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For a long time I have been interested in the popular arts. Their vernacular power and their low brow sensibility have captivated my attention and trigger my curiosity. Whenever I am immersing myself in a culture I always try to devour the popular imagery and language, and discover the carnivalesque in everyday life. During my time in the USA, I have become more and more fascinated with American funny images, comic books, and cartoons. The tradition of caricature, humorous drawings, and funny imagery is rich and diverse in this country and is one of the pillars of American cultural industries. As a matter of fact, from live action movies to video games, characters and stories from the world of cartoons have been recreated and re-appropriated in a variety of ways and with different results. Among all the great cartoonists and illustrators I have discovered, Basil Wolverton (1909-1978), stands out for his unique wacky style. Wolverton combines surrealism, horror, and sci-fi aesthetics, in an explosive mix that is grotesque, weird, and funny.


Although Wolverton published his work since the end of the 1920s, it was after 1946 that his style became more exaggerated, wacky, and grotesque. It was during this period that, Wolverton draw several horror and science-fiction comic books characterized by the weirdness of characters and stories, such as the The Eye of Doom (Jan 1952):

Nightmare World (Sep 1952) :

and The Swamp Monster(Jun 1953):

During this period of his creative career Wolverton also started to contribute to the anarchic humor magazine MAD with covers and cartoons. One of his most infamous covers was, inspired by his iconic “Lena the Hyena” (1946), the one for MAD #11 entitled “Beautiful Girl of the Month”:

Wolverton can be considered part of a rich tradition of “vulgar modernists” artist from the USA who have explored the anarchic forces of the carnivalesque, grotesque, and bizarre, across different arts. As Henry Jenkins notices in essay “I Like to Sock Myself in the Face”: Reconsidering “Vulgar Modernism,” some outstanding members of this tradition are animators Tex Avery and Frank Tashlin, musician Spike Jones, cartoonists Will Elder, Jack Coles, and Basil Wolverton, and comedian Ernie Kovacs. All of these artists, explored different media in order disrupt the conventions of modernist aesthetics with the chaotic power of the carnivalesque, absurd, and vulgar. In his explorations as a cartoonist, illustrator, and comic book writer, Basil Wolverton was able to not only experiment with the imagery but was also interested in the use of graphic sound-effects. His illustrated essay “Acoustic in the Comics” is a great reflection on the power of onomatopoeic words to disrupt the realist and classic expectations of a modern audience.

“We are not Japanese, we are not Americans, we are not human beings, we came from planet Peelander” yelled Kengo Hioki at the terrace of the Elysium while a camera man was interviewing him. Hioki San was wearing a single piece yellow chicken outfit that had a P and a white star in his vest. The costume, inspired by the sentai style suits (the ones used by the Power Rangers), is the official skin of the members of the band Peelander-Z. The concert they had just played was spectacular. I enjoyed it a lot, and was impressed by the energetic expressionism of their punk music performance. Although I have been assisting to several  Japanese punk music concerts, the live show of Peelander-Z was outstanding, more entertaining and clownish, more fun. I was captivated by their relationship with their public, by the cartoon-like colors of their dresses, by the simplicity of their music, and, overall, by their whole performance. Participating in their show made me happy and it made me laugh. If punk had to survive in the 21st century, the ensemble and collage that Peelander-Z puts together is one of its genuine expressions. Pure Japanese action comic punk.

And when I say genuine, I mean it in an ironical sense, because punk will never scape its paradoxical and contradictory subcultural nature. It will be authentic and revel but it will be condemned to use the language that is available in the mainstream culture, in the tradition, in the popular imaginary. As Dick Hedbidge,  points out in his seminal work Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), in order to communicate noise, chaos, and disorder, punk needs to play with the  language that is available in society and culture. Hedbidge said,

“The various stylistic ensembles adopted by the punks were undoubtedly expressive of genuine aggression, frustration and anxiety. But this statements, no matter how strangely constructed, were cast in a language which was generally available – a language that was current.” (87)

In the 21st century, the arsenal of symbols that is available for appropriation is extensive. Contemporary punks can steal and subvert a repertoire of globalized signs that covers several centuries. Peelander-Z, for instance, constructs its style, alternative identity, and Otherness, by using bits of Japanese action sentai heroes (power rangers), cartoon animation, science fiction, classic punk hairstyles, bowling, classic Americana,  and other kinds of noisy elements. The result of such articulation is  a caricature that makes us laugh and sympathize, a collage of nonsense, an absurd. Its meaning reminds elusive, deceive us, and evaporates.

However, it is when Peelander-Z  performs that the signifying practice of its punk style communicates the most. It is in their show when noise and chaos become meaningful, an organic whole. Their music is very basic and direct according the principles of the DIY ethics (e.g. Mad Tiger, S.T.E.A.K). Simple cords and lyrics compose the structure of Peelander-Z’s songs in a similar way as they structured the music of mythical punk bands such as  The Clash, The Sex Pistols, and The Ramones. Following the revolutionary aesthetics, Peelander-Z erases the boundary between audience and artists using different strategies. For instance, by offering instruments and props to its diverse audience (children, teens, adults, elders), Peelander-Z invites them to take active part of the performance. Kitchen utensils, drum sticks, and metallic bowls are given to a public that immediately starts to create a percussion line, adding more layers of sound to the noise played at the stage. Perhaps inspired by the epic-theater of Bertold Brecht, Peelander-Z also uses handwritten signs to indicate to the audience the lyrics of the song, encouraging to add its voice to the aural chaos. And if these tactics were not enough, several times the members of the band jump into the audience pit and perform antics disguised as bowling pins and red giant squids.

I had lots of fun during Peelander-Z performance. I not only danced and sang to their music but also documented their show with my camera-phone. I have finally put together a montage that summarizes their live action performance. As an audiovisual document, it complements well the brief analysis I have elaborated above. However, the video does not replace the adrenaline and interactivity of a Peelander-Z performance.

During the summer I lived in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2010, I became a regular visitor of the website CatracaLivre (Free Turnstile). The site helped me a lot to organize my cultural life and to experience the city in a diverse and rich way. In a South American megalopolis of the size of Sampa, with almost 20 million people in its metropolitan area, there are a myriad things to do everyday and it is easy to get overwhelmed by by chaotic transportation and the fear of the unknown. CatracaLivre was the best resource for finding out not only free concerts, conferences, films, exhibitions, and all kinds of events, but also for learning about the cultura paulistana. The site published reviews of the cultural activities everyday and allowed the users to access a comprehensive catalog of community resources. Thanks to this website, and of course, thanks to the good friends I made there, I had a fantastic time in Sampa and I was able to learn a lot about the language, culture, and rhythms of this enormous city.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to meet Gilberto Dimenstein, the creator of Catraca Livre (Free Turnstile), and to listen to the presentation he gave at International Symposium on Online Journalism 2012. I was fascinated by the story that he told. As a researcher of literacies and education, it was was enlightening to find out that CatracaLivre had its origins in an innovative educational project that Dimenstein started back in the 1990s in Vila Madalena, a neighborhood of São Paulo. The neighborhood-school project mapped all the community’s resources that surrounded a school and transformed them into learning assets for the students. Hence, the school became the hub of a network of theaters, cultural centers, companies, parks, museums, and other public resources that were ready to be integrated in education. As the school became connected to the neighborhood, the learning started to happen not only inside the walls of the classroom but also outside of the school. The learning-neighborhood model was so successful that similar educational projects (Bairro-Escola) were replicated across Brazil demonstrating that cultural and social capitals could be increased by connecting the community resources to the schools. Inspired by this model of learning, Dimenstein and his team, decided to create CatracaLivre, and offer to the citizens of São Paulo, information about all the free and low-cost cultural activities and community resources that existed in the metropolitan area. In this way, the whole city became a learning space and people could take advantage of all the assets that were available.

