Pete Rodriguez Y Su Conjunto - A Mi Me Gusta Asi (Tico 1967)

Picked this album up at a boot sale on Sunday, and had a lovely surprise when I got it home and was treated to some of the most exhilarating and joyous dance music I've heard in years. The title track will probably be familiar to many...I knew I'd heard it before but just couldn't think where until I found this:


(It takes a lot for me to admit so publicly that I sometimes can't think of anything better to do than watch Strictly Come Dance Factor).

Anyway, this is the Nuyorican Boogaloo sound at its most infectious, the perfect sountrack to some libidinous carnival.

Tracklist:

01 I Like It Like That
02 El Hueso
03 Pete's Madness
04 Micaela
05 3 And 1
06 Si Quieres Bailar
07 Soy El Rey

Its over HERE.

BOOGALOO...its a wonderful, theatrical word, a dancing word that some think is related to Bou Jeloud - the Pan-like fertility god of misrule and inversion celebrated at the festivals of the Atlas Montains. The festival of Bou Jeloud is a ritual masquerade during which the young men of the villages dress up in goatskins and smear themselves with egg and flour:

"...the masqueraders are allowed almost unlimited licence. They swear and attack onlookers, enact sexual copulation in in public in front of women, enter the women's homes while the men of the house are absent, demand or steal food...these sacrificial goat clowns even satirize Qu'aranic verses. As part of their routine they enact ploughing, harvesting and a mock wedding. During the whole time they take over the village, senior men are banished and becomes the domain of young men, women and children. The masqueraders scatter great sacks of ash over the people and their houses. They themselves roll in the soot of the great cooking pots that heat the ablution waters at the mosque. The ash from the fires of the ablution is an accumulation of a whole year of burnt firewood. One may speculate that these remains of the burning in the mosque are powerfully imbued with baraka. Hence, despite their licentious and transgressive behaviour, as they scatter the ash and flail people with their hooves and skins, the sacrificial clowns bring desired blessing to each and every household."

P. Werbner (2001) "The Limits of Cultural Hybridity: On Ritual Monsters, Poetic Licence and Contested Postcolonial Purifications" in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7, 2001, p. 140

Here's some Bou Jeloud boogaloo:


And this is some festive lunacy: