{"id":958,"date":"2015-01-09T09:10:40","date_gmt":"2015-01-09T09:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/douglascowie.com\/?p=958"},"modified":"2015-01-07T14:16:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T14:16:51","slug":"song-of-the-week-plantacion-adentro-by-willie-colon-and-ruben-blades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/?p=958","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Week: &#8220;Plantaci\u00f3n Adentro&#8221; by Willie Col\u00f3n and Ruben Blades"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.<\/p>\n<p>This is &#8220;Plantaci\u00f3n Adentro&#8221; by Willie Col\u00f3n and Ruben Blades:<\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xsg1PgfoJFM\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This week I read <a href=\"http:\/\/lovegoestobuildingsonfire.com\/home\/about-the-book\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Love Goes to Buildings on Fire <\/em><\/a>by Will Hermes. The book is a history of music in New York from 1973 to 1977, and while it covered a lot of stuff that I already knew about, it also (and this is why I read it in the first place) covered a whole lot of stuff I knew either very little or absolutely nothing about. Chief among the &#8220;absolutely nothing&#8221; (say it again, y&#8217;all) was the salsa music scene and its artists. Of the debut performance of this particular song, which comes from the 1977 album <em>Metiendo Mano! <\/em>and was written by Catalino &#8220;Tite&#8221; Curet Alonso, Hermes writes: &#8220;Addressing the audience as &#8216;camar\u00e1&#8217;&#8211;&#8216;comrade&#8217;&#8211;Blades sang about shadow people and murder amid &#8216;la la la&#8217;s,&#8217; Afro-Caribbean drums, and chortling trombones in Col\u00f3n&#8217;s shape-shifting arrangement, which included a disco-pop break foreshadowing Michael Jackson&#8217;s &#8216;Wanna Be Startin&#8217; Somethin&#8221; and some samba-style rhythms signaled by a Brazilian cu\u00edca.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hermes&#8217;s book is well worth reading for various reasons. He manages a neat trick of pulling a disparate set of musics and musicians together into a single narrative without forcing connections that aren&#8217;t really there. He also brings his own experience of that five-year period into the story with a light, yet illuminating, touch. The book also has 30 pages of notes, bibliography, discography and filmography, which is no small thing, because it offers you the opportunity to use the book not just to find out what Will Hermes has to say, but as a starting point for and map to your own exploration of the music and musical cultures that he writes about both passionately and intelligently.\u00a0 I, for one, am getting back to the latin rhythms, and seeing where I go from there.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Plantaci%C3%B3n%20Adentro%22%20by%20Willie%20Col%C3%B3n%20and%20Ruben%20Blades\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each Friday I pick a song\u2013new, old, borrowed, blue\u2013that\u2019s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it. This is &#8220;Plantaci\u00f3n Adentro&#8221; by Willie Col\u00f3n and Ruben Blades: This week I read Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes. The book is a history of music in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_twitter_via=\"DouglasCowie\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Song%20of%20the%20Week%3A%20%22Plantaci%C3%B3n%20Adentro%22%20by%20Willie%20Col%C3%B3n%20and%20Ruben%20Blades\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-song-of-the-week","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.douglascowie.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}