Lisa Ono

En la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, tras la primera y segunda guerra del opio, surgió un flujo de emigración china a Suramérica, forzada por los colonos ingleses. Muchos de estos chinos, provenientes en su mayor parte de las provincias del sur, especialmente Guandong, terminaron por instalarse en el Caribe, Centroamérica, y también por Norteamérica, principalmente Vancouver, donde el 30% de la población actual es de origen asiático, y California, contratados en su mayor parte para la construcción de las vías férreas. Perú también acogió un gran numero de emigrantes chinos, rondando los 100.000 sólo en la capital del país, Lima.

Dos de mis compañeras en la oficina comercial en Hong Kong eran descendientes de emigrantes chinos a Suramérica. Habían nacido en Perú y Panamá. Una vez charlando con Angélica, descendiente de chinos asentados en Perú, me hablaba del impacto de la diáspora china en el país quechua. Por poner un ejemplo, me comentaba como en Perú a los restaurantes chinos se les conoce como chifas, que viene del cantonés chi faan (饎飯), literalmente comer arroz. Alberto Fujimori, más popularmente conocido como el chino entre los peruanos, ejerció la presidencia del aquel país entre 1990 y 2000. A pesar de su cariñoso apodo, Fujimori era hijo de japoneses.

Y es que además de este flujo migratorio chino, también hubo un éxodo migratorio japonés a Suramérica, especialmente hacia Brasil. Brasil cuenta con la mayor comunidad de japoneses en el extranjero, rondando el millón y medio de personas. A estos descendientes de japoneses nacidos fuera de Japón se les conoce como nisei, o segunda generación. De igual modo que ocurre con hijos de españoles emigrados a Suramérica, muchos deciden retornar a la tierra de origen de sus padres para probar fortuna. Pero a pesar de los vinculos que se mantienen vivos a través de la educación que se transmite de padres a hijos, la adaptación no resulta sencilla, dificultada aún más por las numerosas trabas culturales que les inflige la sociedad japonesa, desconcertada por la desconexión entre su aparencia nipona exterior y su distinta forma de ser o carácter, que difiere de los rigurosos códigos japoneses de conducta.

Sobre este último punto, me viene a la mente el libro "Estupor y temblores" de Amelie Nothomb que cuenta la experiencia de la hija de un embajador belga en Japón. Nacida y criada en sus primeros años de vida en el país del Sol Naciente, la joven decide volver al país nipón tras finalizar sus estudios universitarios, para realizar prácticas en una importante empresa multinacional. El libro, plagado de desajustes y desatinos, narra la espiral de destrucción y degradación en la que se ve envuelta esta antiheroe que terminará como limpiadora de lavabos.

Volviendo a la mezcolanza nipona-brasileña, estos días, quizás sobresaturado de tanto pop y rock, he comenzado a curiosear radios online en busca de latin jazz y bossanova. Sintonizando Radio Guyarama, he descubierto la suave voz de Lisa Ono, nisei brasileña. Hacía tiempo que no escuchaba algo tan curioso como bossanova cantada en japonés, sonando además con perfecta melodicidad y armonía. Quizás sea por la similitud de dicción entre el portugués y el japonés, o quizás sea la aterciopelada voz de Lisa Ono. Sublime.

Lisa Ono versioneando "Ano hi ni kaeritai" (quiero volver a esos días) de Tokunaga Hideaki

Lisa Ono interpretando junto a Miúcha uno de los grandes temas de la canción popular brasileña, "Águas de Março"

DIY laser harp

Two weeks ago me and Adrián went to a Jean Michel Jarre concert in London. One of the long-time awaiting things of the night was the performance of Jarre playing his laser harp.

A laser harp consists of seven beams of light, each for a natural tone. When a beam is blocked a sound is played, as simple as it is. Well, there are more details about it but that's basically how it works.

Honestly, there's not much you can do with just seven plain notes, except for playing simple melodies, the same kind of melodies you could play with a Casio PT-87, or even simpler tunes. But, what the hell, the whole spectacle of movements, lights and sounds was impressive. In addition, to see the beams of light it's necessary to fill the air with smoke, which creates an even more intimate atmosphere.

After the concert, me and Adrian were commenting on how fun was the laser harp, and joking if it would possible to make our own. As usually happens, it seems someone though about it before.

Stephen Hobley, a music & electronic hobbyist, manage to make his own laser harp. Some parts are not public, and a purchase for the plans is required, but there's still some videos where he explains how to build your own laser harp.

Build your own laser harp, just follow the instructions :)

He even improved Jarre's laser harp by using a Wiimote to detect the height of hands. By moving your hand up and down, this laser harp can vary the pitch of the sound playing.

Laser harp improved thanks to Wiimote

I love him playing Rendez-vous II.

Stephen Hobley playing Rendez-vous part II

Last but not least, check these guys from Mountain Glen Harps who handmade truly laser harps, or rather say, harps consisting of lasers beams instead of strings. The funny thing is that since there's not smoke in the air, they look more like doing air-harp playing :)

This is a truly laser harp

Rendez-vous

If everything goes OK today at 20:00 (GMT +1) I should be standing at Wembley Arena in London ready to enjoy Jean Miche Jarre in concert.

Sorry if it seems a bit boasting, it's not my intention, it's just that I feel tremendously lucky for having the chance of seeing Jean Michel Jarre live, at least once in my life.

It all started a few months ago while listening to last.fm. At that time I got stuck with my current playing-list, that means pretty much indie music and soft rock. Then, I gave a try to someone's else playing-list, I think it was Adrian's, rediscovering the pleasure of listening to the sound of the well-known French synthesizer composer.

I was around 12 years old when I listening to Jean Michel Jarre for the first time. We are seven members in my family, including my parents. At home, me and my brothers used to sit together at the dinning room for studying and doing our homework, since there was not much space somewhere else. My older brother, 7 years older than me, was fond of synthesizer music, and used to play it as background music. Most CDs where just compilations of different composers. Thanks to him, I got the chance of discovering artists like Vangelis, Mike Oldfield and Jean Michel Jarre, perhaps some of the greatests synthesizer composers from the 70's and 80's.

At school my friend Juan Manuel was also fond of Jean Michel Jarre. I still feel long of those good old afternoons playing NES while listening to albums like Oxygene, Equinoxe or Calypso. Those were the times...

Jean Michel Jarre, live at Seville (Isla de la Cartuja), 1993

But, don't take me for a melancholic person. Ironically it was one of Jean Michel Jarre's most recent works which caught my attention. Leaving aside a couple of remixes of old material in the last years, it was the new stuff from the French which surprised me the most. It sounds fresh, alive and up-to-date, however you can still recognize the traits and shades that characterizes Jarre's own style. Yes, I do like this Light My Sky (despite being an English cover of a relatively new track also from Jarre, Tout est Bleu, originally in French).

Light my Sky, live from Gdansk (Poland)

On a recent post in his blog, Jean Michel relates how the tour keeps on going, and at every step further things are getting better and better. So far, it seems that Oslo and Helsinki have been the best concerts in this tour. Things look promising for London, let's hope we can see a good show.

De padres a hijos

Se va expandiendo la ola web 2.0 y esta semana parece que se ha vuelto todo el mundo loco con Spotify.

Básicamente, Spotify es un catálogo de música on-line enorme. La aplicación cliente es una aplicación de escritorio clásica, disponible para Windows, Mac y Linux (a través de wine).

La verdad no sé cómo funciona. Parece que, según leo en el artículo de Wikipedia, la transferencia de archivos se realiza mediante un protocolo p2p. Las canciones no se descargan, se escuchan en demanda, aunque quedan cacheadas en el equipo local.

La aplicación cliente permite realizar búsquedas por título de canción, grupo, etc. También integra información del grupo a través de otras fuentes como Wikipedia, estilo Amarok, aunque un poco más limitado. En los resultados de la búsqueda aparece el número de hits de cada canción, el número de veces que esa canción ha sido reproducida por lo usuarios, lo que da una idea de lo popular que es esa canción. Es quizás la única característica de red social que he visto en el software, ni idea de cómo o si es posible agrandar esa base de datos musical disponible mediante "contribuciones" de los usuarios. Otras características interesantes radio e histórico de búsquedas.

