Nortec Collective adds a new dimension to annual Adams Avenue Street FairBy Chris Nixon
For the San Diego Union-Tribune
September 22, 2005
'The writer Andre Breton basically said Mexico is the most surreal country in the world. If that's the case, then Tijuana is the entry point to most surreal country in the world," says Jorge Verdin, aka Clorofila, a member of the Tijuana-based electronic music cooperative known as the Nortec Collective.
Verdin and the rest of the Nortec Collective find inspiration in Tijuana's surreal back alleys and the bright lights of Avenida Revolución, their music representing the past and future of northern Mexican all in the same breath.
Saturday night, the Nortec Collective brings its distinct sound from Avenida Revolución to Adams Avenue, as the group headlines the Park Jazz & Latin Stage of the 2005 Adams Avenue Street Fair.
Based around the work of five electronic musicians – Bostich (Ramon Amezcua), Fussible (Pepe Mogt), Hiporboreal (Pedro Beas), Panoptica (Roberto Mendoza) and Clorofila (Verdin) – the collective melds the booming tuba of traditional northern Mexican musical styles with the cutting-edge beats of electronic dance music into its own surreal style of music.
Brought to northern Mexico by German immigrants, norteño and tambora resemble a Latino-influenced polka music. Substituting the tuba for traditional stand-up double bass, along with brassy arrangements and marching drum snare, tambora represents a slamming together of cultures: Germanic and Mexican. Add to the mix Tijuana's border culture, and you find Nortec's distinctly urban sound.
"If you grew up in Tijuana, you grew up listening to (norteño and tambora) whether you wanted to or not," says Verdin during a lunch break from his day job, where he works as an art director in an advertising department in the Los Angeles area. "That's what's on the radio, that's what the cab drivers listen to, that's what the neighbor listens to really loudly. You don't really give it much thought, because that's what the masses listen to. Later on, I started realizing the worth of it."
With the release of 2001's "The Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 1," Clorofila, along with the rest of the Nortec Collective, burst onto the international dance scene. The music's highly percussive nature resembles Latin-tinged drum 'n'bass, with ambient keyboards and horns added on top of churning beats.
After the album's release on the trendy World Music label Palm Pictures, the five musicians found themselves as unwilling poster children for the Tijuana art scene and unwitting representatives of border culture.
"We've been given this role of 'cultural ambassadors of the Tijuana arts scene,' but we're really not that involved in the arts scene," said Verdin, commenting on the sudden exposure granted the collective in 2001. "And we're not ambassadors, because if you're an ambassador you're putting a good face on the city.
"You're selling Tijuana as this great, wonderful place. We really don't do that. We show a lot of the gnarly side of Tijuana. There're a lot of cultural issues that you can't synthesize down into a soundbite. It's a really complex situation, and often it's a disagreeable, nasty situation."
After a legal tangle with Palm Pictures, the scrapping of "Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 2" and a five-year hiatus from releasing discs as a collective, Nortec returned this year with "Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3." The album sounds as fresh as the original 2001 release, with the added bonus of more live musicians this time around.
"Everyone wanted to use live musicians more this time to round out the sound a little bit," said Verdin. "Using samples was a cool place to start, but after a while you get sick of manipulating samples and being restricted by what's already been recorded. It was just more natural to have a musician play something instead of twisting samples to sound the way you want."
With the addition of Nortec Collective to the historically acoustic and rootsy Adams Avenue Street Fair, some traditionalists might cringe at the inclusion of electronic music. But Verdin disagrees: "The source of where we get our sound is mainly a traditional regional music of Mexico. So to me, it's not that far of a stretch."
The free festival stretches across two days, with 70 bands on six stages drawing thousands of Americana, roots rock and traditional music fans to Normal Heights.
Just for the day, Normal Heights might prove more surreal than Tijuana itself.
Chris Nixon is a San Diego music writer.
