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MP3 Polka Madre - Casa Donde
15 MP3 Songs in this album (47:18) !
Related styles: WORLD: Gypsy, ROCK: Punk
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Details:
Polka Madre literally means âmother polka.â
Itâs also a pun on puta madre, one of the most vulgar Mexi-
can curses, and a derivative of poca madre, an untranslat-
able and distinctly chilango phrase that can express utmost
disgust or enthusiasm. Itâs an apt name for a band that filters the worldâs music through the worldâs largest metropolis, sighing out elegant folk songs through the gritted teeth and biting grime of Mexico D.F., electrifying old sounds to make them heard again above the noise of the 24 million other chilangos that inhabit the megalopolis.
The story begins when Eric Bergman (vocals, guitar, mandolin), a Finn raised in America and schooled in England, met Marina de Ita (keyboards, accordion) while traveling through Mexico D.F. in early 2004. The two began performing minimal and melancholy music at the weekly Jueves de Kramer, an underground arts night in a warehouse space on the cityâs underdeveloped south side. A
rotating cast of barflies and bohemians would join them on
stage, and their music coalesced around something sinister,
drunken, and Eastern European, elegantly stumbling between
klezmer, polka, and circus music.
After a few months the police shut down the Jueves de
Kramer, but Eric and Marina had built up a solid repertoire
and recruited Enrique Perez (clarinet), a classically-trained virtuoso who was eager to push the boundaries of his training by delving into the occult underbellies of jazz and the avant-garde. Over the next year, Eric, Marina, and Enrique herded a rotating cast of musicians of varying levels of talent and sobriety across Mexico and Europe. After a year and a half of hard touring, Polka Madre became a steady quintet, with punk rock train-hopper Andrew Cameron (U.S.A., bass), and highly-trained percussionist Raymundo Vera filling out the rhythm section. The band members
turned over their lives to music, quitting their day jobs and living on tortillas and onion soup from gig to gig.
Live shows grew increasingly theatrical, incorpo-
rating false moustaches, equal parts shirtlessness and dandyhood, and liberal dabs of alcohol-scented sweat. Their audience grew alongside their ambitions, and they regularly drew 500-strong crowds around Mexico. In spring 2006, Polka
Madre recorded their debut full-length, Infausta Noticia,
and took off on a 40-stop U.S. tour to promote the album,
followed by multi-month jaunts around Mexico and Europe
that kept the band busy well into 2007.
When Polka Madre werenât touring, they were busy assimi-
lating the wide array of influences that they had encountered during their travels. The band had spent three months mingling with members of New Yorkâs gypsy-punk scene and toured Mexico with backbeat-heavy hillbilly revivalists the Can Kickers. Their rhythm section stepped up its tempos
to take on a punk-rock furor, while Marina and Enrique
crafted multi-faceted melodies that touched down all over
Europe and Latin America, and Eric tied it all together with
simple song structures and cryptic imagery. Their upcoming
album, Casa Donde, is as timeless and out-of-time as the
crowd of shantytown-dwelling nacos, glue-huffing punkeros,
and fresa art-scenesters that walk the chilango streets.
The cover artwork for Casa Donde was done by
Finnish performance artists Pekka and Teija Isorattya, who
also provide live visual accompaniment for Polka Madre
with their Isorattya Luukone (Isorattya Bone Machine), a
collection of motorized 2.5 meter-tall humanoid puppets
assembled from various animal bones that dance in time
to the music Pekka and Teija also project videos over the
whole spectacle, and over the course of the next tour they
will be compiling an itsesyova elokuva (film that eats itself), consisting of progressively newer and more altered footage of the band performing in front of old footage of
itself, extending ever-backwards in a hall of mirrors. The
tour will culminate in a multimedia art exhibition at the Ex-Teresa, an old Mexico City cathedral recently reborn as
a contemporary art museum. En route, Polka Madre will
be playing throughout the U.S. during March and April of
2008, bringing along a trunkful of old bones and forgot-
ten or unknown songs, giving them new life every evening.
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