Wrestle mania
“Whether out of
fear or self-protection, we rarely present our true face to the world. Mexicans
are secretive by nature. Our formality is a shield against scrutiny. We use
masks all the time,” says Father Sergio Gutierrez. Perhaps this explains
the wildly popular sport of LuchaLibre, or free-style fight in Spanish.
Throughout human history, wherever two or more have
gathered, wrestling has followed. Seventy years ago, professional wrestlers in Mexico began
wearing masks, subsuming their own personalities to a character inspired by
their new face. Records do not convey whether the acrobatic style associated
with LuchaLibre immediately followed, though one can well imagine the freedom engendered by
hidden identity. Soon, luchadors were flying through
the air and appearing in innumerable films.
Hulk Hogan and the Rock can only dream of a film career
approaching the greatest of all screen luchadors. El
Santo (1918-1984) first starred in El Emascarado de Plata(The
Silver Masked Man) in 1952. Within a decade, he was an action star ala Batman
or James Bond, with his Bentley and his amor de dia. El Santo
chose to remain enmasked throughout his public
career, only revealing his identity (Rudolfo Huerta)
after retiring. Thousands followed his funeral procession through Mexico City to the Mausoleodel Angel,where he was buried in his mask.
Father Sergio Gutierrez began his ministry caring for
children on the streets of Veracruz.
After seeing the wrestling films Fray Tormenta and Fray
Tormenta in the Ring, Gutierrez began raising funds for his orphanage by
wrestling as Fray Tormenta [Brother Storm]. In recent
years, he has become a mentor to a younger group of devout wrestlers, such as Sagrado and Mistico. And he
inspired the new Hollywood movie Nacho Libre,
starring Jack Black, which opens Friday.
— Craig Brownlie
Audioblogs: radio reborn
Audioblogs are about discovering
new music. A lot of new music. You can listen to the
endless wellsprings of music available until your pinna
starts to ache, but if you don’t know what to look for, it’s like shooting
spitballs against the side of battleship. This should you give you a
jumping-off point with a few reliable sites that will lead you out into the
garden of forking paths that is audioblogging.
A fun place to start is FillesSourires (fillessourires.blogspot.com/)
which — according to the site’s host — is defined by: “Girls. Singing in French.Making me sigh.”
That means Francophonic ditties to make you happy.
There is a nice sampling of French bubblegum and ye-ye music from the likes of
Francois Hardy and her disciples, but there’s also good representation from
modern French vocalists like FrancoizBreut and Austine.
‘Buked and Scorned (buked.blogspot.com/) is posted by west-coast
publisher and writer Mike McConigal, who edits the
wonderfully eclectic music journal YETI.
McGonigal’s site is unique in that he provides
in-depth background information about the artists he posts, which is an element
most audioblogs lack. ‘Buked
and Scorned is nicely genre-less, and on any given post you can hear gospel
choirs, Jamaican ragtime and emerging neo-folk artists.
Honey, Where You Been
So Long (prewarblues.org/) is posted by Peter Patnaik
and is a keenly specialized site that collects nothing but esoteric blues from
the pre-war era. The site is intelligently organized into sub-categories like
Country Blues, Piedmont Blues, Texas Blues, etc. You won’t find much by Robert
Johnson or Son House, but you can hear loads of curious obscurities like Bo-Weavil Jackson and Henry Spaulding.
A site making recent headlines is Music For Robots, (music.for-robots.com)
which posts music from unsigned and independent music acts and which recently
got the greenlight from the Warner Brothers label to
post one of its budding acts. Bookmark this site for the absolute newest in
new.
The mother of all audioblogs is
the mp3 aggregator Hype-Machine (hype.non-standard.net), which samples from the best audioblogs
and provides an endless, 24-hour stream on a fast, clean, customized Flash
player. This is the Rosetta Stone for music available
on the web.
The catch with audioblogs is that
most music is only posted for a short period of time. However, most allow you
subscribe to updates, which allows you to be informed each time there is a new
posting. It’s like subscribing to a magazine with an eternally free
subscription.
— Michael Neault
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2006.
