Cumbia is seen by highbrow critics as something you don’t even clean your ass with. We can agree, both lyrical and musical most cumbia is not really the most tasteful music. Is it music anyway? Mmm. But then watch this remix of Major Lazer’s Hold the Line by the duo Frikstailers from Cordoba, Argentina. The hawt video clip featuring the amazing Tranqui Yanqui, aka the King of Cardboard, makes you wanna move for sure. I love it when something so bad, turns in something so good!

Via: WUBA

They say everyone will get his 15 minutes of fame. I guess I had mine already. On the last day of my kind of internship at digital agency Pool Worldwide in Amsterdam I attempted to play the song Amélie on 6 iPhones. I studied piano at the conservartory of Rotterdam and the guys at the agency had the fantastic idea ´to do something´ with my musical skills. I got like 30 minutes to rehearse the song, because everybody needed their phone for obvious reasons. The result after recording were minutes tape of failed attempts, cursing (in different languages), people calling while trying to play, and sometimes a melody sounding like Amélie. I thought…

We could never have imagined the video would have so much success and actually become a viral. Our friends of First took care of the seeding by getting the video on popular Dutch video blog Dumpert resulting in more than 61.000 views and many reactions (some pretty funny), amongst others. The video found its way to other Dutch blogs and websites; NuJij.nl,  Fok en Frank-ly,e tc.

It really started to get pretty amazing when the video became a viral after being picked up from YouTube by websites as Collegehumor and Leo Burnett Frankfurt wrote about it in their trends report Cultural Fuel. Even my friends at Leo Burnett Argentina tweeted about it and some Apple-minded blogs mentioned the video too.

It resulted in 400.000+ views (and counting) on YouTube only.  And because the video was a kind of a present they put a link to my foundation El Desafiothriving an interesting amount of visitors to the website.

I have to be honest, in the beginning I did not know what to think about my performance. If my conservatory teacher would see it he would be ashamed. Now I can’t be anything else than happy, because the video definitely opened doors for me. It shows that  raw creativity without too much thinking on strategies can be very successful. A lesson agencies can profit from when producing their ‘virals’.

My 15 minutes of fame have passed. Guess I can start writing my memoirs.

Eclectic Method – The Tarantino Mixtape from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

Thanks to CR Blog; I had to use their title.

Listening to Lisandro Aristimuño gives me the same experience. This 27 years old singer-songwriter was born in Rio Negro in the south of Argentina. Rio Negro is located north of Patagonia where the colorful, solemn, natural beauty is really overpowering. Aristimuño translates this beautiful landscape into very original songs. Mixing Argentina’s diverse folkloric music gently with electronics into sensitive and charateristic pop songs. It is this mix that allows you to mind travel from Patagonia to Buenos Aires and beyond. It’s really original music that deserves to be heard by a wider audience.

Great news is that Aristimuño will be playing in Antwerp on Wednesday May, 6th in the Arenberg. This is one of the few times he is performing in a non Spanish speaking country, so don’t miss it. Oh, and for the €12 you will get to hear Anne Hukkelberg too. She is from Norway, the country of the fjords.

For now, sit back, watch some pictures of Patagonia and enjoy Aristimuño’s Argentina.

Date: Wednesday May, 6th 2009
Time: 20.30hs Kleine Zaal
Place: Arenberg, Antwerp
Price: € 12

Buy tickets here

The revenge of the nerds started already in 1984 with the movie The Revenge of the Nerds. The nerd is also coming back in the American Pie movies, even that you might argue whether they are really portrayed as hipsters. The American bands Weezer, The Barenaked Ladies and Wheatus are known to make geek rock. In 2006 the band Hellogoodbye released the music video for ‘In Your Arms’ in which the nerdy band members are very successful in their love lifes.

In 2007 CBS started broadcasting The Big Bang Theory starring two equally geeky main characters. In Spain they celebrate the Nerd Pride Day (Dia del Orgullo Friki) on May 25th since 2006 claiming the right for every person to be a geek.

But my conclusion that the nerd has become the new cool is based on the first Dutch Nerdcore Event organized in Amsterdam on February 26th of this year. According to the website Nerdcore is “a subgenre of hip hop music characterized by themes and subjects considered to be nerdy. In the past geeks and nerds were the exception to the rule, but today most people under 40 have at least one ‘geeky’ hobby or interest. Nerdcore rappers rhyme about anything, but there are some hot Nerdcore Favorites: video games, Star Wars, science, cult films, anime, comic books, computers and ofcourse the internet.” On the event famous Nerdcore rappers like Mc Lars, YtCracker and Beefy will rap about gangsters, bitches and homies, but also about programming, hardware and video games. The Nercore-event is organized by Dutch internet company Enrise probably to find those fine cool geeks and offer them a job. Pretty smart if you ask me.

The question is whether all of this is really good news for the nerds. How long will the concept of the nerd exist if the nerd is the new cool? Are they finally defeated after a history of being the outcast? Did the cool guys win at the end? Or are the cool guys actually super uncool?

Probably the real nerd doesn’t care about all of this and THAT is really cool!

Bron: Eerste Hulp Bij Plaatopnamen