Championsound presents SOUND HALL featuring Michael Pigott of Masstropicas

Monday, November 29, 2010

Location:
Bru Cafe
141 Orange Street
New Haven CT

Free - 6:30 PM

FB event page: Click

press release:

SOUND HALL is a curated speaker and performance series, presented by Championsound, co-sponsored by the Public Humanities Initiative and the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program at Yale University. The SOUND HALL series gathers diverse audiences together in various public spaces throughout New Haven, with the aim of creating meaningful spaces for collective listening. This month’s installment of SOUND HALL will be hosted at BRU—a community oriented cafe that serves as a hub for New Haven's thriving cultural scenes. Guests are encouraged to arrive before SOUND HALL's 6:30 pm start time to enjoy the cafe's selections of premium coffees and baked goods.

The second SOUND HALL features Michael Pigott. Pigott is owner/operator of independent record label Masstropicas, dedicated to collecting and re-issuing little-known Peruvian cumbia records from the 1960s - 1970s, like the recently released Ranil's Jungle Party (2010). From the distributor: “For the uninitiated, Peruvian cumbia was to Peru as Tropicália was to Brazil--a 1960s-1970s popular music style that mixed traditional music with those of African and the West.” Limited vinyl copies of the Ranil's Jungle Party will be available at Detritus at Projects Storefronts, SOUND HALL’s exclusive retail partner. Pigott has been travelling to Peru to work with the original artists to re-master and license their music for re- issue and independent distribution to North American audiences. Pigott believes in the material and cultural value of vinyl and cassettes. The physical object of recorded music holds particular meaning for him. His has been an Americas-spanning effort to call attention to these musics and musicians who have never found, or have long lost, audiences beyond South America.

SOUND HALL proposes that music and sound collectors are also historians and that, to different degrees, we are all archivists. We collect music and sound in the forms of records, tapes, CDs, but also in different forms of personal memory and history. When we listen to a song, or a certain collection of sounds, we build particular stories around what we hear--about our pasts, our presents, and our futures. SOUND HALL is where we gather to listen to and examine some of those stories. Join us as we listen to and discuss the music and the complicated politics of cumbia's contemporary presence in North American markets.

SOUND HALL will be followed by Taco Party III, a multimedia dance party whose soundtrack is rare music through space and time. Pigott will be acting as guest selector for the event, which pairs rare music as chosen by the event's selectors locally-based selectors, Shaki Presents (of the now defunct Sundazed series at BAR), King Panos (Kings), and Stefan Christensen (Estrogen Highs, Iron Hand, Popeye's Garage). Tacos will be provided by Caseus New Haven.