"He'd been spinning for hours, and beneath the heat of the record players' overworked motors, and the heat from all those dancing bodies, a crucial piece of machinery began to melt, causing the platters to rotate at half speed. The result was a kind of psychedelic sludge, narcotic in its languor: voices slurred, brass turned liquid, accordions rendered spongy and bog-like."
"Dueñez' music of choice, cumbia, was already pregnant with meaning: Born in Colombia, it had been adopted by generations of Mexican migrants to the northern industrial city, who identified with cumbia's rural imagery and inherent longing. Cumbia was the community's musical lingua franca-a source, for these marginalized working poor, of both nostalgia and a sense of belonging. (So fierce was the local fandom that the neighborhood of La Independencia became known as "Little Colombia.")"
An accidental turntable malfunction in early 1990s Monterrey caused platters to rotate at half speed, creating a narcotic, psychedelic cumbia with slurred voices and liquid instruments. Cumbia, originating in Colombia, had been embraced by Mexican migrants as a musical lingua franca conveying rural imagery, longing, nostalgia, and belonging; Monterrey's La Independencia gained the nickname "Little Colombia." Slowing the music intensified its transcendence and altered perceptions of time. Mexican American experimental musician Delia Beatriz (Debit) explores and extends that aesthetic on her album Deceleradas by further decelerating cumbia using cassette recordings.
Read at Pitchfork
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