I totally agree with this model of neighborhood/city-learning and I can testify from my personal experience in Sampa, that CatracaLivre works great. The project has been so successful that it has become a platform for launching several start-ups. When talking about them, Dimenstein emphasized the collaborative, sustainable, open, and social entrepreneurial aspect of all these new initiatives. For instance, the Caronetas and Campus Aberto, are two websites that allow citizens to find ways of sharing their means of transportation. Descola Ai is a website where users can exchange and barter the commodities that they don’t need anymore. Veduca is as a repository of free and open online courses from top universities that have been translated into Portuguese. Sautil is a search engine that helps people to find information about the public health network.

Even internationally CatracaLivre has been recognized as exemplary model of civic empowerment, community building, and education. Open City Labs, a collaborative project developed by the MIT Center for Civic Media and the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, is creating a global network of individuals and organizations interested in implementing systems that allow citizens to have access to “information on low-cost events, services and opportunities in education, health, social welfare, culture, sports and employment that are locally available.”

I support this kind of civic and educational projects and I am looking forward to collaborating in their development. I think the future of learning and education needs to embrace the city and the neighborhood as physical spaces for exploration and experimentation, as communities with open connections and resources. When I was living in Sampa, I thought about Bogota, the city where I grew up, constantly. For me, Sao Paulo, appeared like a futuristic Bogota. Like a Bogota multiplied by 5 and fast-forward in time 100 years. I felt very comfortable in Sampa, like being at home but in a different scale. Embracing a more interconnected culture, distributing and opening the information, and giving more cultural and educational opportunities for the citizens makes our learning and living experiences better.

Although the practice of building a film music score by selecting a number of pre-recorded songs has been well established since the 1970s, this method of “composing” was limited to specific genres, styles, and particular periods of time. It was not until the 1990s that the “compilation score” became a practice in which the directors were able to arrange a very diverse music playlist. In The Children of Men (2006), for instance, Alfonso Cuaron has put together a playlist of 24 musical works that come from disparate genres such as hip hop, 18th century choral music, classic rock, and electronic dub step. In this essay, I describe how the organization of the eclectic compilation score of The Children of Men helps to structure the film and I analyze the semantic and emotive interaction of the music in several scenes.

First of all, in order to appreciate how the different songs and themes from the composite score help to structure the film narrative, it is necessary to outline the fabula:

A. Theo enters a coffee shop where the killing of the youngest person of the world is being announced in the TV news. When he exists, a bomb explodes in a store nearby.

B. Theo goes to the government office where he works.

C. Theo takes the train in order to encounter his friend Jasper.

D. Jasper picks up Theo outside of the train station. They drive off to Jasper’s house in the woods.

E. Jasper and Theo hang out and talk inside the house.

F. Theo wakes up in his apartment.

G. While walking through the streets, Theo is kidnapped by a group of rebels called The Fishes.

H. The Fishes interrogate Theo and he recognizes Julian, a former friend, among them. Julian asks Theo for help in getting an exit visa.

I. Theo is driven in an expensive car to see his friend, the minister of culture.

J. Theo takes dinner with the minister of culture and his son, and manage to get the exit visa.

K. At a Pub, Theo meets Luke, a member of the Fishes.

L. Theo wins at the dog races.

M. Theo meets Julian in a Bus.

N. Luke drives a car with Theo and Julian. Myriam and Kee, also travel with them and Theo meets them.

O. A group of rebels attack the car in the middle of a road. Julian is shot and dies. While trying to escape the car is stopped by two policemen. Luke kills them.

P. Julian is buried in the middle of nowhere.

Q. Luke takes Theo, Myriam and Kee to the Fishes farm. Inside a barn, Kee tells Theo that she is pregnant.

R. Theo, Kee, and Myriam escape from the Fishes after Theo has discovered, by hearing a conversation, that they killed Julian.

S. Theo, Kee, and Myriam go to Jasper house in the search of help. Jasper suggest breaking into a refugee/prisioner camp in Bexhill in order to have access to the sea. They sleep in the house and start preparing their trip.

T. Theo Kee and Myriam left Jasper house when the Fishes arrive. Jasper is killed.

U. At a school they meet Syd, the soldier who will take them to Bexhill.

V. Inside the camp, Theo, Myriam, and Kee are transported in a bus. Kee breaks waters. Myriam is thrown off the bus.

W. Theo and Kee meet Marichka, who takes them to a room where they can spend the night. The baby is born.

X. In the morning, Marichka guides Theo, Kee and the baby through the streets of Bexhill in the search of a boat they can use for escaping. The whole camp has transformed into a battle field with the rebels upraise. The Fishes find them and take Kee and her baby with them.

Y. Theo rescues Kee and the baby from an apartment building block, but is injured in his guts.

Z. Theo, Kee and the Baby take the rowboat and row towards the meeting point where the boat from the Human Project, “The Tomorrow” is supposed to arrive. Theo dies and “The Tomorrow” arrives.

The Children of Men has a four-act structure in where excerpts from the eclectic music playlist have been arranged serving semantic and emotive functions. In general, it can be said that as the narration progresses, the music style becomes less eclectic and more homogenous. The first act (A to J) has the most eclectic combination of choral music, hard rock, classic rock, progressive rock, alternative rock, hip hop, experimental electronica, and dub-step. The second act (I to P) has also a very diverse range of music styles that covers from electronica to indie rock to choral music. The third act (Q to T) has accompaniment excerpts from classic rock and choral music. Finally, the fourth act (U to Z) has an homogenous style of choral works and modern classical music.

As we can see, choral music is used as accompaniment in each of the four acts. The systematic use of this kind of music through the entire film helps to elicit an emotional mood of salvation and spirituality. Not surprisingly, the majority of choral excerpts are from “Fragments of a Prayer,” the only original work that the film has. As John Tavener, the composer who scored it, explains in the inner notes that accompany the CD release of the soundtrack, “Fragments of a Prayer” is a “musical/spiritual reaction” to the state of dilapidation and decay of the world depicted in The Children of Men. Performed by the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and the string section of a symphonic orchestra, the selected excerpts from this 15 minutes piece function as non-diegetic pit music for accompany several scenes (A, B, C, P, Q, T, V, W, Y,Z) where the characters are facing the gritty of a hopeless 2027 London siege under terror and violence. The female voice feels very spiritual, almost like a religious chant and it key for helping the audience connect with the characters of Theo and Kee.

