Shakori Schedule Announced (Oct. 9-12)

The biannual festival at Shakori Hills, a broad-ranging celebration of roots music, has announced its Oct. 9-12 schedule. From bluegrass to booty funk, clogging to zydeco, jazz to indie rock, they've got it; everything you need to know is up-to-date at their website, www.shakorihills.org.

Latin headliners Plena Libre bring something new to the festival this year. Puerto Rico's top plena band specializes in a hot, plugged-in adaptation of the pandereta-driven rhythm of the island's southern coast. Their salsa will raise the dead, also. There are two chances to catch them, in the Dance Tent on Thursday evening, and at the Meadow Stage Friday night.

For salsa lovers, Chapel Hill band Saludos Compay take the late shift in the Dance Tent on Saturday. A joyful vocal trio playing Afro-Cuban rhythms, they are likely to appear in their expanded version with 5 or 6 members, to feed the dance frenzy; details as they become available.

Triangle rock band Tercer Divisa Nacional follows in the tradition of "cactus" rock, aka rock mexicano or rock urbano, which expresses themes of city life and political solidarity with Mexico's urban poor. Tercer Divisa carries this forward with lyrics about the migrant experience and human rights. Even the band's name refers to the income generated from transnational migrants, which is Mexico's "third" largest source of domestic revenue.

"He who puts bread on the table deserves dignity and respect," cries out the lead singer at the end of "700 millas," in this recent performance at Durham's Broad Street Cafe:



Tercer Divisa pays reverence to Black Sabbath with a Spanish cover of "Paranoid," but also Mexican bands like Heavy Nopal and Rockdrigo Gonzalez, a charismatic folk rocker who was killed in the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. Here is Rockdrigo, a nasal-voiced John Lennon figure known as "El Profeta del Nopal," doing his cult classic about losing a lover in the subway:



See Tercer Divisa Nacional at the Meadow Stage on Saturday afternoon.