This one even hit the top 25 emailed stories for a while - starting at 20, then briefly climbing to 16!
Ojos de Brujo skillfully re-creates the sound of Barcelona's city streets.
- Song: "No Somos Maquinas"
- Artist: Ojos de Brujo
- CD: Techari
- Genre: World
NPR.org, May 16, 2007 · Flamenco has its own rhythm — a natural pulse of hands and feet and mouths. The Barcelona-based group Ojos de Brujo takes that rhythm and cranks it up, adding traditions of India and a hip-hop sensibility. Its members skillfully re-create the sound of their city streets, where many different kinds of music leak out of doorways of clubs and concert halls, then blend together to create one mass of sound.
"No Somos Maquinas" (translation: "We Are Not Machines") is one of Ojos de Brujo's more laid-back tunes, maintaining a kind of ironic balance between sweet, flowing vocal melodies and the mechanical precision of spoken delivery. It's both typical and unusual for the group instrumentally: The strumming of the Spanish guitar balances nicely with the vocals, while the jazz piano adds a vague cabaret feel to the swing. Add the vocal percussion of solcatu, the machine-gun fire of the spoken word, and the solid pulse of percussion, and the song becomes a writhing creature, pulsing not with mechanics, but with life.
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1 comment:
I am not writing about your story. I found some old metropolitan opera records -78rpm- given to my mother in 1944. The title of the works is "Stars of the Metropolitan Vol.2" on RCA Victor recordings. The records are fragile and can easily break. If you would like to hear more, you can e-mail me at lynnsyoung1980@yahoo.com. If the records are pretty much worthless, you can just ignore me! Some of the artists featured are Richard Cooks, Eide Norena, Jussi Bjoerling, Elisabeth Rethberg. I tried to send a message to NPR, but could not find an e-mail address.
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