Global Hit

Nortec Collective

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Nortec Collective is a group of experimental artists from Tijuana that prides itself on technical-savvy. Its name refers to its sound — a 21st-century fusion of Norteno folk music with electronic beats and production. The group’s Grammy-nominated members, Bostich and Fussible, are still obsessed with space-aged innovation from the border. But Corey Takahashi found that some of their latest projects have taken them closer to traditional–even classical!–collaborations. Corey brings us this report from Los Angeles and Tijuana.

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• Video: Interview with Nortec Collective
• Photos: Nortec Collective in concert
• Nortec Collective homepage
• The World’s previous coverage of Nortec Collective

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These days, when you catch a Nortec Collective concert–like this one in L.A.–you don’t just see the group’s electronic musicians, Bostich and Fussible. You’ll catch one or two, or maybe more, traditional Mexican artists sharing the stage.

Bostich: “The experience of the crowd is totally different than when we played only our set with our computers and our electronic instruments.”

The musician Bostich, whose real name is Ramon Amezcua, says Nortec Collective has always incorporated folk sounds from northern Mexico. But now they’re playing live with the type of artists they used to sample: Juan Tellez is an accordionist who played with his four brothers in a Norteno band called La Tradicion del Norte. Now, he tours the world with Nortec Collective.

Bostich: “The accordion player that we have is like the Jimi Hendrix of the accordion. So he’s very virtuoso, he plays, he improvises in the songs.”

Bostich: “It’s like watching traditional Mexican music from the future.”

One of Nortec Collective’s most ambitious–and futuristic–projects was an October show in Tijuana. This time, Nortec Collective collaborated with Norteno folk artists…as well as the Baja California Orchestra.

Bostich: “Please come in, please come in…”

And we are here in Centro Cultural, Tijuana, at the Entijuanarte festival.

“This is the first time maybe here in Mexico that Norteno musicians, electronic music, and symphonic music is together in the same place.”

Nortec Collective artist Fussible, whose actual name is Pepe Mogt, says these odd pairings work for the simple reason that they sound like Tijuana. That’s the sound of a famously unwieldy border town.

Fussible: “Even for Latin people, I know that Nortec sounds weird. It sounds strange.”

Some of Nortec Collective’s new work captures the contrast of touring internationally, then returning to some of Tijuana’s harsher realities. Around this time last year, they came back from a long haul in Europe. The first thing Fussible wanted to do was grab some tacos.

Fussible: “We went to the tacos, and I remember in the street that take us to the tacos, in the middle of the street was one guy dead, recently dead, he was shot and he was on the floor.”

“So that’s why this album, we will have all these stories–like stories that we have back home, and stories that we experience on the outside.”

This is one of the works-in-progress from their new album.

“It’s never black and bleak, unless I say it’s so / I shift the gears and I gooooooooo / I have total control / I can’t be haunted / if I never see a ghost.”

They’re planning to put out the album in the spring. But one of the latest examples of their sound was released earlier this year–not by the group–but by a Berlin-based artist named Jessie Evans. Fussible says the singer and saxophonist is a fan of Nortec Collective. Jessie Evans got in touch with him, made a pilgrimage to Mexico, and had Fussible co-produce her album there, Tijuana-style…It’s a sort of “Nortec-ing” of another artist.

It’s just one of the latest collaborations Nortec Collective has used to take its Tijuana sound so far beyond the border.

For The World, I’m Corey Takahashi, Los Angeles.