DISPATCHES VOL.2: Guest Playlist w/ Jon Coleman of TV Dinner
Cumbia en el TV Dinner
Hello internet pals of music. Today we’re featuring a collaborative playlist to announce a cool new spot that just opened in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Jon has been at the root of all of this and I don’t even think he knows it.
Years and beers ago, I made the decision to head north of the 49th parallel for a second shot at a (not so) fancy art degree. I didn’t really know anyone there, but I immediately got hooked up with a campus job, and my new supervisor and I very quickly bonded over music, natch. He invited me into a private Facebook group of music freaks™ spread across Canada, and in it everyone shared one song per day from Youtube. You see, there was a time long ago when Facebook was useful. That group was a huge influence on what became Sermons!, and a few of these people became some of my greatest friends. Jon is one of them.
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Since then, Jon and I have played records together with five other weirdos in BC Hydra1, a monthly all vinyl heavy metal and punk night (we’re celebrating eight years this month, good lord). We’ve also just done normal things like hanging out in the yard, camping in the woods, and drinking beers in the park.
It was during one of those times drinking beers in the park that he announced that this idea he’d been talking about for a while was now most definitely happening.
You know those ideas that sound so silly that they’re actually brilliant?
Enter TV Dinner:
Jon would definitely explain it better than I can because he’s had to do so a jillion times, so I’ll just say that it’s a coffee shop / food market where everything is local, for people on the go—because Vancouver is stupidly overpriced and everyone’s working too hard and sometimes you just need to grab a bag of amazing frozen dumplings on your way home from one of your eight jobs. Sure, I’m biased—because I worked on the branding with him along with our other compadre, who also has a playlist coming eventually.
Back to music. We’ve collaborated on all the music for business hours. So it not just looks cool, but sounds great; probably one of the best soundtracks of any business currently operating in Vancouver (besides Dandelion Records).
If I recall, it was during the rainy season a few years back that we both started freaking out about cumbia rebajada, the slowed-down Mexican-borne sub genre of cumbia. We decided that summer was going to be cumbia summer.
It didn’t become cumbia summer.
In fact, cumbia still has yet to really catch on in Vancouver outside of Latin circles, although a band like Los Empanadas Ilegales are drawing good crowds playing chicha, the psychedelic, guitar-driven Peruvian style of cumbia. I tried playing chicha in deejay sets there, and I don’t think bar patrons gave a shit. I’ve talked with another BC deejay who has told me he has the same non-response when he plays the stuff.
I find this baffling. Canadians love going to Mexico. What the hell, y’all?
A breakdown on cumbia rebajada would require its own post and I’m not an authority anyway, but quickly: Because of immigrating Colombians in the 60s, Colombian cumbia records started getting heavier play at the public dances hosted by Mexico’s version of sound system culture: the sonidos. According to legend, one night Sonido Duéñez suffered a technical glitch, resulting in the records being pitched down a bit. People loved it. And now it has become a unique subculture, complete with its own styles and dances. Imagine Afro-Latin music played by DJ Screw on a Jamaican sound system. Shit is amazing. Coincidentally, Houston was a hub in those Colombian records getting to Monterrey.
For this playlist, we whittled down a good hour from a longer playlist we’ve been building. This covers a few different stages of the sound’s evolution: from the pure Colombian vallenato style of Andres Landero, through the grupos like Chiripa, to the digital touch of Amantes del Futuro and the logical conclusion of Houston’s Juan Gotti.
Welcome to TV Dinner, welcome to cumbia summer.
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BC Hydra is a play on the Province’s utilities provider, BC Hydro. There’s many heads, and we bring the power. So dumb.
Spotty wi-fi where I am in Peru, but I am downloading your playlist and look forward to it.
Love your connection with Jon and how music bonded you as lifelong mates.
I met a Peruvian dude yesterday who led a hike we took, and when I mentioned I had an album of Peruvian Chicha & Cumbia, he was equally fascinated and amazed I knew what it was, let alone liked it! Funny thing - his favorite musician was Dio. But he shared a playlist with me of Afro-Peruvian music that has some good stuff on it. Especially Pepe Vasquez, which immediately stands out on first listen.
"BC Hydra". Potential fictional villain name noted.