Mexican Film Cumbia

[Ermengardi Atkisson]

Thesymposium will be the first of its kind, incorporating roundtable discussions and panels on the art of cumbia with an onsite archival exhibition, a cumbia sonidero DJ performance, and the premieres of two documentaries exploring the history and current state of cumbia culture.

On April 12, UCSB Associate Professor David Novak will moderate a morning roundtable discussion with cumbia archivists and experts Jorge Balleza, Carlos Icaza, Gary Garay, and Alexandra Lippman. In the afternoon, Assistant Professor Raquel Pacheco will host another discussion with the directors of both films, designer Roberto Rodriguez, and photographer Mirjam Wirz, where the group will speak on documenting cumbia through film, photography, design, and book publishing.

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LATINA spoke with Aguirre to discuss sonidero culture, portraying the immigrant identity in film, and the surprising migratory evolution of the cumbia genre, from Latin America to the southern United States and back.

Your last short film, No Somos De Aqui Ni Somos De Alla, weaved the nuances of Mexican-American identity together with such unique style. Tell us about your background as a Mexican-American growing up in Texas, and the influence your upbringing has had on your work.

[Not appearing stereotypically Mexican] really changed my understanding of the Latin American experience. I think there is such a gradient to how [people] experience that, and how your family has navigated and assimilated [to the US].

The childhood experience for immigrants can be so different in that you had so much proximity to your culture in Texas, where others may have the opposite depending on where they grew up. How would you say that influenced your childhood?

In the film, you used voice-over interviews to describe sonidero culture as means of cultural preservation. Places like churches and sonideros serve as safe spaces in a country that actively terrorizes immigrants. What was the energy like in these clubs?

This roundtable discussion presents sonideros as archivists and knowledge producers and features a conversation between Jorge Balleza, Carlos Icaza, Gary Garay and Alexandra Lippman on caring for, curating, making public, and performing these archives.

Gary Garay will discuss how digging for cumbia records and ephemera informs his art practice and how he activates and makes public archives through performance at Ms Exitos, his monthly radio show and DJ salon/dance party.

Carlos Icaza (Tropicaza) will talk about his collaborations with sonideros through record collecting, DJing, and radio. In collaboration with Wirz, Icaza conducted research for and interviewed sonideros and record collectors throughout Mexico for Ojos Suaves, a book of interviews, photographs, and ephemera following one record dealer, Morelos, who has traveled throughout South and Central America since the 1980s to buy records for sonideros located all over Mexico.

This roundtable discusses cumbia as a visual culture and features a conversation between film directors Joyce Garca and Alvaro Parra, designer Roberto Rodriguez, and photographer Mirjam Wirzon documenting cumbia through film, photography, design, and book publishing.

Joyce Garcia and Alvaro Parra will discuss the process of creating documentary films with cumbia communities in Mexico City and Los Angeles, Roberto Rodriguez will discuss the visual representation of cumbia in poster art, photographs, flyers, recordings, and other soursces, and Mirjam Wirz will discuss Sonidero City, a multi-publication project she began in 2010 as a photographic research project about cumbia record collectors, collections of media and ephemera, and sound systems in Mexico and Colombia.

Juan David Rubio Restrepo is an artist/scholar and is currently Assistant Professor of Music and Chicano Studies at The University of Texas at El Paso. His creative practice and scholarly research consider different types of Latin American popular musics and global experimental practices. Juan David holds a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies and Drum Kit Performance from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogot, Colombia), a Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology from the University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Music with a focus on Integrative Studies from the University of California, San Diego. An active drummer, composer, and music technologist, Juan David performs physically and telematically in venues worldwide. He writes in English and Spanish on music, alterity, sound technologies, and power.

Netflix has done a fantastic job of boosting international film festival darlings, even if they get buried underneath the sea of content that the streaming giant churns out every day. Netflix's latest festival acquisition is the Mexican teen drama I'm No Longer Here, from writer/director Fernando Fras de la Parra, who recently came off the success of the first season of HBO's Los Espookys. Watch the I'm No Longer Here trailer below.

The script for I'm No Longer Here made a splash in 2013 when it won the Bengala award in 2013, later getting published as a short story. In 2014 that script was chosen for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and soon, it won the Gabriel Figueroa Development Grant at Los Cabos Film Festival. Frias' final film would premiere at the Cine Festival in 2019 and make the festival rounds at the Mar del Plata, Tallinn Black Nights, Puerto Escondido un Oaxaca, and Gteborg Film Festivals.

"In the mountains of Monterrey, Mexico, a small street gang named 'Los Terkos' spend their days listening to slowed down cumbia music and attending dance parties, showing off their outfits, hairstyles and gang alliances. Ulises Samperio, the leader of Los Terkos, tries to protect his friends from the nefarious elements of a quickly evolving drug/political war, but after a misunderstanding with a local cartel, he is forced to leave for Jackson Heights, Queens, a diverse immigrant community in New York City. Ulises tries to assimilate, but when he learns that his gang and the whole Kolombia culture is under threat, he questions his place in America and longs to return home."

Sonido Gallo Negro know how to honor the musical roots of Peruvian cumbia but also incorporate plenty of modern rock sensibilities, effect pedals, and dynamic timings to create a blend of old-world-meets-new that is singularly their own. Their use of multimedia elements also heighten their psychedelic production. Images projected behind the band began with a crudely-rendered cowboy hat animation that looked like it was being drawn in real-time; they later progressed to become more polished and graphical in feel.

This evening at Nectar Lounge, the room was at least half-Latin, with many Spanish speakers, buffered by folks of many other ethnicities. The mixed crowd was getting down, which can be a rare sight in some parts of semi-rigid Seattle.

Vee Hua 華婷婷 (they/them) is a writer, filmmaker, and organizer with semi-nomadic tendencies. Much of their work unifies their metaphysical interests with their belief that art can positively transform the self and society. They are the Editor-in-Chief of REDEFINE, Interim Managing Editor of South Seattle Emerald, and Co-Chair of the Seattle Arts Commission. They also previously served as the Executive Director of the interdisciplinary community hub, Northwest Film Forum, where they played a key role in making the space more welcoming and accessible for diverse audiences.

Vee has two narrative short films. Searching Skies (2017) touches on Syrian refugee resettlement in the United States; with it, they helped co-organize The Seventh Art Stand, a national film and civil rights discussion series against Islamophobia. Reckless Spirits (2022) is a metaphysical, multi-lingual POC buddy comedy for a bleak new era, in anticipation of a feature-length project.

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