La verdad que la aplicación va muy bien, la calidad del streaming es muy buena y el catálogo de música disponible es bastante grande (aun así, si eres de esos que escucha grupos que todavía no existen, lo seguirás teniendo un poco crudo...)

Una de las ventajas de Spotify frente a Last.fm, por ejemplo, es la posibilidad de escuchar albumnes enteros.

Hoy precisamente, y cambiando un poco de tercio, he estado escuchando el que es a mi juicio uno de los mejores discos de la historia del heavy metal japonés: "Soldier of Fortune" de Loudness (sí, me temo que yo también soy de esos que escuchan grupos que todavía no existen). Al margen del cariño personal que le tengo a este disco (por los buenos recuerdos que me trae) ha sido especial poder volver a escuchar a uno de los mejores baterías japoneses de todos los tiempos, y esto no sólo lo digo yo.

Tristemente el pasado 30 de Noviembre Munetaka Higuchi, eterno batería de Loudness y co-fundador del grupo, desempuñaba sus drum sticks para siempre y decía adios a la vida, a los 49 años, después de 6 duros meses de lucha constante contra el cáncer.

Con la incorporación de Mike Vescera, Loudness volvió a regrabar este tema, "In the mirror", para su albúm "On the prowl"

Otro gran batería japonés, quizás más conocido pero igual de grande, Yoshiki de X-Japan, expresaba con gran conmoción y perplejidad, quizás como la del hijo que pierde a su padre, su sentido pésame. Creo que pronto llegarán los tributos...

X (antes de ser X-Japan), todavía una banda de instituto, versioneando el tema original de Loudness "In the mirror"

Para siempre Munetaka Higuchi, descanse en paz.

"From the fathers to sons, our dreams will carry on..."

Demon Disease, Loudness

Viva la chalga!

Chalga, voz búlgara para designar un instrumento musical. La palabra proviene originalmente de chalgadzhia, vocablo que se utiliza para designar a aquella persona capaz de tocar una melodía en virtualmente cualquier instrumento musical, aunque imprimiéndole su propio ritmo.

Por extensión, la chalga pasó a referirse a la música folk búlgara, cargada de ritmos orientales, debido principalmente a los cerca de 500 años de ocupación otomana.

Durante el periodo de postguerra que va desde el fin de la 2 guerra mundial hasta finales de los 80, el telón de acero (si bien no formaba parte de la Unión Soviética, Bulgaria era un país simpatizante del régimen) prohibió la chalga debido fundamentalmente a sus reminiscencias asiáticas, en detrimento de lo eslavo.

Tras la caída del último régimen comunista en Bulgaria, la dictadura de Todor Zhivkov, se levantó el veto sobre la chalga y las masas abrazaron de nuevo sus sonidos populares.

Poli Paskova, una cantante de chalga tradicional

Sin embargo, en el despertar de la chalga se han cruzado los vientos de lo nuevo, y a día de hoy los sonidos tradicionales de la chalga se han fusionado con los ritmos pop y disco que han traído consigo la apertura al exterior.

Aspecto de una cantante de chalga más actual, lo tradicional se fusiona con lo modeno.

Foto tomada en Belgrado

Los ritmos de la chalga han traspasado fronteras. Hoy en día la chalga se oye en Turquía, Grecia y algunos países de los balcanes. Debido a sus ritmos beat y melodiosos, algunas estrellas de chalga han comenzado a fusionar su sonido con los ritmos latinos y el reggaeton. Algunas incluso se han atrevido a grabar en español.



Por la calles de Sofía se ven a miles de jovencitas vestidas, de arriba a abajo, siguiendo los patrones de sus divas chalgueras: exagerademente maquilladas, ligeras de ropa y con generosos escotes. Se oye en los autobuses, en los taxis, y quién sabe si quizás también hasta en las salas de espera! Es la música de Bulgaria. Por las noches, los locales de moda pinchan los últimos hits, y ellas y ellos bailan y bailan, toda la noche...

Around the world

One of the most memorable homemade videos I remember from YouTube is this one of a guy dancing across different places in the world. The guy always stands on the same spot while the background flickers from one place to another, together with the music, makes the whole thing really great.



