street signs: what's happening in mex regional

Still trying to confirm who's playing tonight at Disco Rodeo in Raleigh; Los Sementales de Nuevo Leon? I think that's what I heard on La Ley 96.9 FM. Two local horn players have been contracted to play that gig.

Meanwhile, in Durham, found these posters on a phone booth along Roxboro Road:


Note: Ladies free all night at Salamandra. This place is the old "Big Pig," before that a Chinese restaurant (in the long long ago), on Hillsboro Rd.

Click on below photo to see larger. La Luna is in the middle of a cumbia sonidera dance contest. Could be interesting? I've often admired the DF street style of the teenage coup de baile.

Where to go when you're in Henderson...

Posting this not so much for the show tonight (I know nothing about the bands--local?), as for the venue.

Found at Valencia Records on Guess Road in Durham.

Words on the Street

A little late for posting Mexican Independence Day celebrations, but Franco Gallardo y Los Charros de Mexico are at La Maraka tonight (see bottom half of poster, Monday, 9/15):



Also found this, when I was out cruising posters at the tiendas along Roxboro Road: very popular bachateros Monchy y Alexandra will be at Ambis 1 in Raleigh on Friday, 9/26:



Also, on the left there, merengue band Oro Solido, with Bachata Asurr, will be at Club Menage in Greensboro on 9/19.

If you've ever danced to bachata at all, you will have some passive recall of Monchy y Alexandra's hits. "Perdidos" and "Dos Locos" are two on YouTube that I can remember hearing in the past month. "Hoja en Blanco" (their first big hit as a duo in 1998) is the one you've probably danced to a thousand times.

A lot of Latin popular dance music is highly commercialized, which means it is both highly polished and highly recycled. It seems that, before it was a bachata, "Hoja en Blanco" was a Colombian vallenato hit for Esmeralda Orozco and Omar Geles, with Los Diablitos de Vallenato.



Finally, I saw this DIY ad for a live trio huasteco on an Oldsmobile. There were more of these number stickers in mysterious, symmetrically ordered patterns on other parts of the vehicle, as well as old AAA and Fraternal Order of Police stickers. As if a trio huasteco in Durham were not intriguing enough!

"Sería un error perdertelo"

Maybe you want to get your Mexican regional music thang on this weekend. What's the best way to find out about the shows? You can listen to La Ley and hope to hear the ads, or you can head down to the tienda or taquería and see what's up on the wall. So, straight from the soda machine outside the Compare Foods in Raleigh, here are some of this week's events:



Grammy-winning norteño superstars Intocable will be at Disco Rodeo this Friday (August 29). Opening bands are Triny y la Leyenda and Grupo Cosmos. Triny y la Leyenda are a veteran tierra caliente band from Michoacan. I know nothing about Grupo Cosmos, but that's what YouTube's for, isn't it? Based on this video, Grupo Gosmos appears to be a norteño act (not at all to be confused with this awesome a capella/human-beat-box act also called Cosmos).

There was another poster up on the soda machine:



At Vivaldi Night Club on Saturday (August 30): Roddy and his band Rompiendo El Silencio with Costeño de Acapulco, Sendero Musical de Guerrero and Desafiados Musical. I know nothing about these acts, and the Google hasn't been any help at all. But according to the poster, it would be an error to miss it ...