El Chupacabra

Today's musical tangent is into the world of a Mexican fabeled goat killing machine, El Chupacabra. How did I jump from a legendary goat slaughterer to border music? Well, I'll tell you.

It has always been the case that writers write what they know and singers sing what they feel. Culture is a large portion of what we know, think, and feel because it effects every action and perspective of a person in a particular cohort. So, it stands to reason that an integral part of a musician's culture would undoubtedly end up in a song or two, just as an important portion of a writer's life would lead to a vignette.

El Chupacabra is a long told fable that has stretched across continents to haunt children's dreams worldwide. It is the legend of a creature that has been reported to live in the jungles and forests of either Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Chile, or oddly enough...Miami. Though the reported environments are drastically different, the story is always the same: the carcasses of goats are found strewn about, seemingly sucked dry with strange, inexplicable bite marks on their necks.

Whether or not you believe in El Chupacabra, it joins the ranks of other animals in the cryptozoology category such as Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster. The basis of their infamy relies heavily on folklore and circumstantial evidence from those who identify themselves as "true believers."

There you have it: a deeply ingrained portion of border culture. So, in my infinite wisdom (or stupidity - the jury's still out on that one) I put in a search for songs involving El Chupacabra. What happened next would be anyone's guess.

A woman from Long Island, New York, Imani Coppola turned up. Undoubtedly top of the list because of her recent contribution to the hot new show Grey's Anatomy, Coppola had released an album called "Chupacabra."

Confused and almost annoyed that my brilliant plan had failed me, I clicked on the next link. This time the band's name was Chupacabra. They were from Colordado, but this HAD to be it. They were even cited in The Onion. I read on.

"[Chupacabra has] such a unique sound, rooted in the music of Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, West Africa, Europe and the U.S.A."

YEESSSSSSS. It worked! What a fascinating blend. I needed to hear it...but sadly all the links attached were dead ends.

No worries...it worked once, it can work again, I thought. But the next link wasn't as promising. To my utter disappointement I found the following video with the tag "Hungarian Ska" at the bottom.



Colorado. New York. Hungary. What did they all have in common? What was the fabled Mexican goat sucker so fashionable? Then it hit me. As people begin to interact with one another throughout the world using Myspace, Facebook, AIM, etc. they become part of a larger culture. Slowly but surely, assimilating fables like El Chupacabra will become almost second nature until the Internet isn't the only place full of crossing cultures. Maybe, just maybe, the unique hybrid of dueling cultures we have here in Tucson will start to become a cross-pollination technique that musicians all over the world will model. Who knows.

Desert Soul

The Sewer Rats were a group of high school misfits who drove every weekend to the same spot in the quiet, dead of night to a meeting place in the desert. Sitting around a make-shift bonfire (using only the pieces of debris available in the cooling sand), they passed the time taking hardy swigs of cheap beer, long drags on cigarettes and occasionally strumming a song. Kyle DeBruhl, the self-proclaimed ring leader, would talk of these nights during the slow, painful newspaper hour just before fifth period lunch like they were sacred ceremonies of brotherhood. Me, being a stubborn native New Yorker, missed the point entirely.

There's nothing great about the desert. It's hot. It's sweaty. It's boring, I thought. What I didn't realize is I was thinking only of the daylight hours. I had no idea what a late night rendezvous in the cool desert night was like...until now.

Flash forward five years. I was scouring Myspace on a tip from an editor at the Tucson Citizen, Polly Higgins. The band she recommended was Greyhound Soul. The assignment: define the difference between Desert Rock and Border Rock. A much more challenging task than I imagined. I decided to start with the basics. What does it mean to be in the desert? What are the fundamental characteristics of being a border town smack dab in the middle of the desert with no where to go but Mexico.



I found my answer in Joe Pena's voice. "Midnight Radio," the track that happened to be cued on Greyhound Soul's site, embodied everything those stories DeBruhl used to tell me. His throaty vocals are the sand that sticks to the roof of your mouth and the back of your throat when taking a deep breath of hot, desert air. The smooth slide guitar is the sound of sun-soaked delerium that can only be quenched with a cold, wet beer freshly plucked from the cooler on the porch.

So does the music make the place or does the place make the music? Was this truly Desert Rock like the critics say or was it Border Rock? All I know is, that song IS Tucson. That black spot in a sea of rust, brown dirt on the tattered map in the glove compartment of my boiling car finally found its true sound.

If you don't believe Greyhound Soul is the sound of a border town, take the song, pop it into your CD player in the dead of night and just drive. Crack the window and let the cool, gritty air pour in. You'll know what I mean if you drive long enough. That's what it means to live in Tucson, on the border.