This guy is Matt Harding. I do not know the details, but it seems all started as a joke while travelling around the world with a friend, as he explains on a lecture (see below). In the beginning, Matt decided to share these shots of stupid dancings with friends and relatives, but the thing spred over and finally his video turned very popular. That happened about two years ago.

A few days ago, Matt published a new 2008 version of the video, covering more than 40 countries, and some of the coolest places in earth.

I like the magic of the original video, but this new one is also fantastic!

Other interesting stuff from Matt:

• Outakes from original video

Where the hell is Matt? (outtakes)

• Matt commenting some of the coolest places he has visited, while travelling at the same time with Google Earth

Where in Google Earth is Matt?

• A lecture/speech on how it all started

Where the hell is Matt? (lecture)


Finally, it may have nothing to do, but since talking about traveling around the world, I cannot help recommend you the latest video from rock indie band Death Cab For Cutie: I will possess your heart.





I honestly think that the female character of this video looks like Scarlett Johansson and the video itself reminds me of Lost in Translation (perhaps also because of the style of music...how many different places can you recognize on the video?)

La revolución sexual

La Casa Azul es el alter-ego del artista pop catalán Guille Milkiway. La verdad, no conocía el grupo hasta ahora, pero por lo que he leído en foros y blogs, su anterior disco, editado hace 4 años, tuvo muy buenas críticas dentro de la escena pop independiente.

Su nuevo single, La revolución sexual, editado hace apenas 2 meses, se está empezando a expandir como la pólvora, y sin obviar los nuevos mecanimos de publicidad que ofrece internet: youtube, blogs, etc...no pasará mucho tiempo hasta que el tema se haga mainstream (para desgracia de muchos). Ya me imagino: "Envía tono revolución sexual al XXXX, o politono revolución sexual al XXXX..."

Como nota curiosa, la melodía de la canción tiene cierta reminiscencia a "Ritmo de la noche..."; la coreografía es estilo para-para, (baile de origen japonés, que no es más que un reinterpretación del eurobeat de los 80 pero con características japas) y la canción también tiene algunos samples en japonés: "Ii desu ne, ikimashou" (that's OK, let's go...), mítica frase que parece mismamente sacada de un examen de audio del noken (prueba de capacitación en japonés para extranjeros)


Sin duda, me atrevo a pronosticar que la revolución sexual de La Casa Azul va a ser uno de los próximos pelotazos de este año 2008 que entra, y si no, al tiempo...

Feliz año 2008!!! Que seais muy felices en este nuevo año, os quiero!!

---

As for the last day of the year, I would like to bring you one song which is gaining heat at this moment in Spain. The track is called La Revolución Sexual (The Sexual Revolution) from indie-pop band La Casa Azul. Actually, La Casa Azul is not a band itself formed by different members, but just a single player called Guille Milkiway. He just performs on live concerts, whereas his fictional band appears on videos, non-live concerts, and serves much as the image of the band.

Its sound dues much to the seventies and early 80s, although it also blends new up-to-date sounds and tendencies, you may notice some shades of contemporary j-pop music, specially Shibuya-key style. Actually the characters on the video perform an amusing para-para coreography, it's really worth. I am dying to see people dancing like this on the floor here in Spain...Hope you like it.

(Check video above)

By the way, wish you all a Happy New Year 2008! Hope all your dreams will come true...Love!

Amarok Atom Syndication Reader

Here is Amarok Atom Syndication best friend: Amarok Atom Syndication Reader!!!

Last week I saw on a blog a Last.fm gadget for showing what last songs have you recently played on Last.fm. I use a RSS Reader widget from Blogger to do that with my syndicated Amarok track list, but I was not totally happy.

Google implements a policy on Google Reader for only refreshing caches every hour, the same applies to the Blogger's RSS reader widget. So I made my own widget this weekend using Google Gadgets. It was great fun! I tried Google Gadgets last April and it was good but documentation and work environment are much better now. It is very easy to pick up if you got some knowledge on HTML and Javascript. In addition, Google API provides lost of stuff already implemented like XML reading and easy DOM manipulation.

