Summer in the Global Village: Latin Alternative Music Conference – Part One

This is the first installment of a blog series for The World that will cover music from all corners of the globe as it converges upon New York City this summer. From large outdoor shows to intimate underground clubs, I’ll aim to bring you snapshots of NYC’s irresistible summer concert circuit through images, sounds, and words.

First up is the Latin Alternative Music Conference (LAMC for short). In its 13th year, the conference was created to bring non-mainstream Spanish language music to a more widespread audience. The lineup tends to be a mix of artists with a measure of mainstream success (e.g., Manu Chao, Ozomatli, Cafe Tacvba, Julieta Venegas) and artists just getting on the radar. This year was no exception and the lineup threw together headliners like Kinky, Calle 13, and Mala Rodriguez with an array of promising newcomers.

The showcases kicked off with an evening show at Summerstage in Central Park. Thousands of concertgoers were gathered under graceful oak and maple trees as I walked in to find The Sconek-T on stage. The contemporary chamber music ensemble hails from Mexico City and combines virtuoso classical string arrangements with hard rock sensibilities. A favorite moment was seeing the crowd rock out to a violin-heavy cover of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star.”

When asked about their propensity for rock covers violinist Israel Torres told me that as classical musicians they cut their teeth on covers, “In classical training you always play covers of Bach, Shumann, Schubert, Mozart, Haydn, etc… and now we’ve changed the target of our covers. Instead of Beethoven we play Thom Yorke or John Lennon or Deep Purple.” In this brief clip you’ll hear him talk about how the ensemble has not only embraced covers of all stripes, but began to compose their own music.

Mexican vocalist Ximena Sariñana took the stage soon after and delighted the crowd with her radio friendly tracks in both English and Spanish. But the house was brought down by the headliner, Spanish rapper Mala Rodriguez. The sexy MC showed off her swagger with cuts spanning back to the 90s and the crowd seemed to know every lyric.

On day two I had the chance to chat with Javiera Mena, part of a cadre of electro pop musicians representing Chile at LAMC. Their sound harks back to pop confections of the 80s and early 90s and seems to be the most happening thing in Santiago.

When asked what differentiates Chile from what’s happening in the rest of the Latin music scene, Mena said “Mexican and Colombian music [for instance] has a lot of roots [influence], but in Chile I think the people are looking outside more… It’s like an island. It’s so disconnected because of the Andes and the ocean.”

Have a listen to more of our chat here:

In part two I’ll dig into more performances and chats with various LAMC artists.