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C. Hannibal concerts, cultural history, mexican culture, music, visually speaking

Essence of hip-hop en Estadio Azteca

In many parts of the modern world, graffiti is vilified. Here in Mexico, it´s a respected art form. Often encouraged.

From the renowned muralist culture, to even farther back to its ancient civilizations, communicating through art on walls has always been the way here.

Today, with the support of a paint company and local government agencies, what is essentially a free hip-hop festival will take over Mexico´s  main soccer stadium. A place were people go to worship futbol, for the 3rd year in a row, becomes a place for hip-hop´s faithful.

I went in 2009, and the event was regarded as too commercial by many graf heads. But, it´s one of the rare times in this megalopolis that lovers of rap music get a free open-air concert. ¨Wild Style¨ incarnate, here in Mexico City.

Below, Jezzy P , a rapper from Ecatepec who just dropped a new album     (she´s been putting years of work into her music) will be a featured rapper on Saturday afternoon. About two dozen rappers will perform over the weekend, while graf artists are competing on the walls of the stadium.

It´ll be like a day in the Bronx circa 1979.

Check out the list of scheduled rap performances on Jezzy´s blog.

In addition to Jezzy, highlights include performances by 2Phase,  Skool 77, Ana MC, Van T, T-Killa and Manicomio Clan, also check for ongoing cyphers in the parking lot.

The 3er. Concurso de Graffiti en tu Estadio Azteca 2010, co-sponsored by the Secretary of Public Security, takes place  April 17 and 18, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Mexico City´s Azteca Stadium.

C. Hannibal cultural history

Google Video pick of the week #007

I think the best college paper I ever wrote was for film theory and criticism, and used comedy theory to explain ¨Up in Smoke.¨

Prof. Doherty, who promised to give me an F if I didn´t return the video for my paper topic: ¨Touch of Evil¨ (1958), told me my ¨Smoke¨ paper was publish-able. ¨But you have to make it a little longer,¨ he said, his lips dragging the¨O¨ out like I wrote a 2 page composition.

This week´s pick looks at MJ, not the singer, but the woman. The woman of so many young men´s dreams. The confidante for so many hippies and Rastafarians across the planet. Yes, marijuana.

Continue reading “Google Video pick of the week #007” →

C. Hannibal cultural history

Star-Ledger

If there´s no Star-Ledger, then who will cover Newark?


I remember working at a paper on L.I. when a colleague asked me “What’s the paper of record in New Jersey?” He followed the question with a chuckle.

“The Star-Ledger,” I shot back.

That memory came to me last week, after I´d been reading about troubles at the paper over the last couple of years, and a recent buyout that nearly decimated the place.  It was with much sadness that I read the other day that a veteran reporter and photo editor were working in a mail room.  A reward in some ways for all of those years of stress, meeting deadlines and working themselves for the paper… for the business.

Pensions are important and that was probably a good way to make sure they could both retire with something to show for it.

But, still. I worked with the reporter, Jason Jett. I knew him to be a dedicated, serious practitioner of his craft. If I´m not mistaken, he would always bring copies of the Village Voice into work for everyone (it´s hard to get the Voice across the bridge).  No reason he had to go out like that. But I understand.

To be honest, I never was a huge fan of the Ledger. Not really made with an eye on my generation. Plus, for a quick train ride I could go grab the New York Times. That´s not to belittle the work and talent at the Ledger, nor the writers it´s reared.

I grew  up with a piece of my childhood attached to South 18th Street in the city of Newark, where my grandmother, grandfather, aunts and uncles would take care of me when my parents needed a break. Or were out working extra shifts. I care about the place.

New Jersey needs a strong paper of record. People to monitor corruption (there´s a lot). Governors who get caught. Governors, period. Immigration. And the ever-growing gang problem. But most importantly, someone to be the paper of record for the “Jersey Shore.” Ha. No, I´m serious.

There are plenty of smaller papers in Jerz that are worthy. Such as my more local daily, the Home News Tribune (which produced this U.S./Mexico border reporter) and the Asbury Park Press (which produced this writer, who covers L.A.´s celebrity machine).

The Ledger was my first newspaper internship. My first and coolest summer job ever.

It taught me a ton about the paper business and the things I didn´t want to cover.  I wasn’t a big fan of riding around Newark, quizzing people on street and in the projects about shootings. Exciting when an editor gives you an assignment , but a whole other story when you get there. All square reporter, and people are asking you how you got into your line of work, saying they didn´t see anything.

But Newark is worthy of close coverage. It´s a town with a deep and rich American history,  and home to one of the great urban riots of world history.

It would be a shame if profits, or the inability to change with the times kept the greatest city in the State of New Jersey to be without a paper, or worse.

Photo of Newark riots by AP, from NY Times story. (via)

C. Hannibal buildings, cinema culture, los angeles, music

These guys can save your life

And they even speak Spanish.

This is the Hollywood location of this world-famous multimedia store. It does two types of business with you: buying and selling. Record dealers, collectors and the myriad DVD rental stores who’ve been pushed out of business within the last 10 years know this place. It saved their lives. As long as they had no scratches. I’ve seen Weird Al on the sale line. Strange. But that’s Hollywood. His hair was long, gray and he had a box of cassettes. “My wife said I had to get rid of some stuff,” he said. Anything you made in that stack, I asked. He just laughed.

If you live anywhere on the planet — are into music —  and you come to L.A., then you have to visit Sunset Blvd.

