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Los Angeles Times
30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
For your consideration: Indie artists who deserve Latin Grammys in 2025
Juan Luis Guerra. Natalia Lafourcade. Jorge Drexler, Caetano Veloso and Shakira. Clearly, Latin Grammy voters have demonstrated time and again some excellent judgment when it comes to highlighting artists who know how to make a beautiful record or two. At a time when la música latina continues to experience a state of grace — both in commercial and creative terms — the upcoming nominations are likely to include most of the major contenders who dropped new music between June 1, 2024 and May 30, 2025. But what about the singers and musicians who are evolving the genre without the benefit of a powerful record label or high-profile publicity campaigns? Some of the most progressive, forward-facing records of the 2024-25 season are likely to be ignored by the Latin Academy. With that in mind, we've assembled a select list of six Latin artists who should be celebrated. A few may show up when the nominees are announced on Sept. 17 — but each of them deserves a Latin Grammy. In a perfect world, 'Anónimo,' the sophomore effort by Argentine digital sorceress Juana Aguirre, would be an obvious candidate for album of the year. Of course, many artists before her have dabbled in the avant-garde deconstruction of the songwriting craft — fellow experimentalist Juana Molina comes to mind. What places Aguirre miles ahead of the competition is not only the disturbing vulnerability of her process — she records at home, in a lo-fi setting, driving herself mad with frustration by cutting and pasting until the disjointed bits and chirps of sound gel into a cohesive whole — but also the otherworldly beauty of the finished product. Aguirre lived in New Zealand and Bolivia before returning to the balmy Buenos Aires neighborhood of San Isidro, and her nomadic past may account for the assured, cosmopolitan vibe of tracks such as the folktronica lullaby 'Lo Divino' and the ghostly, Erik Satie-infused piano of 'Las Eamas.' A graphic designer and musician of unhinged imagination, she deserves plenty of accolades. One of the most brilliant singer/songwriters ever to emerge from Chile, Gepe is well established across the Americas and could very well be nominated for his luminous 2024 session 'Undesastre' — and if that turns out to be the case, well done, LARAS. It would be important, however, that his triumphant fusion of South American folk roots and nimble electronic beats is not relegated to the Alternative field. A session that glides effortlessly from bouncy, laid-back romantic anthems like 'Playaplaya' to stellar duets with the likes of Mon Laferte, Monsieur Periné and Café Tacvba's Rubén Albarrán deserves a place in the race for album of the year. A move-you-to-tears orchestral ballad of bone shaking intensity, the majestic 'Desastre' — it brims with eccentric sound effects and Beatlesque progressions — would be the most elegant possible choice for both record and song of the year. In conversation, Mabe Fratti is funny and unassuming. She makes silly jokes and describes her music-making progress with selfless glee, seemingly unaware of her own distinguished standing as a member of the Latin American avant-garde. A composer, cellist and ethereal singer, the 33 year-old Fratti was born in Guatemala and moved to Mexico City in 2015. The songs on this trendsetting fourth album are amorphous and crystalline, obsessed with finding beauty in the most faraway corners. 'Sentir Que No Sabes' has been hailed as a masterpiece by critics worldwide, from Pitchfork to the Guardian. Its brainy combination of jazz, classical, post-rock and dreamy synths could easily scare the most conservative faction of Latin Grammy voters — and that would be a grave mistake. As a member of Venezuela's turn of the century party band Los Amigos Invisibles, guitarist and composer Cheo — José Luis Pardo — got to enjoy a Latin Grammy win and several nominations. Sadly, he has kept more of a low profile since going solo in 2014. Creatively, however, Cheo remains a formidable composer and arranger. His 'Música Para Verse Bien' was one of the best albums of 2023, including 'Agujas en el Pecho,' a glorious duet with Monsieur Periné singer Catalina García. During the eligibility period for this year's ceremony, he released three separate volumes in the 'Refresco' series of EPs, paying homage to the genre strands that inform his music: tropical, funk and Brazilian. 'Si Estuvieras Aquí' underscores Cheo's weakness for bubbly Latin lounge, with electric piano flourishes and wordless vocals à la Henry Mancini. 