Following Michel Chion’s terminology, the interaction of the excerpts of “Fragments of a Prayer” in all the scenes where they appear, can be understood as empathetic music. As Chion has stated, this kind of interaction occurs when the music “participates directly in the emotion of the scene, moves in sympathy with it, envelops it, prolongs and amplifies it.” (430) Other choral works from the classical repertoire of the 18th and 20th century are also used as pit music in The Children of Men, such as “Alexander’s Feast/War, He Sung, Is Toil and Trouble” by George Frideric Handel (scene J) and “Kindertotenlieder/Nun Will Die Sonn’ So Hell Aufgeh’n” by Gustav Mahler (a brief moment during scene S). These pieces also incur in the kind of semantic and emotive interaction that make us feel empathy towards the characters and feel a sort of spiritual salvation.

However, the narrative necessity of setting up the time and space of London in 2027 explains the music eclecticism that characterizes the first and second acts. Music excerpts from 20th and 21st century popular music function the onscreen diegetic sound of a dystopian world. It is perhaps during the scenes where the character of Jasper appears, when the diversity of the onscreen diegetic music becomes more extreme. This character is a truly eclectic music lover who is always playing and listening to popular songs either in his car radio or in his home hi-fi stereo. During scene D, we hear three different songs from disparate genres and periods of time. First, while they are on the road, we hear Deep Purple version of “Hush”, a hard rock theme recorded in 1968. Second, when they have arrived to the hidden entrance to the woods, we hear a hip hop track recorded in 2001, “Witness (1 Hope)” by Roots Manuva. Third, when they are parking the car in front of the house we hear a cover version of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” (1966) performed by Junior Parker and recorded in 1971.

Once the action has moved inside Jasper’s house (scene E), the diegetic music changes its source to a hi-fi stereo located in the living room (this fact enables the song to circulate between the onscreen and the offscreen space). First we hear a cover version of the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” (1967) performed Franco Battiato while the camera reveals a wall covered by scraps of newspaper and magazine articles related to Jasper and his wife past work. Then, while Jasper and Theo are in the living room discussing the current social chaos, we hear in the background Radiohead’s “Life in a Glasshouse” (2001), an alternative rock/electronic theme that mixes synthesizer atmospheres and electronic beats with New Orlean-style brass horns (clarinet, a trumpet and a trombone). At the end of the conversation, and after having asking Theo if he wants to listen to “Zen music,” Jasper plays in his stereo the very noisy and loud avant-garde electronica theme “Omgyjya Switch7” by Aphex Twin, and starts to make the body gesture of playing a guitar as a punk musician.

All this diegetic music played in the radio and the stereo, and as well the music played in scene S (“There Is An Ocean” by Donovan, 1973; “Money Honey” by Pressure, 2005; and “Bring On The Lucie” by John Lennon, 1973), function as empathetic music that helps the spectator to identify himself with the character of Jasper, and therefore, to sympathize with Theo, who is Jasper’s good friend.

Other popular music tunes that serve to establish the time and space of a decadent world are heard off-screen. The Dubstep tracks “Backward” by Kode 9 and Spaceape that we hear in the pub (K), and the “Anti-War Dub” by Digital Mystikz that appears while Theo walks in the streets of London (G), reinforce the dystopian vision of the world with super-low frequencies, syncopated drums, and dark lyrics. The Dubstep electronic music style, that emerged around 2005, feels very appropriate for a hopeless gray future. A different kind of empathy is the one created while Theo is taken to the minister of culture (I) and we see images of London through the car window while hearing a version of the song “The Court of the Crimson King” recorded by the British progressive rock band King Crimson in1969. In this later case, the popular music song creates empathy by its lyrics and a sort of nostalgia with the youth political activism from the 60s and 70s.

However, not all the music from The Children of Men, creates empathy. We also encounter a unique case of anempathetic music originated by the use of popular music onscreen. As Chion has explained, this sort of music-image interaction occurs when “the music registers, with respect to the emotionally intense situation onscreen, a palpable indifference; by continuing on its own impassive, mechanical course.” (430) In the scene O, while Luke is driving the car where Theo, Julian, Kee and Myriam travel, the radio plays an alternative/indie rock song called “Wait” by The Kills. As the scene progresses and they are attacked on the road by a group of rebels, the song keeps rolling in the background.

“Tell me you’re the lucky one
How fast you can throw
Tell me all the things you’ve done
I would like to know
Why you say wait
Why”

While they try to escape driving in reverse and the rebels are attacking them, breaking the windows of the car with rocks and sticks, and shooting from a motorcycle, the song continues.

“La la la la la la la
Why you say
La la la la, la la la la
Why you say wait”

Julian is shot in her neck, blood is everywhere, Theo screams, and we keep hearing the song.

“So tell me something bad you’ve done
Tell me bout your ghost
Tell me bout the game you won
And the one who lost
Why you say wait
Wait”

The police cars arrive to the location and force Luke to stop. The music however does not pause, does not fade. Theo screams “We are British citizens! We have British passports!” The policemen force them to get out the car. Luke gets out and shots the two policemen 5 times with a semi-automatic gun. Meanwhile, the radio continues playing the song.

“It’s not worth saving, when you say wait
Why you say
It’s not worth saving, when you say wait
Why you say wait”

Recorded in 2003 by the British based band The Kills, the song “Wait” function as diegetic onscreen music of 2027 London. However, in contrast to the other music that we hear in the film, either onscreen or offscreen, it does not generate any kind of sympathy, or any emotional relationship to the scene in which it appears. The highly intense action of the chase and the attacks of the rebels, and the three different murders that occur in the scene O are completely ignored by the dense mood of the song, the distortion effect of the guitar, and the angry and rough voice of the singer.

In conclusion, the music of The Children of Men is eclectic and lacks unity of style. The diversity of genres can be justified by the semantic and emotive functions that the songs excerpts accomplish in each of the scenes. Furthermore, as we have seen in this analysis, the composite score that director Alfonso Cuaron has put together or “composed” fosters the four-act narrative structure of the film and is appropriate for setting up the time and space of a dystopian London in 2027.

The Republic of Colombia has a long history of violence that goes back to its birth in 1810 and expands through more than two centuries. Colombians have grown up in the middle of an armed conflict that has had different phases, cycles, and scales. The last decade has been a phase characterized by spectacular military actions against the FARC guerrillas and a political process of para-military desmovilization. As a result of these actions, the state has recovered control over the roads, and the general public opinion, specially in the urban centers, agrees that the country is more secure. People has started to travel more by land and the tourism has increased considerably. However, the war continues in the remote areas of jungles and mountains, and, while the actors of the conflict (state army, guerrillas, and para-military militias) keep fighting for controlling territories and narcotraffic routes, civilians continue being displaced from their lands or killed between the fire. As an attempt to reflect on this ongoing warfare and on the violation of human rights, the photographer Stephen Ferry has been working on a project called Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict. Last Thursday, I listened to the presentation of this project during the event Picturing Crisis: Engaging the Viewer that took place at the Austin Center of Photography. I was pretty moved by the imagery and by the aims of  Violentology.

