How cumbia continues its advance? 

A presentation of ideas about Meridian Brothers and the issue of the record CUMBIA SIGLO XXI. Comments about the inspiration of the music and lyrics 

(Personal notes by Eblis Alvarez)

Warning: This text uses double axioms for its foundation. Instead of using positive argumentation of a single correct theory against its false divergencies as has been argued in many recent texts, the text uses the system of polarity; in which an affirmation also contains or proposes its opposite or antithesis. Note the style of ancient treaties, in which as a format required, the condition of posing an opposite argument is mandatory to complete a hypothesis.

*The XXI century cumbia*

The modern Latin-American cumbia became popular in the early 21st century as a global centralized market option to open up to new products. This mercantile increase, like any new ideology implanted * in the civilization within the era of communications, was accompanied by intellectual figures, publications in all the depth spectrum, journalism and merchandising.

* The implanted ideologies are defined here as derivatives of genuine struggles of suffering human groups. Examples such as gender struggles, racial struggles, struggles of the marginalized, those of the 'third' world, who, being potential developers of "trending" within the boundaries of capitalism, commerce or ideology, are continually kidnapped and emptied of their spirit by the central communication network for other uses.

*Cumbia as a new incentive *

The new cumbia movement encouraged a generation of creators and artists by working on tasks of sophistication, collection and updating. One of the evidences of this movement can be seen as countless global publications, compilations and other products related to cumbia which have appeared in the last fifteen years. As in any movement as well, opportunists are also found, who joined the movement to obtain benefits from it (and also emigrated or will emigrate to a following trend), those of us who remained, were the ones who somehow resonated with this sound in our soul and mind.

Although Cumbia in the 21st century movement is encompassed mostly from trend and commerce, there was an awakening of some artists and consumers regarding traditional, local and popular music. These genres found a place in the unconscious mind of the musical creation of Latin-America and even tolerated the globalizing wave that once again launched the creators and artists in recent years. After approximately twenty years of this spotlight, cast in part by the acceptance of 'Anglo' music centers to these expressions previously relegated and segregated in Latin-American urban centers and now brought to youths coupled with globalization and trending. Will there be a north for the tropical genre, cumbia, salsa and other expressions derived from the modernity of traditional and popular Latin American music?

*Cumbia and a brief history of communications*

To answer the previous question, it will be necessary to briefly dust off some facts from the past. From the beginning of our 'electric communication society' that occurs from the invention of the telegraph ending into the coming 5G, one can see a standardizing phenomenon, and homogenizing on human civilization (whether deliberate or casual, it exists *), music is not alien to this phenomenon. There was much more diversity in the world music world little communicated between the mid-nineteenth century and the seventies of the twentieth century, than the diversity found today. It should not be disregarded that human rebellion is innate, the standardizing purpose has been frustrated by a number of artists who have responded with divergent and new languages ​​in response to standardizing programs.

However today we can already see some of the results of the persistent crusade of standardization: for example, the sound of an indie-rock band from the 2000s does not change much compared to the rock structures of the Beatles or the Rolling stones, rock patterns from the sixties onwards. And by continuing to look at most musical products, no one escaped this rule, not jazz, nor academic music, whose formulas, out of some unconscious mind in trance, were standardized and emptied of their spirit by the market of the sheet music software. Similar to the ideological manipulations of human struggles, the music, once alive in the human spirit, is emptied and becomes a formula for other uses. The latest victim of this forced standardization are the so-called 'world music' where all the traditions of millions of non-inhabitants of the centers of power are collected in sounds classified as 'outside of civilization'. From the seventies onwards, a style that I humbly call 'world song' can be cataloged and is found from Asia to Latin America ** and was systematically implanted in every country in the world.

*To test this empirically turn on your trusted iPhone or tablet

**Many of these songs are still beautifully fantastic due once again to the emancipatory spirit that we humans possess

*Cumbia speaks to you from prison* 

As prisoners born in captivity, we do not know what the world was like before the communications grid, which in my opinion serves as a kind of prison. Nor does it mean that prison life is entirely unpleasant. We have been dancing to the beat of 'world song' for over forty years. But how does this jail work?