'Vol. 3: Cheo Goes Brazil' is probably the most touching of the group, with remakes of two peerless Amigos Invisibles bossa novas: 'Playa Azul,' now sung by Cheo himself, and 'Las Lycras del Avila,' channeling Antonio Carlos Jobim's bohemian snapshots of Rio de Janeiro in the '60s, with a wistful melody on electric guitar. In 2022, Mariana de Miguel turned a seven song mini-album about life in Mexico City, 'El Sur,' into a late-night banquet of darkly hued dance-pop. This year, the artist known as Girl Ultra qualifies for the Latin Grammy on the strength of 'Blush:' a delicate EP made up of fleeting miniatures, noir impressions of EDM glamour. The architecture is more refined on shimmering pearls such as the hypnotic 'Blu' and the bratty 'Rimel.' But it is Girl Ultra's emotional maneuvering that turns 'blush' into an unforgettable experience. At first, these songs seem destined to provide the soundtrack for decadent one-night stands. Just beneath the surface, however, the hopeful longing in the singer's voice suggests that she may also be a romantic at heart. The top level production and Girl Ultra's masala-like blend of digital spices would more than justify a record of the year nomination for 'Blu.' Want a touch of genius? Try the 1:30 mark on the song 'Autoestima,' when everything stands still — and the stately chords of a church organ add a spoonful of madness to this tune about the negativity that permeates daily life in Buenos Aires. Since she emerged as a solo artist in 2012, Marilina Bertoldi has established herself as the resident hurricane of Argentine rock, blessed with a corrosive sense of the absurd, a knack for pop-punk melodies, and attitude to spare. Most importantly, her album 'Para Quien Trabajas Vol. 1' is tremendous fun, a wicked homage to the robotic drum machines and baroque synth lines that defined the '80s rock revolution in South America — from the classic albums of genre godfather Charly García to the radical moxie of Sumo, and the angular melodic sadness of cult band Metrópoli. Fortunately, you don't need to catch all the references in order to feel uplifted by Bertoldi's ball-of-fire songbook. The tracks are firmly planted on the now, from the elegant decay of 'El Gordo' to the vulnerable 'Por Siempre Es Un Lugar.' Bertoldi's albums have been nominated three times in the past, but the rock and alternative fields are simply too narrow and myopic for this brash, self-produced gem.
Los Angeles Times
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Guadalupe Rosales crafts an analog Wayback Machine for a vibrant show at Palm Springs Art Museum
As an artist, Guadalupe Rosales is having fun, and she wants her audience to have fun too — and to think about what fun is and means. At least that sentiment, oriented toward pleasure and freedom, is what's telegraphed in the center of the Los Angeles-based artist's engaging and very timely solo exhibition at the Palm Springs Art Museum, where a checkerboard dance floor fills the central space. A makeshift DJ booth, assembled from a couple of upended shopping carts and some speakers, is at one edge of the checkerboard in the dimly lighted room, underscoring the general do-it-yourself ethos of Rosales' aesthetic. Motorized blue spotlights skitter across the floor and climb walls to the ceiling, where they rush past a pair of mirrored disco fixtures. These are not conventional 'Saturday Night Fever' spherical mirror balls but small rotating step-pyramids, doubled-up, flat sides pressed together one atop the other and then suspended, like mirror reflections of themselves. Teotihuacán meets Café Tacvba, a playful merger of ancient Mesoamerican civilization and a 1990s rock en español band in suitably fractured light. The '90s is the decade when Rosales, 45, entered her teenage years growing up on Los Angeles' Eastside. Like Teotihuacán and Café Tacvba, her exhibition looks into formative images and experiences from the past, glimpsed through a Chicana lens. (Women are prominent in the imagery.) She's gathered up ephemera — magazines, snapshots, lowrider bicycle parts, bandannas, street signs, keychains, newspapers, fuzzy dice to hang from a car's rearview mirror, feathers, fake flowers and more — and she's put them to one of two primary uses: Some form component parts of assemblage sculptures, while others are displayed in cases, like rare anthropological artifacts, or else tacked onto poster boards, like treasures from a teenager's bedroom. A side wall near the dance floor is papered with big blow-ups of joyful photographs showing jam-packed dancing at Arena, the massive, 22,000-square-foot former nightclub in Hollywood's old Union Ice building on Santa Monica Boulevard. Arena, like the adjacent club called Circus, was established by a couple of gay and Latino entrepreneurs