Violentology unfolds in various formats: a book, an exhibition, pdf booklets, and a website. Ferry shared with the audience a proof copy of the book so we could experiment touching the “newspaper” quality of the pages (“Bulky” paper stock), and looking at the big format of the images. By choosing such material and format, Ferry wanted to make a homage to the Colombian printed press and to the graphic reporters who have documented the conflict. He said that there is a rich tradition of photographic documentation in Colombia that he wanted to bring to the foreground. Ferry has assembled a collection of photographs that tells the story of the Colombian conflict since 1948 until today. He has looked at the historical archives in the search of visual evidence that  complements, at different levels, the photographic work he has done in recent years. By covering this period of time, Ferry reminds us that the so called historical period “La Violencia” (1948-1958), perhaps has  never ended. Instead, the conflict seems to  expand until today as a chronic illness. An example of this effort of historical contextualization are the images of “Sangre Negra,” one of the most ferocious criminals from the 1950s.

The pages of the book  can become posters when Violentology is exhibited in galleries, classrooms, and public spaces. Thanks to the quality of the paper, the pages can be easily wheat–pasted or taped to any kind of wall. The exhibition at Bogota’s Galería Valenzuela Klenner displayed the images as a sort of long film strip.

Although I didn’t have time to read the articles that are included in the book, I was struck by the images. They reminded me of the violent history of my country and the repetitive narrative and symbolism of  Colombian armed conflict. Somehow, this symbolic imagery of the war and violence is very limited.  It is as if a country and its people could not escape a recursive story of civil wars, lies, violations, and corruptions. I agree with Ferry in that the distribution of big format printed photographs has the potential to change the way in which violent imagery is read by the public. The medium is the message as the famous aphorism says. In contrast to the Colombian mainstream media reiterative and rapid coverage of the conflict, Violentology freezes the frame of the TV news political spectacle, unfocus the action of a fight, and re-contextualize graphic evidence from the historical archive. Hopefully, this message, would help Colombians to think in solutions to our conflict that don’t rely in increasing the violence but instead in imagining future dialogues, and cultural  transformations.

Directed and written by Jacques Tati, and produced by Jolly Film and Specta Films, Play Time was released in France in 1967 after three long years of expensive production and postproduction processes. The expenses of the movie were so huge and its reception so poor, that both producers and director went bankrupt. Even worst, Tati ended loosing all the rights of the movie since he could not afford to pay the multiple loans that he had acquired. However, Play Time is one of the most beautiful comedic films ever made, a sound film masterpiece, and a unique kind of sensorial game.

The choice of certain technical tools and narrative technique explains in part Play Time economic failure. On the one hand, Tati decided to shoot, edit, and distribute the movie in 70 millimeters film (1.85:1 aspect ratio) and five-tracks analog stereophonic sound. Since not all theaters could project and reproduce such kind of film and sound format, its distribution was limited to a certain kind of venues. On the other, the absence of a coherent cause-and-effect narrative and of goal-oriented characters, frustrated the expectations of the popular audience. Even after Tati agreed in 1973 to transfer the film to 35 millimeters and monophonic sound for its distribution in the USA, Play Timeremained unpopular and was only well received by specialized criticism that exalted the beautiful formal aspects of the film over its apparently plain content.

The context
Globally, at the time of Play Time release, the world was immersed in the dynamics of the Cold War and the Vietnam War. American consumerism was being spread as the major ideology across Western countries, and in popular culture rock n’ roll (in English language) was conquering youth audiences. In 1967 the Beatles released Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band, one of the most innovative albums in the history of music production. The same year, Hollywood studios produced movies for the younger audience such as “The Graduate,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” and “Cool Hand Luke.” In France, the president Charles de Gaulle tried to maintain a position of independence from the hegemonic power of the USA. The French local cultural context was vibrant with the development of the New Wave and the radical avant-garde activism of the Situationists. In 1967 Jan Luc Godard released La Chinoise, a film that portrays the ideas of a small group of students. The same year, Guy Debord published for the first time The Society of Spectacle. The local context was, therefore, quite revolutionary. The youth, especially university students, were involved in radical political and cultural activities against capitalist and consumer ideology and society. One year later, in 1968, such vibrant context exploded in riots, strikes, and urban revolts.

Play Time was difficult to understand for moviegoers of the 60s and 70s. The film transgressed the conventions of the comedy genre and its major theme, the life in a hypermodern futuristic city, was a little bit out of tune with the current political, historical, social, and cultural global/local contexts. Furthermore although big part of the audience at that time went to see the film expecting to encounter Tati’s interpretation of Monsieur Hulot character as in his previous Mon Oncle (1958) and Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), they were disappointed by Hulot’s lack of motivations and drive in Play Time. They expected a conventional comedy but they got something quite different, a sort of sensorial game designed to engage the audience in active perceptual play. Play Time explored a new kind of genre, an authentic and alternative comic cinema based on intense sensorial play and in very stylized visual an aural parameters.

Playful Disorientation
Nowadays, Play Time can be fully appreciated and enjoyed. I would like to approach to it as a digitized sound film available in DVD format, which can be reproduced by a computer using a 27’’ screen and a surround sound system. One of my favorite things about sound film, as an art form, is how it can interact with the seeing and hearing senses of the spectators thanks to the synchronization of sounds and moving images. The simultaneous occurrence of visual and aural phenomena creates a richer sensorial experience, in which images and sounds gain expressivity, acquire new meanings, and are re-located in new contexts. Regardless of what kinds of sounds (voices, music, sound effects, ambient sounds or a mixture of them) meet the images, their encounter always creates effects of form that shape the audience activity of hypothesis building and expectation meeting. Although some of these effects were quickly standardized by the classical Hollywood film system and were intended to provide the illusion of continuity, reinforce the character causality, and foster narrative unity (e.g. using a popular tune or an ambient sound to establish a setting in a particular time and place; using a music motif to emphasize the emotion or the mental state of a character; using dialogue along with shot-reverse-shot visual sequences to create temporal continuity), other effects remained unexplored or marginalized to alternative film systems. In Play Time (1967), Tati created one of those alternative systems and experimented with the creation of an effect that I have called “playful disorientation.”

Play Time stands out as a very unique sound film that is at the same time difficult and pleasant to watch and hear. The first time I interacted with it, I experienced a mixture of sensations. On the one hand, the beauty of the huge set design, the dense mise-en-scene compositions, and the unconventional soundtrack astonished me. On the other, the lack of character motivation and goals, the absence of coherent and clear dialogue, and the length of the movie (02:05:24) bored me and at sometimes even made me fall sleep for a couple of minutes. However, at the end of the film I had the feeling that I had enjoyed it very much. I had certainly laughed at different moments and was intrigued by its very subtle audio-visual humor. I wanted to interact with the film again. I wanted to understand better what was really going on with the people and the sounds of that modern world that Tati had imagined, and I wanted to figure out why it was making me laugh in a way that I had not experienced before. It was not until I watched/heard Play Time for the second and third time that I got a better sense of the sort of game that Jacques Tati prepared for the audience of this film.

