Ivan Fernandez

Mexican Dubwiser

Mexican Dubwiser (with live band)
Viper Room
05-10-2013

Better Than...his DJ sets

Mexican Dubwiser, the stage name of producer Marcelo Tijerina, celebrated the release of his debut album Revolution Radio in the U.S. with a live set at the Viper Room Friday.

Tijerina, who's lived in L.A. since 2000, takes his name not after the beer but from elements of his life: He was raised in Monterrey, one of Mexico's hotbeds for new music and the pointy boots craze, and has devoted the past few years of his life to mixing Mexican cumbia with dub reggae. (His handle sounds better in Spanish: el Mexicano sabio del dub.)

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David Monnich

Cesar Rosas of Los Lobos

By David Monnich

Los Lobos Cinco De Mayo Festival
Greek Theatre
May 5, 2013

Despite the spotty weather, droves of Angelinos headed out to the Greek Theatre on Sunday afternoon for Los Lobos' second annual Cinco de Mayo Festival. Last year's event proved that the East L.A. veteran group are master curators, and they again put together a diverse roster of artists with both traditional and modern sounds.

Featuring two stages, six bands and numerous guest artists, the festival brought together some excellent roots and alternative talent, and was a great way to mark the beginning of the Greek's 2013 season.

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Ollin

On St. Patrick's Day at the Satellite, venerable East L.A. band Ollin performed Pogues songs, per their long-standing tradition. A Chicano spin on Irish classics? It makes a lot more sense than you think, and West Coast Sound was there to talk with Ollin about what the two cultures have in common. You can see our exclusive video below; you may find yourself suddenly craving some green Modelo.

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Filmmaker Junior Gonzalez made it his goal to show his Salvadoran culture in a positive light. Or, in any light at all, really. There were no films that he could think of on the subject, save for those on the notorious MS-13 street gang.

"When I say I'm Salvadoran, some people will throw up gang signs as a joke, because that's all they know," he says.

But while attending a Salvadoran festival at Exposition Park near USC in 2005, he saw his first Salvadoran hip hop performance, and soon learned there was a growing scene in small pockets around the U.S. After being denied several grants and funding opportunities for his idea, he finally decided to simply go it alone. And so he took a camera his friend had given him and began filming the scene around the country and in El Salvador.

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Kinky

Los Angeles is known worldwide as a creative hub, and it has one of the biggest Latino populations anywhere. But on the eve of three of the Western hemisphere's biggest and most important music festivals -- South By Southwest, Vive Latino, and Coachella -- one has to wonder: Where is the L.A. Latino musical influence? After all, we have only a handful of Latin bands headed to SXSW, one at Vive Latino, and none at Coachella.

The Ten Best Latin Alternative Albums of 2012

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Ivan Fernandez

La Santa Cecilia

Red Bull Music Academy & Panamérika present Escenario
Bomba Estéreo, Astro, La Santa Cecilia, Que Bajo?!, Carla Morrison
Fonda Theatre
3/7/2013

See also: "Escenario" featuring Bomba Estéreo & More Slideshow

A crowd of hip, multi-lingual latinos (plus a few stray non-latin types) filled the Fonda Theatre last night for an event put on by Red Bull Music Academy and their Latino music station Panamérika, called Escenario.

Originally scheduled for December last year with Natalia LaFourcade and Hello Seahorse, visa issues caused this make-up show, featuring Colombian electro-cumbia group Bomba Estéreo, Latin Grammy winner Carla Morrison, Chilean indie band Astro, local Grammy nominees La Santa Cecilia and NYC DJ Que Bajo?!

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Picky Talarico

Nestled up in the Echo Park hills just north of Sunset Boulevard lies La Casa Studios, where we wait on 14-time Grammy winning producer Gustavo Santaolalla, an Argentine. The walls in the studio lounge are decorated with album artwork for acts he produced like Maldita Vecindad, Juanes and Café Tacuba. When the 61-year-old, gray-haired Santaolalla emerges, he tries to shake off the tired look -- from spending hours in recording sessions -- as we talk about the group he co-founded, Bajofondo.

The classically-driven experimental music act started as a pet project inspired by the Rio de la Plata -- the river that divides Argentina and Uruguay. Buenos Aires, on one side, is like Paris or New York, he says. The Uruguay city of Montevideo on the other side, however, is like "Buenos Aires unplugged, a bit cooler." The river is so wide you can't see the other side, and the spirit of our music is to unite the two cultures across the river, he says.

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Quitapenas is a nine-piece group from Riverside whose name means, we're told, "take away your worries." They've got afro-Cuban influences and are putting a new spin on cumbia. Which, if you ask us, is something that could use a new spin!

Below, we've got the premiere of their single "Mas Tropical," which was produced by musician-about-town Lewis Pesacov of White Iris records and sounds like a vacation. (Perhaps the type out-of-towners think they're getting when they come to L.A. this time of year. Sorry everybody!)

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Carlos Rubio

Queztal and Los Cojolites
The Breed Street Shul
2/9/13

Better than: A Hollywood Grammy red carpet party

Saturday night's celebration of some of the year's Grammy nominees in the Latin category brought the sounds of Son Jarocho music to Boyle Heights. Before doors opened at 8 am, the line for the free show at the Breed Street Shul stretched almost all the way to Cesar Chavez Blvd.

See also: Our Best Tweets From the Grammys Last Night

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Press Junkie PR/Emiliano Granado

Grant Dull a.k.a. El G brings the future sounds of Latin America to L.A.

Texas native Grant Dull is not the guy one would expect to see at the forefront of a revolution in Latin American music. A former resident of San Antonio with no connection to Latin America (other than his hometown's proximity to the Mexican border), he is one of the co-founders of Buenos Aires, Argentina-based record ZZK Records. The label is home to the latest crop of artists from various cumbia-hyphenated genres -- like electro-cumbia and digital-cumbia -- that have come out of South America over the past decade.

See also: The Ten Best Latin Alternative Albums of 2012

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