This prison uses the whirlwind of thought of the human mind towards the communications network, and then, information is returned, but in the form of concrete and inflexible data, which emulates the human network, but is finite, and not infinite, like the creativity of the biological mind (hence the external ocular-centrism of communicative languages, are this 'opium' that hacks our internal brain screen).

The ravages of this "finite" stream of information of the network are already evident in the languages ​​of music. This evidence can be found in a multiplicity of factors. The public's lack of tolerance to non-symmetrical or non-binary rhythms (one-two-one-two), to the lack of tolerance to other forms of harmony outside the twelve-tone system standardized by the West. As well as centered tempered tuning in the 440HZ and its reduction to a vulgar simplification (the harmony chord progressions of an immense percentage of reggaetons, hits of pop, R&B or EDM are virtually identical). Also, the low tolerance to songs or long works, the non-understanding and rejection of multi-layered sound, and the preservation of immovable formats (such as drums, bass and tireless "tu-pa tu-pa"). However, and for our good, the timbre has benefited from trade of instruments, the timbral spectrum has been greatly developed in the last decades, and as always the societies of humans in their tireless rebellion recycle limitations and standards not let them enclosed in parameters that the system of homogenization imposes.

Like a hack to this homogenizing system, there are fighters here or there, who defy the laws of standardization from their own principles. The public also seems to react unconsciously against this process, since the music industry has tried several times to standardize and globalize the language of music from several fronts, for example, mass pop that turned from a piece of plastic to a language that is becoming increasingly sophisticated, sometimes mimicking 'real' human music. But intuitively many music-consuming communities think again about the local, the traditional, or embrace in a search for 'unknown' languages ​​or even have fun breaking down dead industrial clichés, into wonders made of recycling materials with a new life and rebirth spirit.

* The false union of humanity, collectivities and 'fractal' societies *

The union of humanity could be seen on the surface as a noble idea. In the last decades, a constant globalizing movement is perceived in each of the aspects of existence. More in nowadays pandemic in which we find ourselves. Great philosophers and philanthropists proclaim this union in official mass media. Why could this be bad? if union and collectivity is generally perceived as 'good'?

In principle, the functioning of the human spirit is not very collective, of course collectives are important to protect us from the vicissitudes of maintaining the body and are important to exchange a limited amount of information (as oral traditions, for example, or gossip). In general, we need communities to maintain the body and simple/social aspects of the mind  as well as shelter, health and protection (the search for protection is an immediate reaction to fear). We are always told by science that the human is an absolute social creature, but, are we completely sure of this? The deep mind doesn't work entirely dependent on the collectivity. We are not connected like schools of fish or flocks of birds that, without apparent communication, rotate together. Each human seems to have his own thought, within his physical community. Think about dreams that defy natural laws, ideas and own reflections and thoughts, the multiplicity of mental (non-physical) human expressions. Think about the amount of divergences in the communities, the diversity of the culture of the peoples and of our bastion artists in all countries, the varied states of mind and personality of each individual, the small changes to what is called the unconscious psyche that is peculiar but at the same time it seems to add information to the so-called collective unconscious.

What has the globalizing ray wanted to do? Replace that uniqueness with an extern communication network in constant homogenization and standardization to end the problem of "free will". Or to sum it up, with that annoying human freedom that never ceases to be an obstacle to control. The reason for this? don't ask me anymore I am a simple musician who is going to release a Cumbia album. However, there are several independent researchers who are trying to give an explanation with a lot more details.