Play Time requires a particular type of spectatorship activity that instead of creating hypothesis related to a coherent cause-and-effect narrative chain and to the character’s action/reactions, actively listens to the soundtrack (especially to the sound effects) and is ready to explore the mise-en-scene in order to find the visual detail that seals the meeting between image and sounds. By encouraging perceptual play, interacting with the film becomes and exercise to the senses, more specifically, an exercise in the localization of sound sources in a dense and huge visual frame. The payoff of such exercise is a personal laughter, the discovery of a comic relationship between a sound or the absence of a sound, and a very small detail in the image. That is the sort of humor that Tati is proposing in this film, an audio-visual humor based on careful observation of moving images and active listening of well-defined sounds.

Visual and Aural Parameters
In order to understand the unique stylistic parameters of Play Time it is necessary to start by recognizing the technical choices that Jacques Tati made during the production and post-production of the film and his total control over them. Play Time was shot in 70 millimeters film and its soundtrack was completely made during postproduction using magnetic sound. The big film format permitted to capture the enormous dimensions of the set and fostered the director’s obsession with long shots, deep focus, and dense mise-en-scene compositions. Furthermore, the 70 mm had a space (5 mm) for six tracks of magnetic sound that was carefully recorded, edited, and mixed by Tati and Jacques Maoumont, the sound supervisor. The magnetic sound enabled the creation of a very stylized and highly defined soundtrack whose main characteristic is the proliferation of loud sound effects rich in high frequencies. For being a film from the pre-Dolby era (before 1975), it is quite amazing the degree of sonic sophistication that Play Time achieves. The high definition magnetic sound facilitated the creation of polyrhythms and polyphonies, and a very dynamic treatment of the different elements of the soundtrack (dialogue, music, sound effects, and ambient sounds).

The story of Play Time is quite simple and it occurs during two days and two nights. The first day, a group of American tourists lands in the airport of a very modern, homogenous, and futuristic Paris. The same day, Monsieur Hulot tries to meet a businessman called Monsieur Giffard in an office building but ends visiting an International Home Fair, and a Travel Agency where he crosses paths with the group of American tourists. After visiting an old friend at night and eating dinner at the Drugstore, Monsieur Hulot is invited by an old friend to the opening of the Royal Garden Restaurant. There he meets Barbara, one of the American tourists that arrived in the morning. As dawn comes, Hulot and Barbara go to the Drugstore and have breakfast together. Then, they walk through the streets until the American tourist bus picks up Barbara. The film ends with the bus trip to the airport. A detailed outline of the story could be organized as follows:

A. American tourists arrive to Paris’s Airport
B. Bus ride to the hotel.
C. Monsieur Hulot tries to meet Monsieur Giffard at the Office Building
D. Monsieur Hulot wanders through the International Home Fair and crosses paths with the American tourists.
E. Monsieur Hulot enters the Travel agency and crosses paths again with the American tourists.
F. Monsieur Hulot visits a friend in the Apartment complex.
G. At the Royal Garden Restaurant opens its doors its guests.
H. Monsieur Hulot eats a sandwish at the Drugstore and is found by a friend who works as a door man in the Royal Garden.
I. Monsieur Hulot goes to the Royal Garden opening party and meets Barbara while the whole restaurant falls apart.
J. Monsieur Hulot and Barbara have breakfast at the Drugstore.
K. Barbara and Monsieur Hulot walk together through the streets and enter a supermarket.
L. The tourist bus picks up Barbara and takes her, along with the other American tourist to the airport.

The story of Play Time is told (structured) in a series of 12 episodes according to the linear progression of time going straight forward from A to L with out having any flashback, fast-forward, ellipsis, or parallel actions. There are also little periods of transition between each episode that are set up in the modernized streets of Paris (between C and D, E and F, F and G, J and K) and that serve as bridges between the different episodes. The structure resembles a circle that is constrained by the parameters that Tati has chosen. In general, we can say that the intrinsic stylistic norm that dominates the film aural style is the placement of loud and clear sound effects in the foreground while the other soundtrack elements (music, dialogue, ambient) remain in the background. As the film structure develops, we can recognize the variations of the aural stylistic norm. While in the first half of the film (A to F) the foreground is an exclusive territory for sound effects and tiny bits of dialogue, in the second half (G to L) the music, ambient, and dialogue elements are also brought to the foreground several times. In fact towards the end of the movie it is only music what remains in the foreground.

As regard to the visual style, during first half of the film (A to F) the mise-en-scene is characterized by black, white and gray colors, empty modern spaces, and the robotic and rigid movement of characters that seem to be in harmony with the hypermodern architecture. In contrast, progressively during the second half (G to L), characters start to move more freely (the most chaotic moment occurs during the Royal Garden dance party), bodies and object fill spaces, and multiple colors emerge from the dresses and set decoration.

Perceptual Game
The lack of narrative causality and characters goals is replaced by the well-defined visual and aural parameters. No single person is really important in Play Time, everybody is. No single character has a real motivation. The perceptual game that Jacques Tati proposes to the audio-viewers of this film goes beyond the creation of hypothesis related to a well-constructed narrative. Contrary to meeting the kind of expectations that the audience usually forms while watching a classical Hollywood film, either dramatic or comedic, Play Time proposes a different kind of engagement and participation. The engagement is based on a perceptual game that consists in localizing the sound source of sound-effects that have been highlighted in the soundtrack. What happens when a very precise and detailed sound meets with a dense image? What happens when the image has so much information and we have to locate a short but very loud sound?

Since the visual frame is so dense and complex due to the systematic use of deep focus, long shots, and dense mise-en-scene composition, the meeting of images and sounds creates the effect of “playful disorientation”. Even when the sounds we hear in the soundtrack are clear and loud, standing out in the foreground and calling our attention, we are not totally sure of having localized its source in the image. The usually comfortable audio-viewer activity of perceiving the concomitance of discrete sounds and discrete visual events as a single phenomenon becomes challenging because sometimes we cannot find the right visual detail that seals the marriage between sound and image. Of course, the audio-viewer has the option of choosing any of the visual events that are occurring at the same time on screen and can link them to the very noticeable sound-effects. It is as if we were trying to find a needle in a haystack based on the sound it creates. However, if we choose not to participate of the perceptual challenge of completing the meeting of images and sounds, we miss big part of the humor of the film.

