ieishah clelland

We, the Latin music lovers (and of course, Latinos!) of Barcelona are positively buzzing about Saturday’s Salsa and Latin Jazz Festival, hosted by homegrown Latin band, L.A. Sucursal S.A.

Of all the festivals in Barcelona–art, hip hop, indie, new music, cross cultural–a Latin Music festival is what was missing. So La Sucursal S.A. decided to create their “ideal festival. The type of festival they’d both want to attend and perform at” (qtd press release).

Enter Panamanian singer, Ruben Blades and Cuban pianist, Chucho Valdez and the Afro-Cuban Messengers: headliners at tomorrow’s Salsa and Jazz Festival at Plaza Espanyol. Finally, a Latin music mega-jam to add to the veritable constellation of festivals that descend upon the city, yearly.

Ruben Blades is the smart man’s salsero. He’s got law degrees from the University of Panama and Harvard. No one, however, can accuse Blades of “wasting” his pedigree on music–he ran for President in 1994, only after proving himself one of the best storytellers in any genre of music with an ode to immigration and alienation in urban space, “Pedro Navaja”, off Blades and Fania All Star labelmate, Willie Colon’s best-selling 1978 collaboration, Siembra. That two people are shot in broad daylight and no one comes out to see what has happened…if this isn’t the New York City of the Zodiac, I don’t know what is!

As if finally having a chance to see this living legend isn’t enough, I’ve learned that the pronunciation of his surname–the pronunciation his family uses–is the English one. Blades, like the “blades” that come after “roller”; not, as most Spanish-speakers say, BLA-DESS. The name comes from his grandfather who was from the English-speaking Caribbean island of St. Lucia. Blades immortalized his forbear in the song “West Indian Man”, as one of the droves that moved from the West Indies to Central America to work the railroads, banana plantations and Panama Canal. Knowing Blades has got a little bit of, well, me in him, just makes me all the more excited for Saturday. Who knew??

I came up on Chucho Valdes quite late, as it were, only after he collaborated with Concha Buika on El Ultimo Trago, the 2010 tribute album to Costa Rican ranchera, Chavela Vargas. His piano, integral, weaving, and melodic, but unimposing, it’s easy to forget he’s even on the album. But that’s Chucho, pure Cuban cool. He’ll bring the traditional Latin Jazz, making this festival one that covers its bases, and blesses Barcelona with a wide spectrum of Latin sounds.

With this line up, where tradition meets street–something for the music lovers and the dancers (STAND UP!)–is definitely an entire descarga’s worth of steps in the right direction towards creating a real “hub” for Latin music culture in Barcelona. If you’re here Saturday July 16th, DO NOT MISS IT!

If you love music, it’s hard not to fall for Fela, and by extension, Afrobeat: that bright, infectious mix of jazz and African rhythms that starts you moving from your core. This is why Afrobeat takes a minute to take over, I think. Your body has to assimilate to its polyrhythms. Snake its way into the groove, energetically speaking.

Seun Kuti, Fela’s youngest son, performed in Barcelona recently with Egypt 80–his dad’s old band. It was perhaps one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. High energy. Political. Funky. Funny. Ceremonial. I was just really starting to feel it in my bones, when Seun was made to end the show. Sometimes, Europe…I mean, I heard that his performance went on for 5 hours in Senegal at the Black Arts Festival last winter.

The first video is One Minute with Seun Kuti, ending the show, it seems, just before a full on possession occurs. The second video was taken by accident. I gave my camera to someone to take a photo of me and Seun. Neither of us knew that the camera was recording video. What resulted is lots of shots of shoes, but also, some brilliance. There’s me, doing my Spanglish thing. Everyone jockeying for a few moments with the man of the hour. My girl friends, trying to get the young dancers to teach them how to move their asses “like that”. Spaniards wearing “100% Afrobeat, No Bullshit!” tees.

Also check out my review of the show on Global Grind, Seun Kuti: Better than Broadway. Seun himself read it and said, “Very Insightful!”. (How cool is that?) One comment on the piece reads, “Seun Kuti! Fela’s true son!”. Now, even as I firmly believe there’s more than enough room on the international music scene for all Fela’s half dozen seedlings…Truth don die.

One Minute with Seun Kuti from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

You know what happens after 5 days of protest by day, party by night? You start fantasizing about what it would be like if the Fleet Foxes harmonized about murder and arson, and Odd Future rapped about flowers in fields. Because like, really, what if?? “Primavera has always been a minority festival,” said the organizer, at the most chilled out press conference I’ve ever seen. We weren’t thinking the same type of minority, him and I, but I nodded in agreement anyway. It was one of the week’s rare quiet moments, sitting beside the Meditteranean Sea in lounge chairs, munching free pastries from Barcelona Reykjavik. How the organizers could even think straight with the smell of that Argentinian asado grilling burgers and ‘shrims’ (that was actually written on the menu), I can’t know. But apparently this year’s Primavera Sound Music Festival has been the most successful yet, in terms of show quality, attendance, and cold hard cash, experiencing 20% in growth in a country where nothing else is. Primavera Sound masterfully navigates the currents beyond the mainstream, globally, citing as their goals, first, creating buzz for artists on a level at which they wouldn’t normally reach, and second, creating a program that mixes influential, established acts with new acts they’ve inspired. Both targets are probably common for many indie-focused international music festivals, but Primavera Sound is more cohesive than most. Cohesive, but still with enough detours and surprises to have one imagining murder melodies. Here are some of the festivals highlights and lowl some notes on Das Racist.

