On Aug. 28, the Tijuana-based Nortec Collective featured two of its members, Bostich + Fussible, at The Independent in San Francisco as part of their 2010 tour, coinciding with the release of their new album, Boulevard 2000.
Ramon Amezcua, aka Bostich, stated, “Boulevard 2000 is a very important album because it represents this journey of Fussible + Bostich, and shows the evolution of the sound that started with banda and tambora, and now incorporates new technology.”
Nortec Collective was formed as the union of several individual projects that merge electronic music with music of northern Mexico — banda and norteña. The group — which is comprised of Fussible (Pepe Mogt), Bostich (Ramón Amezcua), Hiperboreal (Pedro Gabriel Beas) and Clorofila (Jorge Verdin) — captures, creates and represents an audiovisual record of Tijuana’s often-marginalized subcultures.
Amezcua and Mogt grew up listening to electronic music, on the radio and through record stores on the other side of the border. “The fact of living on the border gave us access to this music. Norteña and tambora is what’s heard on the street, in taxis, on the avenues, at home with the family … and the truth is we were not immersed in that music,” said Mogt.
After seven years in which recycling sounds in the border city was nothing more than a hobby among friends, Mogt and Amezcua decided to form the label Mil Records in 1999, producing the album Nortec Sampler.
The release of Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 1 in 2001 turned Nortec Collective into a symbol that represents the life and culture of northern Mexico. The collection of songs is characterized by the blending of electronic beats with accordions, brass, vocals and tarolas (a type of drum).
Through the years, their concept of music developed and the recycling of sounds began to merge with pieces of norteña songs recorded in a studio in Coahuila (a red-light district of Tijuana), giving it the unique Nortec flavor. “When we create our music, sometimes ideas emerge from songs that we heard in the 80’s, from techno-pop or from a song by Los Tigres del Norte,” said Amezcua.
The album Tijuana Sessions, Vol. 3, produced by Nacional Records, was nominated in 2006 for two Latin Grammys. The group was nominated again in 2008 for Nortec Collective Presents: Bostich+Fussible, Tijuana Sound Machine.
And after 11 years, Nortec Collective still has a great drawing power. Their concert in San Francisco was packed. The audience was receptive and devoted, and the fans danced, jumped and sang all night.
As electronic musicians, Fussible + Bostich work with synthesizers, drum machines, analogue instruments, new technologies such as the I-pad and the Tenori-On, a visual device that in the words of Amezcua “allows people to see how sequences go and how a song is put together live, giving the opportunity to fuse together the acoustic instruments.”
The album Boulevard 2000, which goes on sale Sept. 14, comes from the name of a street in Tijuana, which was built with a vision towards the future, making itself a symbol of the city. The album fuses the violent reality of those who live in that area with the hopefulness of a forward-looking vision.
Nortec albums always tell a story, and the new album continues with the theme of Tijuana Sound Machine, showing a car traveling on the new and dangerous avenue that has seen many murders related to drug trafficking.
The first single is entitled “I Count The Ways”, with vocals by Kylee Swenson of Loquat, the local electro-pop group that opened the show at The Independent. This single was the hit of the night, revealing the musical path and maturity of Nortec. Kylee adds a seventies disco sound, and the beats, a fusion of electro-pop and banda, create a seamless integration of rhythms.
Nortec reflects patterns of immigration, whether from the Americas, Africa or Europe, integrating, in addition to the accordion, instruments like trumpet and tuba, played by Gustavo Medina.
Medina is an essential element of Nortec, representing the connection to the ancestral past, and in making the trumpet a lead instrument, gives a unique and fundamental direction to the songs.
The team of graphic designers and the visual presentation that accompanies Nortec Collective performances project both subtle and obvious images from different locations in Tijuana and present social issues such as labor practices in sweatshops, prostitution, immigration or the protection of the environment.
“[The images] show what life is like in Tijuana, and that which once was regarded as grotesque and even shameful, has been given an aesthetic [through the video clips] that, finally, Tijuana culture has a lot from which to draw its inspiration as a border city,” said Amezcua.
For Mogt they reflect the “range of colors, of lights, the DJ in the cage that insults customers, and the girls dancing, creating a visual record interpreted by the music.”
As they combine the rhythms and visual components, Bostich + Fussible remind us that culture is porous, and that art and music transcend borders.
Nortec Collective is a pair of eyes and ears at the border, telling stories and metaphors with their music and linking the past with the future.
After San Francisco, Bostich + Fussible will continue their tour in Guadalajara, Mexico City, Shanghai, England, Switzerland, France and other European countries. The new album is now available on Itunes. Visit http://soundcloud.com/pepemogt to download songs for free and http://www.milrecords.com for information on the tour.
—Translation Thomas Mayock
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