La Cuneta son machine

Die Band aus Managua/Nicaragua wurde im letzten Jahr für den Grammy in der Sparte "Best Latin Urban Album" nominiert. Sie spielen Chinamera, den einfachen Sound der Armen. Arm? Im Gegenteil! Das ist höchst spannend, vielseitig, vor allem aber temperamentvoll.
Die Cumbia Rock-Band La Cuneta Son Machin spielte zu Beginn ihrer Karriere auf heidnischen Prozessionen in Santo Domingo zu Ehren des Heiligen der Diebe und Prostituierten. Das verhilft zu Street credibility. Und die Musiker scheuten für ihren Mash-up-Sound, den sie in den Bars der Stadt vorstellten, nicht mal die Konfrontation mit Heavy Metal. In den sieben Jahren seit seiner Gründung hat das Sextett einen originären Stil entwickelt, in dem traditionelle wie populäre lateinamerikanische Motive mit Elementen von Rock, Ska, Funk, Hip-Hop und Elektronik kombiniert wurden.
Und wo könnte die Band den Gegensatz von Arm und Reich besser besingen als im Jungbusch, wo einerseits Kinder barfuß auf den Straßen laufen und immer noch viele Menschen keine Krankenversicherung haben. La Cuneta besingt das Leben der einfachen Menschen.

BIOGRAPHY
Born out of Managua´s celebration of Santo Domingo, the patron saint of thieves and prostitutes, La Cuneta Son Machín´ has developed a unique cumbia-rock sound that electrifies audiences wherever they go. Known for their raucous stage show, they
fuse traditional Nicaraguan rhythms, cumbia, electronic and rock elements and feature marimbas, accordions, Latin percussion, and electric guitars. Considered national heroes inside Nicaragua, their surprise 2016 Grammy nomination elevates their music to international status.
La Cuneta Son Machín Transcends the Borders of Nicaragua
Telesur 12/20/2015
Formed in 2009, the Nicaraguan band La Cuneta Son Machín offers a proposal that speak of everyday people with cumbia-latin-funk. Members of this group are nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Latin Urban Rock or Alternative Album for the recent release “Mondongo.”
Liner Notes from latest Grammy-nominated album “Mondongo”
Nicaragua in the 1980’s was called the “cultural center of the world” by the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. The cultural movement that arose out of the revolutionary movement produced new paths in music, poetry, art, and theater that captured the natural flair for improvisation and that is innate in Nicaraguan cultural expression. Nicaragua drew the cultural elite to soak up the euphoric expressions of the early Revolution. Carlos Mejia Godoy became the musical voice of the nation, writing political hymns and catchy songs that embodied the Nicaraguan spirit of resistance to authority through constant
poetic renovation of popular slang. His double entendre songs gave prominence to the most marginal sectors of Nicaraguan society, the neighborhood gossip, the country Casanova, a sex slave to the army, and the illiterate pharmacy flunky with a speech impediment.
The loss of the elections in 1990 signaled the end of the Sandinista Revolution and began a dark period in Nicaraguan culture as the “Miami” exiles returned bringing with them the pop sensibilities of the South Florida mall culture.
La Cuneta Son Machin began as a cumbia rock band, playing in the pagan procession of Santo Domingo, the patron saint of the thieves and prostitutes. They combined heavy metal with the playlist of the juke boxes of Nicaragua’s poorest and most marginal bars in a mash-up format. This unusual fusion captured the attention of Nicaraguan youth as they created a musical language that thumbed its nose at the pop sensibilities of the mainstream and carried on the irreverent tradition of Nicaraguan folk music.
As they began to write original music, they looked back to the revolutionary musical models of the 1980s and began to push the boundaries of Nicaraguan folk styles with modern influences and lyrics that captured the inventiveness of popular slang. In 2014 they sought me out to help with them with this project. I had worked in Nicaragua for ten years in a similar project with Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy and Mancotal that sought to create new musical expressions based on the popular music of Nicaragua. In my basement studio in Alameda we began to play with electronic sounds and rock influences while digging into the deep folk roots that they had inherited from their lineage as members of the famous Mejía Godoy family of Nicaraguan musicians.
Mondongo represents the intestines of Nicaragua, a mixture of all of the influences that young Nicaraguans have consumed, from Queen to Cumbia to Reggaeton and beyond.

CUMBIA ROCKERA SOBAQUIADA
Carlos Mejia (Marimba, Timbales)
Carlos Guillen (Gesang)
Ernesto Lopez (Schlagzeug, Timbales, Gesang)
Omar Suazo (Gitarre)
César Rodriguez (Keyboard)
Augusto Mejia (Bass, Gesang)
Christian Pepin (Perkussion)
Camilo Landau (Gitarre)