"This is old-fashioned West Coast vision and prophecy
time-warped into a future of digital polyculturalism that's already
here. Gómez-Peña speaks, shouts, whispers, and gushes
in forked and curled tongues... Galindo surrounds him in cut-up
sound clouds of opera, speed metal, and urban noise -a jagged
electro-ambience that converts the Hotel California into "la
mansión de la muerte." These are chants for ethnic
robots, rituals for post-millennial Mexican, and balms for the
identity beleaguered. In other words, it's fantasy and paranoia
and hope and it comes in any language you want to make up."
- Josh Kun
Continually expanding the boundaries of Chicano/Mexicano art and culture, performance artist/writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña teams with mad Mexican ex-rockero gone symphonic composer Guillermo Galindo to create a bizarre piece of audio-art. Part Spanglish spoken word epic, and part ópera electrónica, Apocalypse Mañana defies all classifications, and traditional genres.
In
the dystopic universe of Apocalypse Mañana, rappers jam
with Chinese opera sopranos, and lap-top rock intertwines with
classical arias, deranged ranchero and porno- flamenco. Together,
the poetry and the music create a "total mindscape of the
Californian apocalypse," in which virtual space is controlled
by Mexican radicals, and Chicano militias stalk white America
in every public and private corner.
This joint Calaca Press/La Pocha Nostra production was originally written by Gómez-Peña in dialogue with Elaine Katzenberger. The script was adapted for the stage in dialogue with maestro Galindo to produce a unique performance opera which was staged in San Francisco in 2001. Since then, the duo has been re-working the material to produce this CD. During the recording process they invited to the studio an ecclectic array of performance artists, singers and musicians, includin Juan Ybarra, Randy Wong, Kathy Kennedy, Amy X Neuburg and Jenniffer Ashworth.
For
20 years, performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña
has been exploring intercultural issues with the use of mixed
genres and experimental languages. Continually developing multi-centric
narratives from a border perspective, Gómez-Peña
creates what critics have termed "Chicano cyber-punk performances,"
and "ethno-techno art." In his work, cultural borders
have moved to the center while the alleged mainstream is pushed
to the margins and treated as exotic and unfamiliar, placing the
audience members in the position of "foreigners" or
"minorities." He mixes English and Spanish, fact and
fiction, social reality and pop culture, Chicano humor and activist
politics to create a "total experience" for the viewer/reader/audience
member. These strategies can be found in his live performance
work, his commentaries for "All Things Considered" on
NPR, his award-winning video art pieces and his five published
books.
Guillemo Galindo's music spans from the field of digital sound design to the domain of chamber, orchestra and opera composition. Following the school of European and American Avant Garde composers of the 60's and 70's Galindo's music absorbs and combines any existing style to create polymorphic and extremely unusual musical specimens. Guillermo Galindo's work has been awarded by the California Arts Council, Meet the Composer Grants, American Composers Forum and the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. Major works include "Ome Acatl," "Kiyohime," "Califas 2000" in collaboration with Guillermo Gomez Peña and Elaine Katzenberger and "Decreation" in collaboration with Anne Carson.