* The cumbia and the tropical music in relation to the collective culture *

Intuitively, I thought about that fractal mathematics popularized by Benoît Mandelbrot and its repercussions on various studies in biology. Then already in an empirical experience, I noticed that human societies may manifest themselves in a similar way. Although we are proportional collectives up to a point, we are also self-regulating and inalienable entities and that grows (or decreases) to infinity. The cumbia and the tropical could be some of these individual expressions of populations in a fractal at a continental level with languages ​​and historical backgrounds common in Latin America, and at the same time a resistance to the general effort of the network or "grid" of communications imprisoning and limiting knowledge and information. Information cells moving at different speeds and heights are more difficult to catch and predict. In the same way, I think that we should avoid universalizing the same cumbia in Latin-America because centralization is a germ that is implanted in us. The more unequal and individual the preservation of musical languages ​​in Latin-America and the world, the more we will be able to maintain that "infinity" of the mind that I spoke about in previous paragraphs.

* Cumbia XXI century in ideology and fight for freedom - The difference between collectivity and centralism *

I may be a confusion between collectivity and centralism. Many of us have embarked on the romanticism of collectivism and struggle. But it is good to understand that struggles are a mechanism and not a goal. A great proof of this is that the fight generally aims to achieve freedom or emancipation, which is intuitively understood as a human condition, but since we were born in confinement, we have no idea what freedom is, nobody knows what it is or how it feels.

Not knowing what freedom is, this concept * innocently taken for granted is immediately hijacked by the communication and commercial system, becoming in ideologies such as neo-liberalism, ultra-politicization framed in the struggles of suffering groups or 'emancipatory' ideologies derived from the innate orientation towards the good that most of us humans have. In other words, the concept of freedom is diverted towards ideological centralism instead of promoting the collective as a protector of the body and certain aspects of the mind. This also applies to collectives in any of the aspects of human life and when the concept of freedom is kidnapped, the fight for freedom becomes a loop of imprisonment of itself, ending in absurdity. Many paradoxes emerge; "prisoners who are captive in the name of freedom", "we are killing for love" and so on. There is a lot of historical data on this, for example see where the Mao Tse Tung libertarian project in China ended today, or how the capitalist project was mainly a freedom initiative.

We tend to believe that this is all a thing of the past, or that it happens in another "totalitarian" government or country. That this doesn't happen to us, or that  I am not like that. Whoever believes that this pattern is not repeated in smaller replicas and in diverse collectives, I think he is being naive. The promotion of collectivism, which is a kind of current trend very inspired by the anarchist and libertarian movements of the late nineteenth century and also in the 60's  may have ended in totalitarian or fascist movements, and by the equation that I pose, they end up in a paralyzing centralization, which breaks over and over again in an unsuspecting youth.

The lyrics of CUMBIA SIGLO XXI review this absurdity in different dimensions, depicting the loop of the struggles that end in big and small fascisms. Think of yourself as a witness in small communities, where the most charismatic, powerful or wealthy exercise their ideas (many with libertarian precepts), justly violating the preservation of of free will within the mind domain. There are also many videos on YouTube, explaining how funny the contradiction "Liberty and equality" is. Of course we must continue to preserve the collective systems of preserving the body but NOT those of the mind. In the four-dimensional space that we inhabit and in the bodies that give us sensors to detect "reality", collectivism is fundamental, since the oppressive entity that we all feel and moves us to rebellion, does not stop its attacks.

* We are given the understanding of what freedom is from a young age, so we take that for granted and do not ask ourselves questions about it, but it is possible that we confuse freedom with some of its derivatives, which paradoxically many of them are negative: caprice, abuse of power, overflow of the pleasures of the body, domination, manipulation, individualism or oppression.

*Cumbia siglo XXI* 

Concluding this launch paper, Cumbia Siglo XXI is an album that seeks a divergent intention. An album that imagined within its limitations this unknown freedom we feel, but we all miss. It tries to be framed within the formats of global standardization but imitates, sometimes awkwardly, the work of great warriors of the mind and musical imagination.

*Thanks to:*

Mange, Alejo, César and Empa who have helped maintain this project over the years in moments of success, rejection and in the crises that every effort brings with its existence.

I hope you enjoy this new work of the Meridian Brothers.