Dallas Cumbiaholics

My first stop on Saturday night was 7-Eleven on St. Francis.  I made my purchase as a large adult black man talked on his cell phone next to the checkout. He talked on the line about his mother-in-law, well his baby-mama's mama, and he seemed to be looking for someone to come pick him up.  As I left the store, to my back he blurted "My man, my man, nice shoes.  You put that all together real nice.  Everybody know you went to Burlington."

I didn't turn around, as I was almost out the door and I wasn't really sure if he was talking to me, or what he was trying to achieve. Maybe I should have turned around and smiled, and let him know that the joke was on him - everything I was wearing I'd bought at a thrift shop.

I continued my path, crossing the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge to the Trinity Groves area, which is sort of like Main Entrance at San Agustin in San Pedro, but a bit more hipster.  I had dinner with friends at Souk, a supposedly Moroccan Restaurant that served generic Mediterranean food and served me a second round of eleven-dollar scotch I didn't ask for.

Being in that shared patio setup just like Main Entrance, the music from neighboring restaurants bled over the Arab Pop at Souk, and I heard Molotov's Gimme The Power coming, I think, from Chino Chinatown, an Asian-Latin fusion restaurant. That was a cool moment, and I'll surely hit Chino Chinatown up one day soon.

My dinner friends were looking to keep the party going but they weren't adventurous enough to follow me here:

I headed to Lower Greenville to fufil a hipster rite - for the first time ever I saw perform live an artist that I had discovered on Soundcloud, un tal Erick Jaimez.



Erick opened the show, and though I am also now a fan of Faded Deejayz, the Cumbia Trap Lord stole the show.

Upon entering The Crown and Harp I noticed more non-white faces than you usually find at a Lower Greenville establishment, especially one that claims to be an Irish Pub.  There were though a few yuppies and hipsters that shared my complexion and I was excited to see this grand mestizaje, the South-of-the-Border sabor mixed with crunk beats and flow moving the culos of people on the north side of town.  However, once the initial more generic mainstream hip-hop mixing gave way to Erick Jaimez's less orthodox grooves, lots of white ears left to go hear Miley Cyrus on the jukebox across the street.

Erick isn't the first to mix cumbia and hip-hop, but he does so more artfully than most.  When a guacharaca beat just needs to be guacharaca, he gives it some space before dropping the bass, and when a chicha classic needs some ponchis-ponchis to get the crowd going he pushes it. While a lot of DJs will drop a rap a cappella over a sonidero beat, Erick explores Latin Music more widely, sampling not only from Colombian/Mexican cumbias, but also Argentine villera and Peruvian chicha as well throwing in some Latin Pop, Rock en Español and Chente, and on the hip-hop side rather than just throwing in Dirty South and Top 40 staples, Erick has forged a musical identity inside the hip-hop DJ subgenre of Trap, spicing it up with some Old School, a bit of New Orleans Bounce, and, for lack of a better word, EDM (I think that word used to be 'House').

All this is done rather seamlessly. The distinct genres don't sound forced together.  It sounds surprisingly natural to hear Fito Olivares all trapped out while Pharell raps over it.  Speaking to Erick Jaimez after his set, he expressed his intention to 'bring cumbia back' to Dallas, and his sound does a lot to define our city musically, mixing together sounds that Dallasites, at least those of us from certain neighborhoods, have been hearing side-by-side all of our lives.  This is music that really reflects the Mexican-American musical identity, if I may dare make such a claim.

When I hit the club to shake my nalgas while sipping a Dos XX, I wanna be listening to cumbia trap music.