Here is a playlist compiled from my book chapter “‘Vamos al Freeshop’: The Uruguay Brazil-Continuum”. The songs are intimately of and about life along the fronte(i)ra (border) between Uruguay and the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, dealing with everything from contraband to linguistic rights to ranching. Tracks 1 and 2 are about the border… Read More Music of the Uruguay/Brazil Borderlands
Originally released last year, Lucas Sugo’s Cinco Minutos y Nada Mas was the song of 2014 in Uruguay. Whenever I said the words “cinco minutos”–hard to avoid in ordinary conversation–people would break out into the song. A catchy tune indeed, I heard it more often than anything by major pan-Latin artists like Romeo Santos, Enrique… Read More Lucas Sugo’s Cinco Minutos y Nada Mas–The Future of Uruguayan Music in Five Minutes
My travel piece about raid, the horse races in rural Uruguay, has appeared in Roads and Kingdoms. My op-ed about Uruguayan indifference to marijuana and equal marriage laws was published in this morning’s Register-Guard.
There’s only one word to describe lying in the middle of a eucalyptus grove full of cow shit being woken up sunburnt and sore, at 5PM by the sound of racehorse hooves and trucks blaring cumbia, going to the cooler and having to dig through two dozen cans of the cheapest Brazilian beer before finding… Read More There’s only one word: RAID
Serial Localism 