Just when Gomez thought Miami had officially seceded and become the new tassel-shoed capital of Latin America, along came the Ultra Music Festival over the weekend,
to make the city about as white as you can get without a dog-eared copy of a Carlos Castaneda book under one arm and a peyote button in your hand.
Ultra is a massive showcase for drum-and-bass electronica music, and a close scrutiny of the featured artists revealed that none of them were Latinos, or at least that they did not want to admit to it on the ultra home page. We suspect someone in Infected Mushroom is Latino. Everyone else we thought might have been Latino turned out to be Danish or from Paris. There was one Spaniard, Elio Riso, but we figure he shouldn't count.
Between 50,000 and 60,000 people showed up for the festival, all of them thrusting their pelvises (pelvi?) alone in a tracelike state that is best cultivated alone in one's bedroom in leafy northern suburbs. The only mention Gomez found of Latinos at Ultra was one attendee's online review referring to the cheapest food being sold by some Latino guy. Gomez wishes we'd been there to sell snow cones laced with ecstasy.
Gomez wonders if we are the only ones reminded of side cramps in step class from the early 1990s when we listen to Elio Riso. Gomez wonders why people think it is clever to call a self-loathing musical group Infected Mushroom. Gomez wonders whether repeating ourselves over and over could be a literary version of electronica. Gomez wonders whether repeating ourselves over and over could be a literary version of electronica. Gomez wonders whether repeating ourselves over and over could be a literary version of electronica. Insane, insane, insane, insane, insane, insane...
It is amazing to Gomez that in a country where so many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans wear cowboy hats and listen to country music, that not a single performer or honoree at the Academy of Country Music Awards - airing a week from Sunday on CBS - is Hispanic. Or black. But you don't see as many black folks in cowboy hats, big-ass trucks and listening to country music as you do Hispanics. Or at least that has been Gomez's experience. Perhaps Gomez lives in the wrong part of the world.
Yes, it is amazing, but not surprising.
Gomez put in a call to the US Hispanic Country Music Association president Maritza Baca, to try to get a handle on why country music remains the whitest genre since Lawrence Welk, but all we got was the voicemail. We also noticed that Ms. Baca's Web site hasn't been updated since 2006, shortly after Freddie Fender died. Is it possible that Freddie was the last great Latino country star in English?
Calle 13 - La Jirafa
Latina.com reports that Rene Perez, the poetic lyrical genius known as "residente" in the Puerto Rican rap duo Calle 13, recently talked to MTV3 about how HIV and AIDS have impacted his own life. His aunt and uncle both have the disease, he said.
Mr. Perez also talked about how huge a problem the disease is in Puerto Rico, where, in Gomez's experience, too many men refuse to use condoms even though nearly all of them are cheating on somebody. Gomez thinks those men who refuse to wear condoms with their wives, even though they are cheating on those wives, should be put in jail.
Gomez applauds Mr. Perez for speaking so candidly about this epidemic, and for encouraging the use of condoms. If Mr. Perez needs someone to try out a condom with, there are a few volunteers raising their hands and screaming "oooh, pick me!" here at Gomez. Just a thought.
MARCH 20, 2009 - Sometimes, a woman genius can't catch a break, especially from male music critics.
Take this Dallas Morning News story about last nights SXSW performance by the brilliant Mexican singer/songwriter Ximena Sarinana. The review, by a dude named Mario, said she was very good, but also called the twenty-three-year-old "child-like," "youthful" and "brunette," all in the span of a single paragraph.
For the record, Mario did not describe any of the other artists mentioned in his article - Quincy Jones, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Devo - in these subjective terms. Gomez will venture to guess that this is because they are all male and old.
Then again, Gomez has an organic tortilla chip on our slumped shoulder about the treatment of women in the music business, for our own sordid (and, yes, perhaps childlike and brunette) reasons.
Gomez should probably quit complaining and just be glad the DMN wrote about MS. Sarinana at all.
Gomez would like the record to state the very original and impressive Ms. Sarinana is currently our favorite Mexican export after tequila. We would also like to say that Ms. Sarinana sings like a modern Billie Holliday. No, we did not say "the Mexican Billie Holliday," we said "a modern Billie Holliday".
Mariah Carey and husband Nick Cannon are set to purchase the world's most expensive mansion, in Beverly Hills, according to multiple sources. The palace is priced at $125 million.
Gomez loves the Venezuelan-American Carey (yes, her black father is Venezuelan) for her singing, and believes she singlehandedly changed the course of American popular music for generations to come. But Gomez wonders if she and Mr. Cannon have taken second jobs working for AIG. Do they need a championship tennis court? Do they need staff quarters for ten?
How, how, how is it possible, during such dire economic times as these, for two overpaid entertainers from humble backgrounds to be so out of touch with the needs of regular people?
With Latinos the hardest-hit in the current recession and foreclosure crisis, we wonder if it wouldn't be too much to ask that filthy rich Latina celebrities like Ms. Carey make more of an effort to tone it down a bit - and maybe help out more?
Ms. Carey, ostentatious consumption, like super-high whistle tones, Tommy Mottola, and gold lame tank tops, is unfashionably 1990s. We suggest you recalibrate, and evolve. This is not the time for anyone to flaunt their wealth and retain fans.
Gomez tried not roll our collective eyes (we got eyes like spider, oiste?) when news surfaced this week about Cuban-American singer Christina Milian.
First, we learned that a demo of her newly-recorded single has been leaked on the Internet. Here's the link where you can hear the song, I'm a Cheat.
Then we learned that Ms. Milian is not actually engaged to a producer who goes by the name The-Dream. Gomez never thought she was. Gomez can't believe anyone would be silly enough to go by a made-up name like...oh, well, what? Nevermind.
Then the story surfaced that there is some controversy about Ms. Milian lightening her skin and dyeing her hair blond. I guess that with resident fading freak Jack-O on tour the skin-lightening police had to pick on someone else.
Gomez does think the new Ms. Milian looks much worse than the old, however contrived the controversy might be. Gomez suspects all these Milian Mishaps are the result of some late-night hand-wringing by overpaid publicists who hope to draw attention to the singer who, "coincidentally," has a new remix of an old song, Amazing, out in video.
Gomez respects Ms. Milian's obvious talents, but wishes she weren't reduced to stunt-pimpin' for attention like Britney. Gomez would not, however, be disappointed if Ms. Milian shaved all that straw-stiff yellow stuff from her head. Then again, Gomez's first live concert was Van Halen. Times have changed. Maybe Gomez should, too.
Gomez doesn't have anything particularly new to say about twenty-two-year-old Nuyorican singer and actress Jeannie Ortega, except that we were surprised to find out that some of our closest Latino friends had no idea who she was. Shame.
Miss Ortega looks like all the chola girls who used to beat Gomez up in middle school, but that's where the similarities end. In reality, Miss Ortega is a talented songwriter, singer and actress from Bushwick, who decided at the age of eight to make the big time, but has now been trapped in the MTV ghetto where excellent Latino mainstream artists are sent to watch their careers die before they get off the ground.
Gomez think it sucks that MTV has stupidly relegated Miss Ortega and her excellent English-language pop to their Spanish-language music video network MTV3. Gomez wonders whatever happened to Kat de Luna and Paula de Anda, the two who escaped said ghetto.
Gomez wonders when segregation will end in the music industry for the vast majority of US-born Latino performers. Gomez also wonders when Pitbull will reveal the secret to his success (Mother Goose books). Gomez wonders about a lot of things. Don't you?