Big Boi

Don’t go to concerts without earplugs. Otherwise you’ll find yourself standing by a bank of speakers with your index fingers doing the job of  keeping your ear drum from busting. And then the performer, in this case, Big Boi’s hype man, will keep looking at you and gesturing for you to move your ass. Then you play a cat and mouse game with said hype man, wherein you take your fingers out of your ears and dance a bit each time turns his attention to you, which is far too often, given the other 20,000 festival-goers at the show. Look, Big Boi and his hype man were engaging, and murdering all the hits. They deserved my participation. And also I was the only black girl for miles.

Finally, I hear, “Yo, yo, yo….cut that shit. You see this pretty lady in the brown jacket?” Shit. Cameras zoom in on me, the collar of my brown leather jacket pulled up around my cheeks. “She keep smiling at me”. Shit. “I don’t think she knows who the fuck I am”. The kids around me are cheering and clapping and slapping me on the back and punching me on the arm like I just won some kind of groupie super lottery by being called out from on high. “She don’t know who I am. Let’s hit her with….”…and they launch into some song I don’t know. A mixed English girl sees my blank stare, leans in and says, “Oh, you couldn’t give a shit, could you?”. He stops the music again. “She still don’t know who the fuck I am…”, he guesses correctly. I shrug. Smile. He launches into “Kryptonite”. Indeed. A few songs later he invites me to come onstage. I decline. “You scared?” I give him my best “Negro, please!” look, and keep bouncing. Ear drums, be damned.

Tiru, a British Sri Lankan (who claims to be a 2nd cousin to M.I.A.) later says of Big Boi’s set, “I thought Andre 3000 was the talented one.” I ask Tiru if he heard the part about the girl in the brown jacket.  ”That was you! Did you find it misogynist?”, he asks then quickly gives me his take: “I thought it was…quite sweet.”

Fleet Foxes

“We’re really lucky to be playing after The Tallest Man on Earth and before PJ Harvey”, the Fleet Foxes lead singer, Robin Pecknold is smiling and shrugging like Michael Jordan after those 8 consecutive 3-pointers against Portland that time.

One of the guys over at the Madbury Club called the Fleet Foxes, “camping music”. Hard to dispute in the face of lyrics about “strawberries in the summertime”, “frozen rivers” and getting snowed in and shit. I was so lost in harmony it took a few repetitions for me to realize, wait, are these dudes really blowing about how apples in the summer are cold and sweet?

The testosterone coming from behind the drum set was my first clue that this group was not, as I thought they might be, some fresh out of college sextet with total recall of the smell of the dorm bathrooms where they’d practice their harmonies because the acoustics were so boss. Flannel shirts and wool hats belie the pretty in their sound. I love how they don’t even try to be cool. How Peckinhold tiptoes to reach those notes at the top of his falsetto. It shows he cares. How the black guy looks bored half the time, then after he pulls out his, like, tenth instrument, you realize he’s not bored. He’s just a fucking genius. How Peckinhold thanks the audience for listening, as though they’d be playing the same way even if we weren’t there to see it. It’s honest music. It’s Fleetwood Mac sans the sexual dysfunction. Add really hot drummer.

Das Racist
Das Racist would say they are very different from other hip hop acts. And at least at Primavera Sound, this held true. Das Racist’s live show was far inferior to the other hip hop acts on the bill. They lack the professionalism, charisma, AND HIT SONGS of Big Boi. They don’t have the youth, energy, or ABS of Odd Future (see below). So it was with a sense of sadness that I watched the most fucked up of the quartet, strip down to his boxers and scream, “Fuck Catalonia!” at the audience, repeatedly, when he wasn’t playing air guitar with the mic. As they thrashed around the stage to some lame call to disaffection or another, lyrics unintelligible (the sound is not to blame here, Big Boi was crystal clear), all I could think was that they’re too young to look this washed up. And too old to look this unwashed. What tragedy is this? Is there even an archetype for this anti-hero? How do I cast this? The fuck is even going on right now?? Billy Joel is perfection, so if it weren’t for You Oughta Know, which samples Movin’ Out, I’d not have bounced my head once. Tiru (remember my new Brit Sri Lankan friend?) thinks Das Racist needs to save “the postmodern ironic hipster bullshit” for a non-paying audience. I disagree; you can’t get lost time back. I would say save it for the kids, but even they, alas, are too smart for it.