There are numerous examples of the exercises on localization of sound that Tati has systematically set up for the audio-viewer across almost all the episodes of the film. I will highlight only one of them in order to give a sense of how the “playful disorientation” works. Towards the end of the airport episode (A) when the group of American tourist is about to exit the street, we encounter a long shot of a hall where many people is waking and standing up. While in the visual foreground we can see the customs gates and the American tourists, in the background we see electrical stairs and people with suitcases walking and standing in the first and second floors. Right in the middle of the hall we can also see a woman sitting in a couch with a brown bag in front of her. Meanwhile, in the soundtrack, emerging from the mixture of ambient sound (quite room tone), dialogue (vocal polyphony as cocktail party effect caused by the chat of the American tourists, tourist guide voice, female public announcer), and sound-effects (foot steps), we suddenly hear the loud sound of a dog barking. Where is that sound coming from? Where is that dog hidden? After a fast image exploration we realize that the woman in the couch is touching her brown bag doing a gesture similar to the one of stroking a dog. We laugh.

Conclusion
In Play Time, Jacques Tati has created a unique parametrical film system that not only transgresses the traditional narrative expectations of the audience but it also challenges the audio-viewer comfortable perception of the meeting of sounds and images. By encouraging an active audio-viewer participation that consists in the localization of sound sources within a complex visual frame, Play Time represents an innovation in the cinematographic language and in the generation of laughter. Such innovation requires a different kind of spectatorship that is not afraid of exercising its seeing and hearing senses, and of completing sound-image relationships that appear at first time as unfinished. Play Time is a perceptual game in which the narrative and meaning have been undermined in favor of the development of a new kind of sensual interactivity and play that generates laughter.

References
Bordwell, David. Parametric Narration. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. Pp. 274-309
Burch, Noël. Theory of Film Practice (London: Secker & Warburg, 1973).
Chion, Michel. Film: A Sound Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
Hilliker, Lee. In the Modernist Mirror: Jacques Tati and the Parisian Landscape. The French Review, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Dec., 2002), pp. 318-329
Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Tati’s Democracy. An Interview and Introduction. http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/?p=15628. Retrieved on May 7, 2010. Originally published in the May-June 1973 issue of Film Comment.
Thompson, Kristin. Play Time: Comedy on the Edge of Perception. Breaking the Glass Armor : Neoformalist Film Analysis. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1988. pp. 247-261.

No suelo escribir en español en este blog pero creo que debo hacerlo más frecuentemente para así reconectarme con lectores que hablan mi lengua materna en las Americas y al otro lado del Atlántico. En esta ocasión quiero compartir el video de una entrevista que hice durante el SXSW a Tarek Shalaby, un bloguero egipciano que ha participado activamente de la revolución que se viene dando en su país desde el 2011. En la entrevista, que fue hecha mientras esperabamos el inicio de la proyeccion del film Anonymous: We are legion, Tarek habla del campamento en la plaza de Tahir en El Cairo, del proceso de cambio de régimen, la participación de los jóvenes, la similitud del Mundo Árabe con Latinoamérica, el acceso a tecnología en Egipto, el analfabetismo, el hacktivismo, y la aceleración de la concientización del pueblo egipcio durante la revolución. Escuchar a Tarek hablar sobre estos temas con su experiencia de primera mano es realmente interesante. Su testimonio deja en claro que aunque el proceso de una revolución y cambio social es a largo plazo, es definitivamente posible. Su optimismo hacia el futuro es inspirador.

The last 10 days have been full of cultural activities here in Austin due to the annual SXSW conference/festival. The town-city of Austin transforms, for few days, into a hectic place where people from different parts of the world (mostly from North America and UK) meet. The SXSW is an interesting crossroad point for entrepreneurs, artists, filmmakers, musicians, innovators, educators, and fans. During this time, a little bit of the diversity and energy of a cosmopolitan city can be felt in Austin. This year was my second SXSW and I had the opportunity of participating not only in the music and film festival but also in the interactive conference. I liked the experience very much but I also found it exhausting. Today, I have spent the whole day away of downtown avoiding any concert, film, or talk. It was a day for resting, for recovering after all the intensity, and for reflecting about what I saw, listened, and interacted during the past days. In these blog entry I am going to share some of those reflections.

One of the things that really impressed me as a person who lives in Austin, is the capacity of this town to host so many people and provide them with so much entertainment. It seems to me that there are not limits to the organizers of the SXSW and they keep expanding the conference/festival each year, making it bigger and bigger. Although this could be good for local business, service providers, and the organizers, it could also be a little bit overwhelming for the participants. I really got tired of running from one venue to another and then to other one, trying to catch a panel, a keynote, a screening, or a concert. Not to mention the getting in lines for everything, from entering restrooms to ordering foods. This could be fine for a couple of days but starts to get too much after your 5th day in SXSW.

The worst thing of getting in line for the SXSW events is that sometimes you cannot even enter the event you are waiting for. It happened to me for the film screenings of Iron Sky and Wikileaks: Secrets and Lies, for the keynote of Baratunde, and for the concerts of Santagold and Balkan Beatbox. The society of spectacle loves lines, it is like a performance of the multitude. Lines are like frozen walking crowds.

During SXSW one can experience in Austin the vertigo of the multitudes. Crowds walk the streets, not going to work, but moving in the search of entertainment. And there are tons of spectacles not only in the official venues but also in public spaces, streets, parks, backyards, coffeehouses, parking lots, you name it. Sixth Street in Downtown is, however, the most hyperbolic expression of the SXSW spectacle. During the days and nights of the music festival, the street is closed to traffic and opened only to pedestrians. The restaurants, bars, and clubs that are on the sides of Sixth blast their sound systems, while in the middle of the street many musicians and performers create improvised stages. There are also several carnival-like parades that tour Sixth promoting a musician, a new app, or a website, giving away t-shirts and bags, or doing a random choreography as the one performed by the decentralized dance party (DDP).

It is precisely during this time of the year that one can believe in the myth of Austin as the “live music capital of the world“. Indeed, there are many live shows everywhere during the afternoons and nights. There could be 20 different bands playing at the same time, or even more, so it is difficult to decide where to go. Most of the music events are organized as showcases in where different groups play for 40 minutes one after another. This provide the audience with an opportunity to listen to many bands and discover new sounds. Other shows are framed as special parties sponsored by major media companies where bands can play for the normal length of a concert (aprox 90 minutes).

It is difficult for me to review in this blog entry all the different bands I listened and liked. I will try to write about them in the future and share some of the videos and pictures I recorded. For now, I am just going to mention my favorite SXSW 2012 musicians. My highlights, with a little Colombian bias, are Ghostland Observatory, Dan Deacon, Apparat, Banbarabanda, Lila Downs, M.A.K.U. SoundSystem, Acollective, Monsier Perine, and Peelander Z. Perhaps the best show, and the longest as well, was made by the Ghostland Observatory, a local band from Austin who put together a performance with an impressive display of lights and a powerful sound.

As regard to the films I got the opportunity to watch, I really liked three documentaries. We are Legion. The story of the Hacktivists is a comprehensive review of the decentralized activist movement and features some interesting members of the Anonymous community and as well scholars who have been following its development. The film does a good job contextualizing the movement and its impact during the years it has been taking action mainly in the USA but also in other parts of the world. Another film I liked a lot was Grandma Lo-fi: The Basement Tapes of Sigrídur Níelsdóttir, a documentary about woman from Iceland who becomes a prolific musician at the age of 70. Plenty of music, this film follows the creative process of this grandmother who is not only very good at composing songs with a keyboard, but also is excellent at recording sounds, voices, and instruments with a simple home stereo and a mic. My third documentary is called La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus, and as it names says it, this movie tells the story of a school bus that migrates from the USA to Guatemala. The transformation of an obsolete vehicle into a useful means of public transportation, is told from the perspective of five characters which lives intersect due to their relation to the bus and to its changes.

