1	Film & TV Chameleon actor Jesse Garcia defies stereotype, and Rodrigo de la Serna relives a great escape. read more...
2	Music Kat de Luna lights up the charts with her new album while the Orishas release a CD of their best. read more...
3	Books Scribes share their insights on Dominican women, WWII vets and Hugo Chávez. read more...
4	Calendar Our monthly list of premier events throughout the U.S. read more...

Latin Forum

MUSIC

By VICTOR CRUZ-LUGO

over the moon

Dominican American pop music sensation Kat de Luna spoke with Hispanic via phone while in mid-tour for her debut release 9 Lives (Epic Records/www.katdeluna.com). Here’s what the precocious and bilingual 19-year-old had to say about the roaring success of her animal nature.

Hispanic Magazine: What’s the current running through the songs in 9 Lives?
Kat de Luna: The main theme of my album is expressing how to make dreams possible. Even Whine Up, the sexiest song is really about inspiration, daring to go after your dreams.

HM: You are only 19. How do you keep things in perspective, living this now-charged lifestyle?
KDL: I’ve been preparing for this a long time, fighting for seven years to get a record deal. There have been a lot of reality checks along the way. Tomorrow I might be back to square one, so I’m humble and simple while I try to do this thing in Spanish and English.

HM: What has been the toughest part of living your dream?
KDL: The truth is I’m very happy. But one thing is sort of weird; I’m a homey sort of person, and now I move from hotel room to hotel room and that can be sort of strange. I can get homesick.

HM: Is your life what you expected it would be?
KDL: Definitely. I am the sort of person that makes her own happiness. There are always battles along the way, but I find my resolution and make sure what I do is what I love.

a cure from the GODS

With the summer release of their greatest hits CD Antidiotico, son-meets-hip-hop trio Orishas closed one chapter of their musical legacy only to open the next. Orishas’s hard-rapping Yotuel—at times humble, then fiery—talked to
Hispanic via phone from Madrid about what it all means.

Hispanic Magazine: How do you define yourself within the trio?
Yotuel: They call me El Guerrero (The Warrior). I bring a hard edge to the music. You could say I’m the bazooka of the group, while Ruzzo [the other rapper] is the Uzi. And Roldan, well, he’s the whistling rocket, the sonero. I shoot that blank bullet that goes right to your heart. But there is no leader. All the compositions are written for a perfect balance of three.
HM: You are named after sacred Santeria gods, yet you are engaged in a commercial musical project. How do you feel about that?
Y: I feel very, very good about that. Our intentions were always to make good music. And we, and the orishas, are now part of history together. People come to know about the orishas [like] Chango and Yemaya through our music and I think the gods are quite happy with that and with us.

HM: Why a greatest hits CD now?
Y: To have spent the last 10 years making music, to have been emigrants [from Cuba] and to have created these new lives, to have had such opportunity and success, well there comes a time when you have to stop and say “Wow, look at all we have accomplished.” It’s time to celebrate and show people what we have lived. But are we going to stop? No way! We’re ready for another 10 years!

Vortex of Variety

Hip-hopper Baby Bash releases a whirlwind of a CD in Cyclone.