Teenage Dream

I didn’t expect many people to know Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. I certainly don’t talk about them with anyone outside of the internet. Furthermore, who can go around saying all that? Especially in Spain? Turns out Tyler-the-Creator was thinking the exact same thing. “Y’all speak motherfuckin’ English?”, he asks from off stage. The crowd answers, I’m guessing, in the affirmative, because next thing I knew, Tyler had no sooner zoomed onstage than launched himself off it and into the arms of screaming, beyond-all-control Euro-youth.

My concert companion, Libby, who heard about Odd Future from that Kelefa Sanneh write-up in the New Yorker, thinks Odd Future is ‘not organic’ and too ‘consciously caustic’. Not without merit, this. They aspire towards ultimate verbal offense. They really, really want you in fear. Unfortunately, this shock-rap approach has the effect of a horror film trying to scare you by grossing you out.

Look, underneath all that talk about murder and burning shit and raping pregnant women, they are kind of…nice boys. Hodgy Beats is all, “I wish I could speak Spanish. I would rap in Spanish for y’all.” Sweet, right? And Tyler had a lot of non-rape-y and murder-y things to say, like, “Thank you for knowing the lyrics.” Awwwww. The only thing–the only little sliver of a thing–was when this fake redhead with a bowl cut takes off her shirt and bra, and perches herself atop her homeboy’s shoulders. Left Brain jumps off the stage and cops himself a feel. My boys from the Barcelona band, Seward, entered the building just in time to share a cringe with me. The redhead? She’s filming the…exchange…with her mobile. “Nice tits!”, Left Brain yells as the song ends. “I had to grab them shits yo!” No, Left Brain. You didn’t. The rest, one should see for oneself.

OFWGKTA @ Primavera Sound ’11 from ieishah clelland on Vimeo.

Honorable Mentions:
The Walkmen: I don’t know much about this 5-man indie band, but the lead singer was baaaad with his big voice and wrinkled beige suit. Loved.

James Blake: Seward’s guitarist calls James Blake’s music “minimalist. Elegant”. I can’t articulate Blake’s brand of R&B any more succinctly. Blake returned to the Pitchfork stage the day after his proper performance for a DJ set. I learned he likes Lil Wayne/Young Money Millionaires, Beyonce, sparse drum-n-bass grooves and boozy spring nights by the sea. I heard that while he was spinning, a group of very drunk, bare-chested Nordic neanderthals stood in front of him yelling, “Swag! Swag! Fuck James Blake!” That couldn’t have been easy.

Belle and Sebastian, while bubblegum fun and sonically perfect, ignored this:

Looked right at it, waving directly in front of the stage, and kept singing. Didn’t even put a fist in the air, or acknowledge the existence of the two freaks who’d fought their way through the crowd to present it to them. To each his own, but I found that weird. It’s not like they didn’t know what was happening. Not even foreign performers could escape the Spanish Revolution. “Freedom of expression is at the heart of the Primavera festival,” the organizer said. “So when 15M [the organizers of the protest camp at Plaza Catalunya] contacted us about a collaboration, we agreed. We’ve put up banners around the forum that explain what the values of the protest are, and we passed that information along to the artists. We let them know that if they wanted to show their support on stage, it would be good. Jarvis Cocker [lead singer of Pulp] dedicated “Common People” to the Spanish Revolution during their set [on Friday night].” I knew I should have stayed till the end of it, but I’d wanted to stop by the protest camp the next morning.



Barcelona becomes Spain each May when the Ciutat Vella Flamenco Festival comes to town. During this very weekend for the last three years, together with good friends, bottles of wine and aged cheese, I’d settle into the tough plastic bleachers at CCCB‘s theatre under the stars, and pretend I was in the Spain of the anglo-American imagination. Where men die valliantly for love, women wear flowers in their hair, and everyone speaks Spanish. Every year there’s a new singer, dancer, or sound to discover. I achieve better grasp, thus a deeper love, for gitano rhythm. This year the festival was moved from it’s ambient outdoor theater to a florescent-lit, indoor monstrosity that has all the charm and sophistication of a middle school auditorium. The generalitat didn’t have enough money to build it as they’d originally planned. Of course they didn’t.

In the week leading up to the May 22nd local and regional elections in Spain, a coalition of progressive activists calling themselves 15-M (May 15th), lead by Democracia Real Ya, set up camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, declaring themselves, indignados. Indignado is one of those words whose English translation is identical–indignant–but somehow doesn’t feel the same. Spanish citizens are not just indignant, they’re angry. Incensed. Frustrated. Spain’s unemployment is at 21%, more than twice that of the rest of Europe. Youth unemployment is at 40%. Social services are being cut in order to recover some of the money that many Spaniards believe is being stolen by banks and corrupt politicians. Since madrileños took over Puerta del Sol (calling it the new Tahrir Square) on May 15th, similar camps have sprung up all over the country, including Barcelona. As one young Spaniard explained to a curious tourist from Miami, “Everything is a big, big shit, and the politicians? They don’t do nothing about it”.

There was no way I could sit in that very unappealing theatre, sipping whine, air kissing, and politely applauding with the Catalan elite, with the people in the square, indignados, over it. It would just be out of step, like dancing cha-cha to a gitano rhythm. And if there’s one thing I do have, it’s rhythm.