Here is the result. The best feature is that now contents are refreshed every ten minutes. There still other features I want to add but would do it later. Now I got to publish this on Google Gadget Repository or find a way to make this available to other users who may be interested.

By the way, there is a new version of Amarok Atom Syndication available (now even easier to set up)

Syndicate your music!!!

Introducing Amarok Atom Syndication

Apart from the new look&feel of my blog, maybe some of yoy have noticed a new widget on the right-side panel which shows the recent tracks played on my computer. It seems there's nothing new there, a similar widget exists from Last.fm for example...

The thing is that couple of months ago I got one of those crazy ideas which sometimes come to my mind (and most part of the times I forget the next day). I wanted to do exactly this, I wanted to publish all the track songs I played on my computer to my blog, and I wanted to do it automatically.

It was pretty simple actually. I just needed to whenever I play something, then retrieve the data related like name of the song, artist, album, etc. Then I put it in a file format like RSS or Atom, and then I syndicate it to the net. Quite simple indeed...

By that time I started using Amarok as my music player. Amarok is a great music player. Apart from the common set of features which every music player has, Amarok supports lots of extra features: huge file list processing and organization tools, transparent integration with other services like Last.fm or Wikipedia, and lots more. Most important of all, Amarok can be extended via customized plugins. Writing your own plugin is damned easy, just use DCOP to communicate with Amarok back and forth. In addition, plugins can be written in any programming language, being the most popular Ruby and Python.

So via Amarok I got that part covered. I knew now how to get the data I needed and writing my output in a XML format. I chosed Atom file format for my output, since it seems is gaining ground.

What about syndicating? How to upload my Atom file to the net, so other applications could read it and show its data? Well, I started to dig on Google developer services, to see what can I used. I tried Google base but it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Then I discarded the idea of using some Google services, and tried S3 from Amazon, but I also discarded short after playing a bit with it. Simply nobody will sign for S3 services just for having a stupid file list published somewhere on the net. Then I got back to Google but started playing with a wide unknown service from Google: Google Pages. Yes, you got it, Google Pages is something like Geocities, one of the oldest services which sprang up in an early Internet, but on a Google flavour. Whenever you sign for Google Pages you are giving a space where you can put your stuff and build your own website. Among other things, you can upload files, and that was exactly what I wanted.

On the contrary to many Google services, Google Pages has not an API developers can interact with, but if you can make via a browser you can make it via programming language, maybe will be loads more difficult, but still you can.

So basically, I got all my requirements satisfied. I programmed my sript in perl, which is my scripting language of choice. Perl helps me a lot for processing the text data and writing up the Atom file. It was also great for uploading my output to Google Pages, via LWP.

The pity is that maybe perl is not the best language for writing KDE applications. At this moment it lacks of binding support for Qt4.0, and according to the threads I read on the internet, it seems there is no interest on bringing Qt4.0 support for perl. As a consequence, the plugin requires to do some hand configuration work, straight on the source code.

Putting it all together

Download

You can download the plugin here, Amarok Atom Syndication.

Requirements

• A Linux enviroment
• Amarok and whatever libraries needed
• Firefox. Plugin needs to read you firefox cookie file
• A Google acount

Installing

• Download the plugin
• Open Amarok and go to Tools->Script Manager. Choose open and select the plugin downloaded

Configuration

First of all, you need to apply for Google Pages service. If you do not have a Google account, the sign first.

Then, log to Google Pages at least once. When doing so, check your Remember my password checkbox, so your login data will be saved on your cookie file. The script needs to read your cookie file in order to interact with Google Pages (no malicious code executed, you can checked, it is free software ;-))

And lastly, before running the plugin you need to add your username in the main script file. Edit the file with your favorite editor and set the $username variable. Do like this (I use vi for editing):

$ vi ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok/scripts/atomSyndication/atomSyndication.pl

Go to line 28, and set username:

$username = 'my_google_username_goes_here';

And that's all, then run Amarok Atom Syndication (again Amarok, Tools->ScriptManager, select atomSyndication and play on Run).

Reading the feed

Your Atom file will be posted at http://username.googlepages.com/amarok.xml. This is my Atom file: http://pinowsky.googlepages.com/amarok.xml.