By VICTOR CRUZ-LUGO

The son of an Anglo father and a Mexican-American mother, hip-hop artist Baby Bash unravels anecdotes that reveal an urban Chicano experience with all that it entails: the heartbreak as well as the deep pull of family. But listen to his late October release, Cyclone (Arista/www.babybashmusic.com), and you will find more than another rough-edged hip hopper spitting Spanglish. Bash offers smooth, nuanced vocal and lyrical deliveries.
But where did he find that mellowed balance of meaningful lyrics, laid back grooves and well thought-out compositions that resist the clichéd droning of so much rap, instead tilting into the realms of pop, reggae, rock and even folk? And where did he find the courage and inner resources to define himself, as opposed to being defined by the marketplace? Place and history reveal the secrets to Cyclone’s (and Bash’s) variety.
“I grew up in Vallejo [California], and I was the only Chicano in an all black neighborhood. I instantly got into the hip-hop lifestyle, the dress and the culture,” he says. “My whole school was black, and I was always hanging out with blacks and it helped me get into what we now call urban Latino music.” That may explain some of his naturally sultry R & B-infused delivery, the ease with which he rides the grooves of tracks like Numero Uno, Supa Chic, In Tha Mood, Don’t Stop and other hook-infused numbers on Cyclone.
But dig deeper as Hispanic did, and there’s a deeper cultural complexity to Bash.
“Being Chicano shaped me first as a person, and then as an artist,” he says. “My family struggled with drug addiction so my grandmother raised me. I was a little wetito, and I was sort of a weird kid, never dark enough to be Mexican, never light enough to be white.”
But, he elaborates, what made him different also made him stronger, more resourceful as he moved between two worlds—one black, one Chicano. And always, the music of both cultures streamed in the background, a soundtrack to his life.
The do wop he heard his aunts and uncles listening to opened him to the softened contours of pop music, even as the songs of Freddy Fender and Vicente Fernández showed him how much could be bared through song. That’s all part of Bash’s music now. He offers feeling in a genre known for its toughness, and more than anything else he offers variety. Cyclone may be a hip-hop release, but it’s as much a pop CD of finely crafted songs and plenty of soul that’s easy, even tasty, to listen to.
The acoustic ballad Too Many Things—an homage to a Mexican American soldier in Iraq—is a case in point. It’s melancholic lament would be as at ease in the mouth of a Tupac Shakur as an Anthony Kiedis.
“I’m more of a songwriter, than a rapper,” Bash explains. “I don’t have the big ego and the rap is the last part I worry about ... That’s my formula for longevity because it’s about the song first, not even about Baby Bash.”
And where is that formula taking Bash? Far beyond the world of musica Hurban. Listen to Cyclone’s 14 tracks and you will hear influences from all over the hip-hop world, from laid-back West Coast bumpers to Dirty South in-your-face grinders. Watch Baby Bash’s artistic career and you will find him penning everything from tunes for country artists to Primos, a comedy that will feature Bash, fellow hip-hopper Chingo Bling and actor Danny Trejo.
If you have the luck of actually having a conversation with Bash, you can sample his deep versatility right down to his speech, which he calls “slanguage.” “Hey, I like to play with words and make them candy-coated,” he says.

Releases

Think Global:
Salsa
Various Artists
World Music Network
www.musicworld.net

Fourteen top salsa artists—from New York City, Colombia, Africa, England and elsewhere—lend their compositions to human rights organization Amnesty International. Compiled by tropical music impresario Lubi Jovanovic, the tunes are as good as the cause is just.

ColombiaAfrica:
The Mystic Orchestra
Voodoo Love Inna Champeta Land
World Music Network
www.musicworld.net

Imagine Paul
Simon’s Graceland album, but in Spanish and with vallenato flourishes. Fourteen contemporary Afro-Colombian tunes of the Champeta genre. Colombian stars Viviano Torres, Luis Towers and Justo Valdez join African legends Dally Kimoko, Diblo Dibala and others. Tight work.

Monkey Village
Phase III
Self-released
www.myspace.com/monkeyvillage

When underground sounds pulse with determined fury, they can bubble to the surface. This collection of 15 tracks, the third released by Miami musical collective Monkey Village, showcases the best of Miami’s homegrown music-makers. A percolating stew of Latino-fied musicians and Caribbean sonic sass.

Puerto Plata
Mujer de Cabaret
IASO Records
www.iasorecords.com

Accompanied by his nation’s best players, Dominican guitarist and sonero Jose “Puerto Plata” Cobles dazzles with 11 impeccable renditions from the Dominican golden age of guitar. The last living survivor of this classic period, Cobles stirs with the gravitas of a tradition dancing in the flesh.

Latino Nuevo
Various artists
Music Rough Guides
www.worldmusic.net

Contemporary
Latin music reflects ever-widening influences and cross-pollinations. These 14 fresh selections survey the emerging musical landscape. From surf rock, to electro-cumbia, from Jose Conde Y Ola Fresca to the Spam AllStars, the Latino Nuevo sound is as dynamic as it is compelling.

Chembo Wilson Corniel
For the Rest of Your Life
Chemboro
www.chembocorniel.com

“This is Latin
jazz, but all up in your face, New York style,” says conguero extraordinaire Chembo Corniel, of his second stellar solo release. For the Rest of Your Life’s 10 tracks feature unsung Latin Jazz heroes, and special guest singer/drummer Grady Tate. “Concrete, street and bricks!” Corniel concludes.