Sunday, March 2, 2008

Mexican, Argentine acts prep for Austin spotlight

http://entertainews.blogspot.com


By Ayala Ben-Yehuda


LOS ANGELES (Billboard) -
A Vans Warped tour franchise in
Mexico and an Argentine DJ collective are among the
international Latin groups looking for stateside exposure at
the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival, which runs March
7-16 in Austin, Texas.

On March 15, a Warped tour Latin America showcase will
feature Mexican bands Allison, Delux and Lipstick Terror. (A
lineup for a one-off June 14 rock festival in Mexico City this
year under the Vans Warped brand has yet to be set.)

"International bands sometimes come to South by Southwest
and get kind of overshadowed," said Warped founder Kevin Lyman,
who also throws an unofficial SXSW party for bands from as far
away as Japan and Europe.

But "now it's a real conscientious effort to have different
types of music from the U.S. as well as from around the world,"
said Lyman, who has been freshening up his stateside tour by
booking such foreign bands as Spain's the Pinker Tones.

In 2007, Allison played several Warped U.S. dates after the
band's Warped showcase at SXSW, and Lyman said that this summer
Delux will do the same.

Pako Zepeda, co-CEO of Mexico City-based management company
Soundguich, is licensing the Warped name, pursuing sponsorships
(Vans and Monster Energy are already onboard) and building a
database of potential attendees via MySpace and the Warped tour
Mexico Web
site.

Meanwhile, a collective of Buenos Aires-based DJs has built
a five-city U.S. tour around its March 13 SXSW showcase.

The six Zizek acts blend electronic and breakbeat with
cumbia and reggaeton, in a style the tour's MySpace site
describes as "electro cumbia," "cumbia crunk" and "cumbia
rave." (Traditional cumbia is the music for a dance of short
sliding steps that originated among African slaves on
Colombia's Atlantic coast.)

"The experimental cumbia scene has been around for six or
seven years," said Dull, who along with the talent he manages
is self-financing the tour. The Zizek DJs "want to see their
careers advance and get more gigs ... everything that happens
when one goes from Argentina abroad."

Reuters/Billboard

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