Sometimes it really does feel like I’m in Oz, some Wizard behind a curtain producing lifelike YouTubes of my swirling musical obsessions — or like that cartoon kid Simon for whom the things he drew came true
15 thoughts on “¿Sueños de Jerkbow?”
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Ace! Do my ears decieve me, or is one bit of this on a (very) pared down version of the Bam Bam riddim?
Yeah, you’re hearing Bam Bam in there, as filtered through 15 years of Playero-esque tinkering with it in PR and the DR. Those Bam Bam bits alternating with the jerk/NewBoyz samples (which are themselves subject to reggaeton’s sample-version logic) are the current sound of Dominican dembow. See, e.g., “Pepe” or any of the mixes by DJ Scuff.
And the Jerk samples are themselves some sort of clave, via “Wait (The Whisper Song)” and crunk? Whoa, this stuff is historical-conceptual-incestuous on so many levels.
another crunk genealogy
I’ve told you ;)
Are they saying “soy un mama clítoris”? and ” es que los condones no me quedan cocolos”? That’s…a bit on the wilder side of things compared to Pepe and some of the others. The production reminded me of the old underground videos, except the storyline is, well what storyline?
It made me look for one of those from an earlier era.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4rYeN9pTIs&feature=related
Your ears, Deepak, are sin duda much better than mine for picking out these lyrical, um, intricacies. What you observe is consistent with Raquel’s take (via email):
We’ll see whether/when that panic ever arrives. Curious in a way, to see this sort of thing surface again. Then again, with global publishing available to teenagers at the click of a button, is it any surprise that such sophomoric content would make its way to such accessible channels? Will we all adjust our norms in turn? Have we already?
As for the musical similarities, I too really love the way the alternation between the jerkin samples and the classic dancehall/reggaeton bits harken back to the “underground” days myself! In some sense, visible/audible as “Jerkbow” is, it’s still pretty undeniably “underground” in its ways.
Wayne, I’m not sure if this would qualify as an inverted facsimile of the jerkbow samples you provided (assuming that boricua underground has an influence in jerkbow’s visual and musical style) but I thought you would be interested in seeing it: bachateo paródico boricua. From Ponce—the land of Héctor Lavoe— with love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x_TSsc26z4
Wow! I don’t really know quite what to make of that or how to compare it to jerkbow. For all its humor, it definitely comes across as a heartfelt, faithful, and spot-on interpretation of bachata. I may be missing lots of cues, but I don’t quite hear how this interweaves PR and “non-PR” musical sources in quite the same way as the jerkbow stuff. But thx for bringing to my attn!
So how big is Jerk in Panama anyway? Also eg. this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRwaHkvcZEg
Thanks for that, Birdseed, which led me to this one too —
It’s pretty fascinating to see how the “You’re a Jerk” song & video have both become (re)fashionable texts for expressing a certain cosmo cool in places like Panama and Dominican Republic (from which the initial videos I posted above issue).
As far as the popularity of jerk in Panama, it’s a good question. I have no idea. I don’t even know to what extent it’s integrated into hip-hop practice generally vs. something seen as its own phenomenon, embraced by kids from outside, say, the established hip-hop communities in Panama. (Same questions go for DR, incidentally.)
hmm,, http://www.mediafire.com/?ukuzmeyzjin
Nice one, Carmen! Thanks for sharing. Funny, I was just checking some Jamaican jerk (the terminological confusion cracks me up) yesterday c/o —
http://brukmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/the-grass-is-always-greener/
It’s not too surprising to hear JA artists jump on jerkin given that dancehall kids are always up on the latest hip-hop hype. I’m hoping to hear a little more in the jerkbow vein from Jamaica, however — something that seeks to merge jerkin and dancehall more than just rap inna patois on some (“tiefed”) jerky beats. Do let me know if you run across anything like that!