Montevideo Mondays (XXIV)
In previous posts, I mentioned the notorious amount of thematic parties emerging in the recent years in Montevideo. One sample of this big success is called Club Subtropical, a party where the tropical rythms of Latin America mix together in long, spiritual, chic and sometimes hypnotic sessions where the concept of south american folklore music gets twisted, dissolved and also vindicated while lots of nice people are having fun. Here´s a song of the previous days of Jaime Roots, a project created by Juan Chao mainly focused in the pursuit of a solid resignification of old sounds and concepts into a popular music more actual, full of soul and suitable for partying.
The task is not easy, and the possibilities of mixing everything into something without any form is big. However, Jaime Roots managed to have one of the most authentic approaches -a task not that easy in times where every old genre has its new versions, its vindications, its “electro” variants (remember electrotango?)- mainly based in experimenting with dub and hip hop as two of their most powerful weapons:
That kind of brand has a lot of satellite acts and even some playlists. However, some artists seem to have started from there to already evolve and play in bigger pastures. That may be the case of the former artist known as Jaime Roots, now called J.R. Here´s a funny story: the name was a homage to Jaime Roos, possibly the most popular and iconic uruguayan singer-songwriter who is a classic and sells out every venue where he goes. Jaime Roots -the name was referring to the roots of uruguayan music, personified in him- was banned as a name by Roos and his team of lawyers, so Jaime Roots had to abbreviate his name. The project didn´t stop, of course. Here´s another sample of what Jaime Roots could do sampling a great, iconic uruguayan sound:
That “Roots situation” didn’t seemed to be a problem for the project. Recently, they took their music to Senegal, after getting picked among more than 2.000 bands from all over the world to record songs in that country with local musicians, in a pretty un-clichéd effort, which means a lot for a project that is still searching its soul. In the meantime, you can try to see what happens with yours when you try to enter and dance tunes as these two.
Make sure to check the new J. R. Facebook page, here.