Finally, I have to recognize that although I loved some of the music and film spectacles, several panels and keynotes of the SXSW Interactive conference were also inspiring and I liked very much. This is the first non-academic conference I go and I found it pretty exciting. The energy and positivism of the participants is contagious and it is great to hear and meet people who is making changes happening in the real world using networked digital technologies. Of course, there is also a lot of marketing and evangelism in many talks, and the buzzwords of social media, participation, and democracy, are cited over and over during SXSWi at risk of leaving them empty of any content. However, I have the feeling that overall, the good geek intentions of changing the world and collaborating wins. Learning about concrete social media projects and innovations is always great. For me, in particular, it was excellent to hear about the social innovation projects in Brazil such as the cultural producer network Fora do Eixo, the open data project in Chile Poderopedia, and the citizien journalism project mipanamatransparente in Panama.

After surviving SXSW 2012 the balance is definitely positive. Due to the amount of information and sensations one gets during a 10-day period of time it is quite understandable to feel a tired. It is exhausting but it is worth it. I am looking forward to assisting next year and putting together a panel about learning spaces, technology, and transmedia in education. Meanwhile, Austin will return to its reality of few pedestrians and no lines.

Waiting in lines is one of the cultural practices of the attendees to the SXSW festival. Tonight we did again a very long line around the Ritz Theater in oder to enter the screening of a movie and we couldn’t get in. Yesterday we had the same result. We keep missing the opportunity of watching Iron Sky, a new film made in a participatory way inspired by the free/open source software method of production. Usually you don’t expect that a midnight screening is going to be as crowded in a place like Austin. However, this is what happens during South By. Austin transforms into a crowded city, its downtown starts to be populated by multitudes that move through a simple urban layout (chess pattern) in search of concerts, talks, parties, movies, foods, and different varieties of entertainment. Lines are a sort of award for the organizers of the events, they reveal a little bit of the commitment of the audience, its passion, its engagement. We didn’t care about waiting in line because after having listened to some of the members of the Iron Sky crew (including director and producer) and having watching the trailer, we were eager to see the movie.

The film is an absurd and dark sci-fi comedy about Nazis from the dark side of the moon that try to conquer planet earth in 2018. According to the story, the Nazis moved to the moon after loosing World War II and developed a space infrastructure capable of producing a whole spaceship fleet. The imagery of the film is a parody of the American sci-fi action genre and one can find, at least in the trailer, starships that look like the ones that appear in Star Treck, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica. The special effects are astonishing and reveal the success of Iron Sky in crowdsourcing many of the production and post-production aspects of the film. The best way to illustrate this is with the Iron Sky trailer:

Timo Vuorensola, the Finish director of the movie, explained that the success of participatory film making relies in engaging a community of collaborators that is willing to not only do volunteer work but also donate money and demand the distribution of the movie in their different cities and towns. As other examples of the application of the free/open source software (FOSS) model of production, Iron Sky had an online platform (www.wreckamovie.com) for organizing and distributing several tasks that needed to be completed (visual effects, editing, set and art design, costumes and so on) by professionals and amateurs passionate about the Iron Sky story. In a certain way, we could even say that these volunteers and collaborators were fans of Iron Sky, people who believed in the story world and wanted the film to be completed. The platform provided a space for the collaborators to meet, connect, discuss, and coordinate the different tasks. And the best part of its success is that the platform has continued online providing a service for filmmakers interested in producing movies in new collaborative ways.

There is one more screening of Iron Sky during this hectic week of SXSW. Next wednesday we hope to be able to enter the theater and see what it looks like one of the most funny sci-fi films ever made.

The journey of cumbia, a rhythm from the Caribbean coast of Colombia, across the Americas is an interesting example of the power of Caribbean music to transcend national borders and provide inspiration for the emergence of new music styles. During the second half of the 20th century, cumbia was appropriated and hybridized in Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and the south of the U.S, giving rise to the cumbia villera, cumbia sonidera, cumbia chicha, techno cumbia, and cumbia andina mexicana, among other variations. In the dawn of the 21st century, within the context of globalization and informatization, a new cumbia style is emerging thanks to the practices of certain deejays around the world that are mixing classic cumbia tunes with other rhythms such as hip-hop, dub, reggaeton, dance-hall, and B-more breakbeats. Because these deejays use digital technology for their music production, performance, and distribution, it seems appropriate to call the new style they are creating cumbia digital.

Researching the Cumbia in the Americas.
The simplicity of the 4/4 cumbia rhythm, its catchy groove -mixture of indigenous high raspy sounds (made with guacharaca or güiro) and steady African drum beats (made with bass and medium drums)- and its repetitive and clear melodies (made first with indigenous gaitas and millo´s flutes, later with European accordions, clarinets, keyboards, and guitars), are the musical characteristics that have made cumbia very popular among dancers and musicians.

The stylizations, appropriations and hybridizations of cumbia in different parts of South, Central, and North America have motivated researchers to study the local adaptations of cumbia and their relationships with the construction of cultural identities and urban subcultures. Martín (2008), De Gori (2005), and Cragnolini (2006) have studied the cumbia villera (shantytown or ghetto cumbia) in Buenos Aires highlighting how the dramatic urban context of violence during the 1990s Argentinean economic crisis surrounded the emergence of this music style. Hurtado (1995) has looked at how the cumbia chicha or psychedelic cumbia from Perú articulates the social identities of the immigrants from the highlands in Lima. Santillán and Ramírez (2004) have researched the production, distribution, and consumption of tecnocumbia in Quito, Ecuador, pointing out the popularization of this music among middle-low classes. The particular appropriation of cumbia in Monterrey, México, where a subculture called “Colombia” emerged among people from marginal and segregated neighborhoods (“cholombianos), has motivated a sociologic study by Blanco Arboleda (2005), a thorough ethnography by Olvera Gudiño (2005), and a fashion photo-essay by Vice Magazine (2011).

Even in its Colombian version, cumbia has been a topic of study for scholars interested in music journeys and cultural identities. Researchers want to understand how a rhythm from the Caribbean coast traveled to the interior of the country and then became the national music serving as a symbol of the mixture of races (mestizaje between indigenous, afro-caribbeans, and whites). In Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia, Peter Wade (2002) develops a thorough historical, sociological, and anthropological study of how the cumbia, among other rhythms from the Caribbean coast such as the vallenato, played a crucial role in the imagination of Colombia as a multicultural tri-ethnic nation, and helped to articulate the concept of blackness.

There are very few studies that compare the different cumbia styles and try to understand the journey of cumbia with a transnational perspective identifying patterns of adoption and appropriation. Fernández l’Hoeste (2007) is perhaps the only researcher who has described cumbia as a pan-American transnational product associated with the racialized urban poor subcultures and their identities in Argentina, Perú, México, and the US-México border.