as open-to-everyone party spaces — a radical departure during an era when discos were defined more by the vulgar discrimination of velvet ropes and vain bouncers policing entry. For people like me, who remember those clubs' heyday, even a memory of the name 'Union Ice' once prominently painted on the building's street wall flips into bitter irony, now that 'union' in daily American life has been purposefully shredded and 'ice' has become a thuggish term representing politicized, Gestapo-like cruelty. At an art museum, a dance club's once forward-leaning experience of scrappy social optimism — life and liberty fueling the pursuit of happiness — is enshrined as a necessary and valiant cultural value, which lends richness to Rosales' otherwise simple materials. The exhibition has four loosely thematic sections. In addition to the dance room, there's an introductory entryway, a gloomy nighttime space and a car culture gallery. The entry frames motifs that will ricochet through the exhibition, which is titled 'Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo' (My memory in your reflection). Tzahualli is a Nahuatl word for spiderweb, a common metaphor for fragility, interconnectedness, beauty and, not least, potential entrapment. Rosales juxtaposes a wall of psychedelic party posters, glowing beneath blacklight, with a roadside shrine of flowers and votive candles remembering loss. They are laid at the base of a black wrought iron gate, which doubles as a portal between public and private realms and the inescapable suggestion of prison bars. Bandannas tied and knotted around the gate put a familiar symbol of individual liberation and civil rights resistance at the heart of the work. Behind it, a wide rectangular hole cut into a hot-pink wall offers a telling peek into the inner dance room. An eccentric fainting couch, the horizontal hole is lavishly embellished with plush pink tufted upholstery, like the tuck-and-roll interior of a sexy 1964 Chevy Impala, the ultimate 'Lowrider' in the movie of the same name. That upgraded car, jacked with hydraulics, could also dance, which may explain the little mirrored disco ball dangling within the narrow void of Rosales' sculpture. In a rear gallery, dark nighttime photographs are hung on walls painted black to denote the wee hours. They show fragmentary urban scenes — a few palm trees illuminated by the glow of an unseen automobile's headlights, the artist's bland backyard, some mute shops — but the images aren't compelling. A wall text speaks of the melancholy of returning home after a night of fun, but visually the mood is not there. Surely, they have personal meaning for Rosales' late-night excursions as an exploring kid, but for a viewer the shadowy imagery is merely obscure. More disarming is the car culture room, where high art and lowrider productively collide. A couple of big, brightly colored photographs of painted car hoods merge automotive details of swooping and jagged shapes with the look of abstract hard-edge canvases, a painting term coined by California art critic Jules Langsner in 1959 — the dawn of a distinctly L.A. aesthetic. Nearby, an eye-grabbing projection of 'found video' snatched from the internet documents a gasp-inducing, acrobatic quebradita dance contest held in a neighborhood parking lot. (It seems to be a church event.) The amateur video, like the recreational athletic dancing shown, celebrates a kind of homemade street art. The clip is DIY culture at its most satisfyingly vivid. By now, the spiderweb invoked as the show's title is pretty much in focus, with very different pieces in very different rooms nonetheless intertwined with one another. The exhibition's strongest individual objects are three mesmerizing 'infinity portals,' two on the wall and one on the floor. Rosales edged double-sided mirror glass with strips of shifting LEDs, which create a reflected illusion of depth cascading into visual eternity. One is framed in aluminum engraved with chain links and the words 'Lost Angeles' written in an elaborate font that zips between establishment Olde English 'Canterbury' style and illicit urban graffiti. Look closely, and 'Smile now, cry later' is etched into the clear glass below a suspended bandanna, a gently admonishing song lyric by Sunny and the Sunliners, the 1960s Chicano R&B group. The other two portals ruminate on the 1992 Los Angeles riots in the wake of the horrendous Rodney King police brutality verdicts, as well as furious demands for gay rights and survival help as the AIDS epidemic rampaged. One surprising element of the show is several engrossing display cases with zines and memorabilia of daily life during those fraught days. An archive of throwaways gets new life when presented as a natural history