Babaloo - Hardcore Juju

Much of my freshman and sophomore years of undergrad were spent in Comparative Literature classes. I am interested in literature, and philosophy, and comparing things, so I had taken a Freshman Seminar on the topic, which stuck me with a comparative lit advisor. I really didn’t know what I wanted to study, but the pre-registration literature assured me that changing advisors later would be simplicity itself.  Later, when I decided to pursue Urban Planning and International Relations as a course of study, my advisor seemed personally let down, like he thought I had a future in comparative literature. He didn’t take it too well when I said I would prefer to do something that had an actual impact on people’s lives.

My advisor’s specialty was in Latino/ Hispanic film, so I ended up taking a number of Latino focused courses, exposing me to a fair amount of criticism of American culture from a Latino perspective. One commentator, whose name escapes me now, welcomed the influx of Latino influence on popular music, which he criticized as becoming increasingly vapid and over produced. I found this pretty funny, since most popular music with a Latino influence is pretty much shit, with the exception of Rage Against The Machine and some of Madonna’s work. At the time it was even worse, as Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin had only just dropped off the pop charts, but the author was writing in the 90s, if I recall correctly, a period that, while not exactly known for scintillating pop charts, had some moments of sublime rebellion and underground fervor.

I have thought a lot about this bizarre contradiction over the years. I wonder if I were to play the commentator work by Green Day, Nirvana, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, bands that I feel represent the best of the 90s in all its odd eclectic variety, would he change his opinion of American popular culture? Probably not. If I countered that I found the Latino influences that came out in popular culture to be over produced and boring at best, and dangerously regressive at worst, would he understand what I was talking about? Again, unlikely. I might be labeled closed minded, and unable to see beyond my own, mainstream white person culture. As a socialist youth deeply embedded in underground punk subculture, I like to think that I respected multicultural influences and welcomed musical variety that this commentator’s favored subculture sought to introduce, and yet this bizarrely myopic statement, from a supposedly well educated commentator, stood between us.

This mutual miscomprehension is becoming more and more common in the United States. One particularly fascinating example of this was the online fallout from the Arcade Fire’s Grammy win in 2011. For those in the indie subculture Arcade Fire were so well known as to be ubiquitous, and of beloved quality for most. The complete outrage from the Hip-Hop and Pop community, and the subsequent Indie backlash, showed a lot about both communities. The fact that the Hip Hop and Pop communities continue to be completely unwilling to acknowledge or comprehend alternative subcultures in American popular consciousness, 50 years after the start of the beat and hippie subcultures, 30 years after the start of punk rock, and seven years after indie music stormed the carts in 2004, showed up the increasing insularity of a “popular culture” based on the sales figures of a small group of failing industries. On the other hand, the subsequent backlash by the Indie community revealed that group’s extremely unjustified sense of self satisfaction at being some kind of pop music intelligencia. Though more aware of other subcultures and at least superficially more accepting, comments made online revealed, as they often do, that the average member of any group is as uncomprehending of others as they are of him/her.

Blends of Latino music into subcultures of the United States on equal terms face barriers that go beyond language and geography. In the same period that immigration has accelerated from Latino and Hispanic countries, the suburbanization of the culture of the United States has made the presence of minorities significantly invisible. Despite large populations existing in roughly the same geographic boundaries, Latino and White kids rarely go to the same schools or mix in the same social circles. This is why there has been way more Latino influence upon hip hop and popular music than on the increasingly isolated world of indie rock, despite the latter’s often avowed love of new influences and musical styles.

There are some exceptions. Calexico are beloved indie darlings and feature strong Mexican Folk influences, and there have been acts with lesser or more influence. The biggest act worth noting is the 90s powerhouse, Sublime. Incorporating Dub, Reggae, Ska, Punk, and Latino influences, the are hard to classify and it is almost always hilarious when commentators try. Nonetheless Sublime has not generated a large influx of Latino influence in their related subcultures. Part of this might be explained away by their limited creative lifespan, but among my friends they had a very brief popularity. Most still acknowledge their talent, but many will say something along the lines of “yeah, I listened to them way too much back in the day, I really can’t stand them anymore.” The music was so infectious that it was listened too much and was worn out. And so Sublime’s influence died away like a self cauterizing wound.

