Sunset, Sunday, 6 September 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I receive general reports about site traffic, and was wondering why yesterday’s post about the Poe story “The Fall of the House of Usher” had received an unusual number of ‘robot hits’. (These aren’t real site visits, just various search engines indexing your stuff ... something like that ...) Anyway, could it have been the mention of “I Am The Walrus”?

Then I noticed the most conspicuous word in the Poe story, and my phrase –

... the weird music Usher makes ...

Oh! ... that Usher ...

Moving along, and perhaps ahead, musically, my friend Agustín Gurza in L.A., longtime Latin music critic for the L.A. Times and now among the many proud ex-staffers of that once-great paper, recommends “Nueva Vida,” the new song from (quoting Agustín) “the brilliant Barcelona band Ojos de Brujo ... ‘Viene y va,’ says the swaying chorus. Life comes and goes. Very joyful.” Song/video here. Features the lead singer’s new baby.

I have never met, but am a fan of, one of Agustín’s friends, the great Rubén Blades, who has just released a new album, Cantares del Subdesarollo, which you can find on iTunes or on Rubén’s own site. What Blades has done thus far in his life is enough to make you dizzy. I would bet that, strangely, North Americans know him most from his part on the short-lived TV series Gideon’s Crossing, which barely gets a mention in his Wikipedia bio. The opening paragraphs of that article will give you a clue what kind of person we’re talking about here:

Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna (born July 16, 1948) is a Panamanian salsa singer, songwriter, lawyer, actor, Latin jazz musician, and politician, performing musically most often in the Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz genres. As songwriter, Blades brought the lyrical sophistication of Central American nueva canción and Cuban nueva trova as well as experimental tempos and political inspired Nuyorican salsa to his music, creating thinking persons' (salsa) dance music.

Blades has composed dozens of musical hits, the most famous of which is “Pedro Navaja,” a song about a neighborhood thug who appears to die during a robbery (his song “Sorpresas” continues the story), inspired by “Mack the Knife.” He also composed and sings what many Panamanians consider their second national anthem. The song is titled “Patria” (Fatherland). He is an icon in Panama and is much admired throughout Latin America, and managed to attract 18% of the vote in his failed attempt to win the Panamanian presidency in 1994. In September 2004, he was appointed minister of tourism by Panamanian president Martín Torrijos. He holds law degrees from the University of Panama and Harvard Law School.

This may just reflect how unhip I am on Blades’s music, but my favorite album of his is his collaboration with Willie Colón, Siembra (the all-time best-selling salsa record, so it’s a little like someone from Maracaibo saying “Oh, the Beatles? Sgt. Pepper, right?”). “Maria Lionza” from that album is one of my all-time favorite songs ... and I don’t even understand Spanish.