Physically located only in Hollywood, San Francisco and Berkeley. http://www.amoeba.com

Some great performers drop by for their in-stores (live show RSS feed).

Amoeba Hollywood is live streaming an Ozomatli performance on April 20th at 6 p.m.

C. Hannibal concerts, los angeles, music

For the Mescudi stans

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Alright, so WordPress threw this slideshow function into the mix and I plan to aprovechar. Just something for the stans who like my previous Cudi post.

A  little background on the images above:

Cudi came to Steve Aoki’s Tuesday night party at Cinespace two Springs ago, along with his manager (and former Kanye A&R)  Plain Pat.  He wasn’t all Baped out at this point in his career. He still rocked The Hundreds.

He was riding the high of having a single that was just beginning to beat up on big city airwaves. He had the silver sneakers on, a bottle of Grey Goose and a friend from back home, now living in the Valley hanging out with him. He was Scott Mescudi.

Onstage, Kid Cudi came out.  He was warming up earlier, in the V.I.P with that bottle of Goose. Plain Pat reminded him of a Kanye warning: don’t get drunk around reporters. It was too late.

Nothing crazy happened, though. Cudi was a personable dude. This was before the record sales and tour, of course.

What I enjoyed about Cudi’s set was that he had a heck of a good time with the audience. He was a little bummed that I was only writing for a blog.  He said he wanted his mom to be able to read it, and that she was too up there in age to be checking for her boo on the Internet. I’m sure, two years later, Scotty gets all kinds of ink.

Outside Cinespace, on Hollywood Blvd., Cudi asked a few people for directions so he could direct his homegirl back to the Valley. Some dude, salty from all the groupie love Cudi was getting, was like “go back to Cleveland–this is Hollywood”.  Cudi, taking a long drag off a Newport, gave him a delayed look, like what you say!? Then Wale’s manager softened the moment by yelling, “White Power.” Weird moment, but whatever animosity there was in the air got diffused immediately.

You can catch Cudi on HBO. Or get your so-called emo-electro rap fix, with about a  half dozen Cudi mixtapes.

C. Hannibal cultural history, mexican culture, music, Racially Speaking

Post-race in the Americas

In the week before Obama won his presidency, this guy on a Mexico City roof, above, thought up a great costume for a Day of the Dead party. There were only a handful of people who gave this get-up any pause.

There are a lot of complicated reasons, which I hope to explore throughout various blog posts, why many intelligent people in this country don’t see anything wrong with blackface, or deny racism exists here. As a person whose mother is from South America, and father from Prince Street in Newark, I’m always interested in how Black Latinos view themselves in the context of Spanish-speaking culture, and how those cultures in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Spain, view people who are Black.

This 2005 piece from the Boston Review, raises the race issue, starting with the Vicente Fox speech that said Mexicans grind doing the types of work not even Black folks want to do. That, along with the federal government nearly making a postal stamp with this character’s mug on it, brought international attention to Mexico’s apparent culture of racism (which really isn’t that different from what still exists in the U.S., we just hide it way better).

“Criticism of race relations and racism in Brazil, Mexico, the Andes, the Caribbean, and Central America has developed as a natural extension of multiculturalism and identity politics in the United States, and many studies describe persistent racial inequalities masked by the idea of racial democracy.

This criticism and research has, in turn, fed discussions of race in Latin America, albeit in an attenuated manner: Brazil has had its own proponents of “black power,” and racism against Indians has become a theme in Mexican social movements.

Because these challenges are difficult to reconcile with Mexico’s 80-year-old ideology of national integration, they are often downplayed in public debate—as if Mexican racism had long been taken care of, and as if whatever remains of it were somehow less harmful because things are worse in the United States.”

Check out more on the topic, here.

Continue reading “Post-race in the Americas” →

C. Hannibal buildings, los angeles, visually speaking

Bunker Hill in the L.A. night

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From Bunker Hill Towers, a place I would not want to call home when the ground rolls, I could always see the eastside of Downtown encroaching me. There’s a sky bridge that connects the Bunker Hill apts. with the World Trade Center and I would walk across the traffic on Flower and Fig. The bridge is part of a system of Downtown L.A. pedestrian skywalks. Your feet never have to touch ground if you’re just going for a Subway sandwich at the Bonaventure. Wonder what Fante would have thought?

He might agree that the traffic-jumping bridge doesn’t change the overall problem of how that section of L.A. has carved its space. During the day it was all office workers getting exercise, or taking a shortcut to lunch. At night it’s another crowd, once, I saw two transsexuals taking night photos with the L.A. skyline as the backdrop. Another night, a homeless man taking advantage of lax security below and enjoying a brown paper bagged tall boy near the spiral staircase.

For more on Downtown L.A.’s historic Bunker Hill, check out this local blog. A Boston site has this forum post with pictures that capture Bunker Hill in the daylight.

C. Hannibal mexican culture, music, Racially Speaking

¡ Ask a Jeweler !

I’ve been clearing out photos from an old laptop and came across this 2008 snapshot. Many southern rap fans probably know TV Johnny Dang from his appearances in Slim Thug or Paul Wall videos. I talked to him for this piece I did back in ’07.

Looking at this photo again, though, TV reminds me a lot of an acquaintance, OC Weekly writer Gustavo Arellano. Not sure this qualifies as a “separated at birth” post. You decide.

Gustavo, as you can tell from his column and complete grip on  the OC immigration debate, is a Mexican journalist. TV Johnny is Vietnamese jeweler to southern rap stars. The thing they both share, other than having parents who were born in other countries, is being very successful in what they do.