Lauren DukoffDevendra BanhartTuesday, April 14, 2009The IndependentBetter than: Paying nearly $300 to bake in the Southern California sun with thousands of other music fans.It feels like there's a defacto music festival in the Bay Area right now as a number of acclaimed and underground bands perform warm up shows for Coachella (which goes off this weekend). Between last week and next, San Franciscans can see acts ranging from Leonard Cohen, Mastodon, and Franz Ferdinand to Band of Horses, Mexica
Napoleon HabeicaYerba Buena snagged a great musical act for this Friday's opening of its new Wallworks exhibit: Mexican Institute of Sound. The band is the brainchild of DJ /producer/president of EMI Mexico Camilo Lara, who uses the moniker as an excuse to mix together traditional Latin music with modern electronica. On his records you hear bits of everything from cumbia to cha cha cha, spiked by left field sound effects. Lara says Latin music comes out of him naturually--or, as he told SF We
EKAphotographyOfficially Hip: M.I.S.' Camilo Lara with Tommy Guerrero and Money Mark
Cumbia is the new Afrofunk/Batucada/Baile funk/Bhangra/Reggaeton. Hipsters have embraced the quirky Latin dance music, just as they did other global sounds of recent note, with open arms. If you need further evidence of that, you shoulda been at the Makeout Room last Saturday night, when a live set by the Mexican Institute of Sound preceded El Kool Kyle y Roger Mas' weekly "El Superrrrrrritmo!!!" cumbia DJ n
If you've ever packed it into the Make-Out Room on a Saturday night, you have El Kool Kyle to thank for making you sweat. The El Superrritmo DJ goes crate digging across continents to bring back the best the barrios have to offer (and over Halloween weekend, you can take advantage of his sonic travels by grabbing a free El Kool Kyle mix at his club night). Kyle tells his story better than we can sum it up, though--especially if you flip to page two of this interview, where the dude tells his