Since reading the critic’s comment all those years ago I have made sporadic attempts to familiarize myself with Latino music. One of the things I discovered is that there has been much more subcultural bleed-back into Latino music in their home countries than we see in this country. Bands like Cabrito Vudu and Control Machete helped pioneer a ska and punk flowering in the border areas of Mexico that lasted until the current drug violence began to overtake those regions. Of almost universally high quality, I was hoping to find another of these albums when I picked up Babaloo’s “Hardcore Juju.” I did not find that, but, I’m not really sure how to characterize what I did find.

Babaloo sound very much like the border bands I have grown familiar with. In fact, they sound more Latino than the bands actually from the homelands, despite about half their songs being in English. They use very formal song types and structures, which isn’t to say the music is cliché, but much like Jazz, Mexican, Caribbean, and central American Folk styles have their own conventions that you have to train your ear to understand. My ear is trained enough to know that there is a lot going on here, but not enough to know how much of it is original and how much of it is aping precedents. That said, it almost doesn’t matter how original it is because there is so much going on here. There are literally folk styles being incorporated from various Mexican Folk regions, numerous Caribbean Islands, even various Creole and Spanglish styles. I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to unpack the influences on this disc, but suffice it to say that I know they sing in Spanish, English, and French, and if I could identify Portuguese I am pretty sure they sing in that as well. Their website claims that the total comes to seven.

How does one band bring in all these styles? Are they globe-trotting elder intelligencia of the Latin world? Not really. They seem to be a bunch of kids who met in Jamaica Plain in 1994. Now, granted, in 1994 Jamaica Plain was not the gentrified near-suburb of today, but one has to assume that, given Boston’s college town status, some amount of education went into this band. In fact, the guitarist, one of the main song writers, is actually an Irish girl who specialized in Arabic music in college. This irritates me a bit, because they maintain this persistent populist attitude in the music. I cannot help but compare this to the modern indie tendency to be honest about middle class origins and not spend time rewriting them out of their personal history.

 On the other hand, most of the punk acts I love perpetuate this same act of dishonestly. Despite spending his entire career singing about rights for the proletariat, Joe Strummer was the son of a British Diplomat, and went to art school.  Though he spent his twenties living in squats and was pretty much on his own after age 9 one really doesn’t get the impression that he was starving. Given these precedents it wasn’t until the late 90s that this kind of posturing was really abandoned, even in most avant-garde circles. And the band is clearly influence by mid-90s punk culture. Beyond the fact that they say so on their website, the album art has a large amount of illustration of the band engaging in various punk lifestyle activities, like skating, drinking in clubs, and getting arrested by the police. Whatever their origins, the band tries hard to stake a claim as working class and whether this is a choice cause by the punk environment or some seed of reality is hard to tell given the paucity of information about them on the internet.  

So I guess I can deal with the faux populism. The fact is that the band is fascinating to me. Drawing in this plethora of influences, singing in a billion languages, and using more instruments than the blue man group, the music exists in this weird mid 90s time slide, being obviously of their time and yet sounding like none of the contemporary acts. The lyrics touch on a fascinating variety of socially progressive lyrics, touching on everything from popular Luchadores to feminist dress codes. I really wish modern Latino artists had held onto this kind of liberal progressivism, instead of backsliding into escapist machismo.

That said, I’m not sure this is the kind of thing I will seek out for relaxing listening. The music is well preformed and written, but lacks hooks or good vocal performances. I get the feeling that the band would be good live, and people who are into Latino music might really enjoy this. Something about this recording is a bit grating, and I am not sure whether it is my weariness with the Latino cultural imperative left in my brain from college, the fact that my ear is not yet trained to listen to this kind of music, or some inherent lack of harmony in the music itself. I will probably be holding on to this one because of its numerous intriguing qualities, and I would recommend giving it a listen on your own. Just maybe preview a song or two on YouTube first.