composed of cultural artifacts. Absorbing works built from archives are becoming increasingly prominent in the art world. The motif is built on such diverse precedents as Fred Wilson's sharply researched interventions into the establishment framework of museum storerooms and Elliott Hundley's dizzying collages of material pinned with long needles to panels, which position life's scraps somewhere between exotic butterflies captured for close study and therapeutic visual acupuncture. (An excellent Hundley solo survey is currently at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.) With this exhibition, Rosales is poised to join their ranks. Archival interests among artists may be residue of our tumultuously evolving digital age. As they say, nothing digital is ever permanently deleted, leaving everything open to revival and reassessment. That, too, dates to the 1990s, when personal computers became common household items, putting an infinity portal into almost every home. Think of 'Tzahualli' as a worldwide spiderweb. The show was organized by PSAM chief curator and interim director Christine Vendredi, her first exhibition since joining the museum staff last year. Disappointingly, there is no catalog, but fragments of the art's fun-drenched analog Wayback Machine are destined to live on in digital ether.
Yahoo
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mexico's AXE Ceremonia Festival Canceled After Crane Collapse Kills Two Photographers
The post Mexico's AXE Ceremonia Festival Canceled After Crane Collapse Kills Two Photographers appeared first on Consequence. The AXE Ceremonia festival in Mexico City was cut short this weekend after a crane collapsed and killed two photographers. The incident occurred around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday during Meme Del Real (of Café Tacvba)'s set. A large gust of wind caused a crane holding a decorative metallic object to fall on two photographers covering the event, now confirmed to be Miguel Angel Rojas and Berenice Giles. According to local authorities, the two 'received pre-hospital care at the scene, and were later urgently transported to the hospital, where they unfortunately passed away.' While the festival carried on throughout Saturday despite the tragedy — including performances from Charli XCX and Tomorrow x Together — the festival organizers and local mayor opted to suspend Sunday's activities, which was set to feature performances from Tyler, the Creator, Massive Attack, The Marías, and more. Neither the local authorities nor AXE Ceremonia have provided details as to what led the crane to collapse, nor why they kept the event going on Saturday as normal; the festival did, however, release a statement confirming the accident on Saturday evening. 'With deep sadness, we confirm the passing of the two people who were injured during today's incident,' AXE Ceremonia said in a statement. 'We are deeply heartbroken by this loss. We are reaching out to their families to support them during this incredibly difficult time and to provide them with all our care and solidarity. The safety of our community has always been our priority, and we continue, as from the very beginning, to maintain close collaboration and complete transparency with the authorities.' The festival released a statement on the incident and cancellation to Instagram, and announced that refunds would be issued to festival goers automatically. The local mayor's office also confirmed the day's cancellation, saying,'The teams from the Miguel Hidalgo Government and Legal Affairs, along with the borough's Civil Protection department and the Administrative Verification Institute of Mexico City, completed the inspection and placed suspension seals at the entrances to AXE Ceremonia in Bicentennial Park. Therefore, the event this Sunday, April 6, is suspended.' In light of the tragedy, several members of the press and creative community created a makeshift memorial in tribute to Rojas and Giles near the festival grounds (as captured by photographer Franco Emmanuel above). Mexico's AXE Ceremonia Festival Canceled After Crane Collapse Kills Two Photographers Paolo Ragusa Popular Posts Kanye West Says Wife Bianca Censori Left Him After Trying to Get Him Committed South Park Tackles Diddy, Ketamine, and Canada in Trailer for Season 27: Watch Bill Burr Confronted Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder at SNL50: "I Hated Your Band" Liam Neeson Lets It All Hang Out in New Trailer for The Naked Gun Reboot: Watch White Lotus Characters Ranked By How Much I Hope They Die in the Season 3 Finale Mariah Carey Mortifies Teenage Son By Crashing His Twitch Stream Subscribe to Consequence's email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.