You can your Atom file posted on you Google Page address, via any feed reader like Google Reader, Thunderbird or Firefox's extensions like Sage.

If you want to show the data of your Atom file on your blog, then use one of the new widgets Blogger comes along with. Click on Configuration at your Blogger backend frontpage, then go to the Template tab.

Many other websites allow to plug in feed readers, via iframes or so. There is one for Facebook for example. Check my Facebook profile to see an example (look for the Feed Invasion plugin).

Updating your Atom file

Atom file updates whenever you jump to a new song in Amarok. However, you won't see the results on your Google Reader or Blogger feed widget immediately. Those services, more specifically, take one hour to be updated, so you will notice changes on your track list only every hour if you are using these tools for reading your feeds.

If you want to get a more accurate update of your Atom file use other readers like Sage or Thunderbird. Basically, all feed readers based on web have an updating lag. It is simply something you have to cope with.

Cool features

One cool feature of this recent tracks played list, is that every entry is a link to Seeqpod searching by name of the song and artist. Seeqpod is a web-based music search engine. Basically, it crawls the Internet searching for music files, index them, and then you can query it later to search for new songs, and play them. If you are lucky and one of the songs on your track list is relatively popular, the likelihood to be found in Seeqpod is higher. So, imagine you were playing some music yesterday at home on your computer. On the next day at work you feel like listening to some of the songs from yesterday, but unfortunately you did not carry those songs with you on your ipod or even you cannot remember the name of that song you like. So you read your syndicated track list, and click on that song which will lead you to its mp3 file at seeqpod, if you are lucky. The other choice is not to forget your ipod next time, hehehe...and keep it updated, by the way.

Anyway, this is still fun. I think this approach is more to lazy people like me (or for those who have not an ipod yet, by the way, Christmas is coming...). It is also a kind of poor's man ubiquity service.

Extending the plugin

It has been good fun programming this plugin. It is not very customizable and lacks for a better configuration procedure, via a dialog-box or something for example. As I mentioned on a paragraph above, perl lacks for Qt4.0 support, so that means I may need to switch to other programming language, more likely Python, if I want to fix these problems.

I encourage everybody to use the source code and maybe extend the plugin. I also will like to see other people syndicating their music in other music players, using a similar approach (retrieve data, write ouput on a Atom file format, post to somewhere on the net (Google Pages)).

Hope you like it, have fun!!! and remember to vote for Amarok Atom Syndication (even if you could not even make it run, hehehe)

It's only Monday...

There's is a song which continuously beats in my mind at the start of every week. I know there are many songs talking about blue Mondays...but the funny thing with this song is that I have never actually heard it. My friend, and former Dublin flatmate, Dan, hummed it for me once when he once told me about DJ Shadow. We were both excited talking about Australian unique band The Avalanches, and he told if I were fond of The Avalanches I most likely love DJ Shadow.

So today, taking just the only sentence, "It's only Monday...", I could remember from this unknown song and putting it together with DJ Shadow on my search, I found this VC on YouTube.


The song is even better than I remembered. And best of all, the music video is directed by Wong Kar Wai, main actors Chen Chang (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Danielle Graham, a Malaysian supermodel half Chinese, half Irish. Video is dreamily beautiful, as almost all works from Wong Kar Wai, and it really matches with the music. Hope you like it!

Pepino, game boy rock band

My brother Fran passes me a link of a new rock band. Nothing new there, but this time is not just another rock band...

Their name is Pepino and it is formed by just two members: Karawapo, from Spain, and Ai from Japan. Currently located in Japan, they have started to gain some ground in the scene very recently so their popularity is increasing. The interesting thing with them is that their songs are all composed using Game Boy's sound chip synthesizer. Ai sings on an already arranged gameboy tune previously composed by Karawapo. At the same time, Karawapo improvises over the beat.

If you feel curious and want to know how they sound just try some of their songs. They were supposed to have some original songs there but all can I found on their website were a few covers, some of them totally wacky like this cover of Mecano's Maquillaje. Do not expect any professional production, simple is beauty.

