Video from "scratch guitarist" and looper Genie

["Krispen Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

Here's a new video from "scratch guitarist" and looper Genie, who played 
at 
Y2K6 this year.  I asked me to forward this along. I'll have his Y2K6 
recording sent out this weekend some time, among others.

Kris

----- Original Message ----- >

> http://currenttv.com/watch/16180242


> The renowned pioneer of "scratch guitar", The Genie blends blues, jazz,
> electronica, bossa nova, latin and middle-eastern rhythms via slide
> guitar, beatboxing, and live sampling, to create a visually stunning and
> truly unique show.
>
> San Francisco Bay Guardian July 28-Aug 3 2004
> Making it from scratch
> Mission homeboy-guitarist Luis Monterrosa, a.k.a. the Genie, plugs in and
> blows up.
> By Camille T. Taiara
> ON A BALMY , late-summer night last year, during my first trip to the
> Middle East, I discovered the most enchanting music. It was at the modest
> apartment of a Palestinian artist and newfound friend who'd invited a
> small group over for dinner. I'll never forget the moment: sipping on a
> glass of arak and listening to the mesmerizing sounds emanating from
> Mahmoud's paint-splattered boom box as I stared through open porch doors
> at the vast Damascus skyline, with its miles of Soviet-style, concrete
> buildings interrupted by the occasional mosque's green-lit minaret. The
> musical score, I was later told, dated back thousands of years and had
> been discovered in the Iraqi desert by a team of archaeologists who'd
> translated it into modern-day notation. It was then performed by a
> European symphony (they didn't know which).
> "It conveys a profound solitariness, yet with the understanding that 
>we're
> part of something much bigger than our individual selves," I told another
> guest at the time.
> "You, my dear, are a Sufi," he responded.
> Back home many months later, I popped a CD into my own boom box and was
> taken back to that moment in Mahmoud's apartment.
> The cultural references were different. Others might call the music's
> spiritual message by another name - referring instead, perhaps, to
> Buddhism's tenet that "all is one," or to American Indian spiritual
> beliefs that what we in the modern West call God can be found in the 
>earth
> and sky and everything around us.
> But listening to Luis Monterrosa's songs, it was evident: he's a Sufi 
>too.
>
> Monterrosa, who goes by the stage name the Genie, is quickly becoming an
> underground icon in San Francisco these days - playing at house parties,
> galleries, cafés, and wherever else they'll give him a chance. His
> instruments: a guitar, a sampler, and a mic. His technique: scratch
> guitar, a term he made up to refer to his distinctive playing style.
> "I make everything from scratch," he told me. "Also, I'm emulating
> turntablism techniques."
> The Genie usually begins by beat-boxing into a mic and looping the beat
> into a sampler to set the percussive groundwork, then layering in a 
>string
> of guitar notes. This becomes the musical base over which he plays slide
> guitar. His music comes off as a melodic fusion of hip-hop, Latin rock,
> and electronica, and, in the case of "Grenada," even includes an element
> of Southern twang.
> The result is mesmerizing and, somehow, profoundly human - as if he were
> giving sound to some intimate yet universal quality shared across time 
>and
> cultural divides.
> With diverse cultural reference points and without much left by way of
> family, the Guatemalan American Genie has developed a sense of
> interconnectedness that doesn't rely merely on blood ties or a shared
> history. And while he'll point to Prince, Metallica, and particularly
> Carlos Santana as his earliest musical influences, supplemented in recent
> years by local underground DJs (Shadow, QBert, Shortkut, and MixMaster
> Mike), his is much more than a mere patchwork of styles. It's a 
>reflection
> of his political consciousness, extensive travels (to Palestine, 
>Colombia,
> and Brazil), and the lack of a psychological home.
> In that sense, the Genie resembles a Mission District homeboy version of
> Manu Chao - a globe-trotting musical nomad influenced by a profound
> concern for social justice coupled with the insights garnered from
> experiencing different perspectives, sensibilities, and ways of life.
> Also like Chao, the Genie launched his solo career playing at Metro
> stations - albeit in Montreal two years ago rather than in Paris during
> the mid-1980s. Then one day he spied a flyer for the Montreal 
>DMC/Technics
> World DJ Championships turntable competition at the venerable Club Soda.
> "I just crashed it," he recalled. "And someone who was supposed to 
>perform
> couldn't, so they were down for me to play."
> The Genie's unique performance caught the attention of DJ Horg, one of 
>the
> competition's judges, who signed him on for a record deal. The result was
> Rebel Music (High Life Music), the Genie's first album, which comprises
> seven original instrumentals.
> Appropriately, the album opens with an excerpt from Frontiers of Fears 
>and
> Dreams, Mai Masri's 2001 documentary about two young Palestinian girls:
> "My dream is to one day find a lamp with a genie inside who would turn me
> into a bird so I could fly away," Mona Zaaroura, a 13-year-old from the
> Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, says in Arabic.
> Now the album's made its way to San Francisco, and the Genie is
> celebrating with an album-release party at StudioZ.tv that includes
> collaborations with Afro-Brazilian contemporary choreographer Paco Gomes
> and local vocalist Panacea, as well as an invitation for local rappers to
> freestyle at an open mic at the end of the night.
> "Watch, this vato's gonna blow up in a year or two," local Chicano
> filmmaker Pepe Urquijo told me after the Genie played a set in Urquijo's
> living room during the latter's birthday party back in 2002.
> He was right.
> But to the Genie, it's not about that. It's about consciousness - about
> recognizing that we're all part of a greater whole, and struggling to
> create a more just, egalitarian, and humane world.
> "I'm trying to reach people on an emotional level, more through their
> souls than through their brain," he said.
> The Genie plays, with David Molina and special guests, Thurs/29,
>
> Montreal Mirror    Noisemakers 2004
>
> ARCHIVES: Jan 08-14.04 Vol. 19 No. 29
>
>
>
>
> Out of the bottle
> Your wish is the Genie's command
>
> by SCOTT C
> The first time I saw the Genie perform, I simply wasn't prepared for the
> spectacle. Using an electric guitar, a multi-effects foot pedal and a
> microphone, he was able to create a layered mish-mash of riffs, licks and
> tricks, backed by a looped beat box - all in a matter of 25 seconds, live
> on stage. He built track after track of weaving hip hop instrumentalism
> laced with guitar and sampled guitar byproducts while a mystified 
>audience
> looked on with head-nodding appreciation.
> The Genie is Luis Monterrosa, a passionate, socially aware San Francisco
> expatriate who turned a lot of heads in this city when he bum-rushed the
> 2002 DMC Championships and gave the audience an unexpected treat. Ever
> since then, he's been playing around Montreal, blowing people away with
> his on-the-fly productions.
> The Genie recently recorded the album Rebel Music, with the aid of
> Montreal's High Life Music and his good friend DJ Horg, an album that
> attempts to capture the essence of his live show. The album is a 
>testament
> to the globetrotting tendencies of this talented musician, who clearly
> tries to impart a piece of his travels into every song. Upcoming projects
> include a DVD, a live album, and collaborations with the many people the
> Genie has been blessed to meet along the way.
>