The Transnational Appeal of Hybrid Mestizo Music.
Cumbia has been mestizo music since its origins in the Caribbean coast of Colombia in the 18th century. According to one of the legends, African slaves and indigenous Colombians who lived in Cartagena de Indias created the cumbia rhythm and dance for their festivities, for celebrating their sexuality and mixture of races (black men conquer the indigenous women in a circular dance in which they flirt but remain separated).

It is very important to notice that cumbia was marginalized as a local phenomenon of the Caribbean coast of Colombia until the first decades of the 20th century when the Colombian cultural industries started to record this music and successfully commercialized it nationally and internationally. The first Colombian phonographic industries were in fact established in the Caribbean coast. In 1934, Antonio Fuentes created in Cartagena de Indias, what would become the most important record label of Colombian tropical music, Discos Fuentes. Almost ten years later, Emilio Fortou founded Discos Tropical in Barranquilla. Working in association with Colombian radio networks, the phonographic industry was able to create a national market for the cumbia music and other tropical genres (música costeña) from the Colombian northwest coast.

The recorded and produced sound of this cumbia, as Peter Wade has noticed, was influenced by a complex international music exchange that occurred at that time between Europe, Cuba, New York, México, Argentina, and Colombia. Rhythms from other regions such as foxtrot, jazz, rumbas cubanas, boleros, rancheras, tangos, pasodobles, and waltzes were broadcasted on the radio stations, played in the domestic phonographs and reinterpreted by local Colombian Caribbean bands. Hence, the cumbia that was produced, recorded, and commercialized during the first half of the 20th century was at the same time representative of the traditional folk music and of the modern transnational music exchange. Such characteristic reinforced the hybrid and mestizo nature of cumbia and facilitated its commercialization as popular dance music not only inside Colombia but also in other places of the American continent, especially in Mexico and Argentina.

After having become a popular rhythm and a commercial success, the cumbia rhythm started to be reinterpreted and appropriated by musicians from other Colombian regions and from several parts of Latin America during the second half of the 20th century. The simplicity of the cumbia melodies and catchy beats facilitated the appropriation of this music, the modification of the instruments according to local traditions, and its hybridization with other music genres. For instance, in the late 1960s musicians from the Peruvian Amazon blended the cumbia rhythm with Andean melodies and incorporated the sounds of electric surf guitars and synthesizers in order to create a new hybrid style dubbed cumbia chicha.

However, if in the past radio and phonographic industries, along with certain international migration processes, promoted the spread of cumbia across the Americas, nowadays the digital forms of production, distribution, and consumption have allowed cumbia to reach world wide popularity. Cumbia digital, the newest cumbia hybrid style, emerges in the 21st century from multiple and distant locations simultaneously. Deejays from Buenos Aires (Zizek crew), New York City (DJ Rupture, Que Bajo?!), San Francisco (Dj Juan Data), Monterrey (DJ Toy selector), La Paz (Sonido Martines), Noord-Brabant (Sonido del Principe), and Austin (Peligrosa crew), to name just a few, are leading the development of this new style.

Digital Practices, Deejay Culture
Digital is one of the common adjectives used for describing the computer and telecommunication technologies that social scientists have identified as major forces in the current transformation of society. Desktop computers, laptops, the Internet, MP3 files, mobile phones, DVDs, and software are digital technology. Deejays have become one of the most active participants in the information/network society thanks to their engagement with this kind of electronic technology. Perhaps because deejay culture has always relied in electronics, deejays have transited to the digital very fast.

Analogue electronic technology from the past such as turntables, mixers, equalizers, vinyl records, and cassette tapes, facilitated in the past the development of deejay practices such as the blending of songs and rhythms from different music genres (remixing), the removal of sounds from its original sources (sampling), the creation of music copies for independent distribution (mix tapes), and the building of music collections (libraries). With digital technology, especially with the ubiquity of computers, the popularization of MP3 music files, and the expansion of the Internet, these practices have become more popular and easier to learn, allowing more people to participate in the deejay culture.

DJ Orion, and DJ Manolo Black perform, produce, and distribute cumbia digital. They are members of Peligrosa, a deejay crew from Austin, Texas, which specializes in mixing Latin and modern electronic music. Their monthly parties are very popular among young people (21 to 35 years old) who get together in the dance-floor, independently of their ethnicities, in order to dance to the eclectic music mix. When Dj Orion and DJ Manolo Black are playing, the audience is often surprised by the innovative combinations of classic cumbia tunes (especially Colombian ones) with hip-hop, B-more breakbeats, and even pop music from the 1980s.

For producing and performing, DJ Orion and DJ Manolo Black use MP3 files, computer hardware and software, and the traditional analogue dj-ing tools (turntables, headphones, vinyl records). On the one hand, they produce their final remixes, the ones they distribute in the Internet, at their bedroom studios. For that task they use desktop computers running software such as Ableton Live and Sound Forge. On the other hand, when they perform in front of an audience they use a system called Serato Scratch Live that allows them to play MP3 files from their laptop’s hard-drive using vinyl records as a controller.

For distribution, DJ Orion and DJ Manolo Black use the Internet. Both of them have uploaded their remixes to personal MySpace pages and also have links to them in the collaborative Peligrosa blog. DJ Orion, however, has created more outlets for spreading his cumbia digital creations. He has a personal website where he shares not only his music but also the links to other cumbia related websites. DJ Orion is also very active in his use of social network tools such as Twitter and Facebook for advertising his music and the gigs where he is going to play. Furthermore, DJ Orion has been distributing his new album “Carajo Colombia,” a collection of thirteen cumbia digital remixes, through a specialized publishing platform for musicians called Bandcamp.com.

As other producers of cumbia digital, DJ Orion and DJ Manolo Black use the Internet not only for distribution but also for consumption. They can gather classic cumbia tunes, and new cumbia remixes from peer-to-peer networks, file sharing platforms (especially Rapidshare, and Soundcloud), music blogs such as Africolombia and La Congona New Cumbia, and websites like the one of Zizek. The fact that many of the MP3 music files they download from the web, later become the materials for producing their own music remixes, reinforces the digital quality of the new cumbia style.

Conclusion
After having spread across the Americas and being associated with low class and marginal people during the 20th century, the cumbia, in its latest stylization as cumbia digital, is becoming very popular in the network society, and is conquering dance floors of major American, European, and Asian cities. The remix of old classic cumbia tunes with contemporary electronic dance music has proven to be popular among the cosmopolitan youth who is experiencing the globalization process. The success of the new style can be appreciated not only in the dance clubs where young people from different ethnicities is dancing with the cumbia rhythm but also in the Internet, where cumbia has become the focus of many blogs, file sharing platforms, and online communities. A closer look at the practices of two deejays from the Peligrosa crew (Austin, Texas) reveals that the production, distribution, and consumption of the new cumbia style relies in the use of digital technologies, especially the Internet, MP3 files, and computer hardware/software.

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