Talking about their sound, I would consider them more in the electro-pop wave. With all this fuss of Gameboys, eletro-pop sound and novelty bands the first thing that came to my mind when I listened to them was local band Superputa and their relatively well-known smash-hit Nintendo. Another piece of art you should not miss out!

On summary, I never stop surprising what kind of weird things you might find on the internet. It is really impressive! I feel happy this kind of things exists. My next goal: get a ticket for a Pepino concert. Hope to see you all there!

Hong Kong

I like Gorillaz very much and also like Hong Kong very much. This is what happen when they meet each other. Lovely vc, best music!! really touching...

Nada que decir

Con la excepción de Japón, el heavy metal se pasea poco por Asia. Este año, sin embargo, parece que la cosa ha cambiado. En el plano mainstream, hace unos años tuvimos por aquí a Guns & Roses. También el superguitar hero sueco se dejo caer por aquí. E incluso los Rolling, este año, pudieron al fin dar su concierto en Shanghai.

Para la escena metálica parece que este año ha sido un punto de inflexión. Primero tuvimos a Dream Theater. Después se pasaría por Febrero los "finlandeses" Stratovarius, y poco después en Marzo lo haría Edguy. Desde entonces, sin noticias de Dios.

Hasta un par de meses cuando Angra anunció en su website una minigira asiática con motivo de la celebración de su 15 aniversario.

Y hoy llegó tan ansiado día. Sin apenas publicidad y con sólo una semana de adelanto para comprar las entradas, se orquestró este concierto. El lugar escogido, uno de los más conocidos pubs de la noche hongkonita "The EDGE", justo debajo del más conocido Dragon-I.

Llegué poco después de las 19:00. Ya había hongkonitas haciendo cola tal como esperaba. Esta gente lo prevee todo. Aun así no había prisa. Con solo 300 entradas a la ventana el local malo sería que no pudiera hacerme un hueco XD. Curioso, 300 personas...Me acordé de la anterior vez cuando los había visto. Fue en 1998, en el Eurometal en Leganés, delante de unas 4000-5000 personas. Esta noche tocando para 300 personas...eso sí, el precio de la entrada valía por 3: 35 euros anticipada y 40 en taquilla.

Las puertas tardaron en abrirse. Pasadas las 21:00, presentación del grupo y comienza la caña. Muchos temas nuevos para un clásico como yo. Eso sí, no faltaron: Angels Cry y Carry On, para goze de todo el personal; y Nothing to say, que por lo visto solo unos cuantos pocos conocían. Por lo demás, que me venga ahora a la cabeza: Waiting Silence, Acid Rain, Heroes of Sand, Spread your Fire, ya casi al final, Rebirth, Angels & Demons y Nova Era, como corte de cierre.

Bienvenidos hijos mios al Templo del Metal

No es que Kiko Loureiro se mueva muy rapido, es que se ve borroso

En general, la banda cumplió. Buen sonido y buenos solos, le faltó un poco de ímpetu a Falaschi para animar al público. Y es que animar al público hongkonita tiene tela. Al contrario que en España, aquí los peludos no saltan ni hacen palmas, aunque ocasionalmente gritan. Los tios se quedan en su sitio mientras mueven su cuerpo y cabeza.

Después de 15 temas Angra se retiran. El protocolo dice que el público debe ovacionar, gritar y reclamar con cánticos a sus ídolos para que éstos, después de 10 min haciendose derrogar, regresen religiosamente al escenario y se calquen un bis. Pero esta vez, y contra todo pronóstico, no hubo bis.

Angra tambien a lo Judas Priest!

En lugar de ello, 20 afortunados agraciados fueron seleccionados por Angra para una sesión en el backstage. Por supuesto yo no estaba entre ellos. Pero, ¿quién ha dicho que la vida sea justa? Y así, como galera que la mar espera, me quedé yo esperando y esperando entre el tumulto de los pocos que allí quedaban, hasta que me llegó mi turno. Foto y CD firmado. Y para muestra, un botón. Keep rocking!

Dedicada a todos mis fans

Cartel de la gira

Angra tocando Carry On en el concierto



Y este otro grabado por mi, tocando Rebirth. El sonido se oye bien, aunque a veces se ve un poco oscuro y a veces borroso.