, surprise (which is to say, contingency). To my friends in California: Please vote no on 8! [Supervalent Thought]
- Speaking of elections, this particular presidential campaign season was long, exhorbitantly expensive, and at some point, just tiring. But here’s a great review of the campaign, just to make sure you hang on to some of its more memorable parts. [This. Fucking. Election.]
- So, for all you Boston folks out there, you probably know this by now: Cambridge’s B-Side shuddered its doors for good. Which is a horrible thing if you like good food and even better drinks. **Sigh** [Big, Red, & Shiny]
- Speaking of shudderings, though this one temporary: One of our favorite blogs, Daniel Hernandez’s Intersections, is going on hiatus until next year. We here at tirado/thrown suppose that we’ll have to live with occasionally scouring the site’s rich archives while eagerly awaiting more dispatches from the first capital of the new world. At the very least, readers new and old will have some time to get caught up on two years of outstanding pocho musings from the ancient navel that is the primitive font of pochismo. [Intersections]
So for readers in the U.S., those eligible to vote are encouraged by tirado/thrown to get make your way to the polling booths toot sweet and pull the lever/fill in the scantron/punch the chad/touch the calibrated (we hope) touchscreen. The last eight years have been miserable enough. Let’s get to work on improving the situation for all of us.
Image credit: First seen at Guanabee; from an image at planetjan.
