Jocie Head reviews the Sonar Festival, Barcelona, June 12-14.
arcelona's Sonar Festival celebratAll tickets were sold out, including the Matthew Herbert Big Band concerts, the only Sonar events not part of my three-day pass.
This was a disappointing start: Herbert is a prolific producer of quality music. The Big Band project was particularly enticing, it's about "War and the American empire".
Sonar is split into by day and by night events. By day has five music venues. I start at the only outdoor one (Sonar Village), where Hip-Hop label Anticon are holding forth.
Themselves' turntablist has a 'Bush' T..... Shirt, with the 'S' substituted for a swastika. Sage Francis is the Anticon flagship act, he takes to the stage draped in a US flag. The 'stars' are revealed as US corporation logo's. Yay.
Francis has refreshing lyrical content; rapping about "ten-second (TV) clips of the West Bank" and replacing the words of Pharoah Monch's 'Simon Say's' from "girls, rub on your titties" to "girls, keep your dignity".
Jamie Lidell gets the most feverish crowd reaction. He's decked out in a skirt and has sandbuckets for shoulderpads. The sound is a compelling combination of blues, techno and hip-hop.
Unlike much 'live' dance music, you can see the effect of his playing with machines for example he recorded himself humanbeatboxing, then played it back on a loop, whilst singing over the top. few times. My favourite performance from cameo from Matthew Herbert.
us inhuman".
why is he not called a thief? a conman?".
... ..
In Lidell's "What's going on?' cover, the "War is not the answer' line was looped a Sonar is capped off nicely with a keyboard
Sonar cinema is kindly provided by Fox (Rupert Murdoch). Among the highlights is 'Resistencia, Hip-Hop in Colombia'. The rappers spit out lines such as " represent for the stowaways" and "Imperialism makes
The film quickly moves on to the artists voicing their opinions on the state of the nation. "Businessmen make millions of peso's from the fruits of the workers labour,
It seems the Colombian government knew a thing or two about conning; the announcement of the privatisation of the education system in 2001 was timed to coincide with Colombia winning the Copa Matthew Herbert Big Band America: the country had its back turned.
Of course, Colombia's situation is not only due to the government: the US funds paramilitaries to clear peasants from the land, so the path is clear for US corporations to control resources.
Sonar festival, an unusual and diverse set of acts, it's in Barcelona and in the summer Can't ask for much more