Annotations for Genre: Fusion

And it's interesting because they'll listen to accordion music, but then they'll also listen to, you know, American pop or rap and sometimes incorporate it into the accordion music.

[Music] It's a musical hybrid.

It's also Tijuana and the border.

Actually, it's its own world, a hybrid world where cultures clash and reinvent themselves.

This musical fusion is called Nortec, Norteño and Techno.

Then I come back to my studio and then I started experimenting with this track. And then I like the result of that.

So I invite them just to create a compilation that doesn't have any name and nothing. It's just, you know, fusion these sounds.

So then people that were in other disciplines like graphic designers, painters, and then they say, you know, 'I'm working with the image from the border, an image from Tijuana, and I fusioned this in my works. Can I use your music?' Yeah, of course.

And then the word spreading out too fast because when the name came out of the compilation, the people start calling us the Nortec Collective or Collectivo Nortec, the Nortec guys, and then even clubs that invite us to play, they say, 'are you going to play your techno stuff or you're going to play Nortec?' You know, like they say, like if it is, you know, some kind of style or whatever. [Laughter] [Music]

Where do you see Nortec going next? I mean, if it's a movement, if it's a multidisciplinary atmosphere and attitude, what comes next then in terms of where Nortec goes?

And even like what we were doing today, like with these people now as Nortec, with fusion, it's happened before with Santana, you know, Santana, which he was mixing the music of their age, you know, of the seventies with all the Mexican stuff that were there, you know.

And earlier than Santana was, you know, like Herb Alpert, you know, fusioning the jazz, the American jazz with all the sounds happening in that moment in Tijuana.

So I think it's always Tijuana has this vibe, you know, the border, the fusion of two cultures, the sounds that are flying around the radio waves and all these television channels, you know, back and forth from the border.

It's like kind of a, that's a way to broke the border, you know.

And Ojala is also the name of a unique duo that combines both Spanish and Middle Eastern influences.

What's the response that you get, Javier, when it's your version? People say, oh, my God, imposible. Or do they say this is extraordinary?

[Music] What I found interesting was how, for example, in the song Corazon Loco, you've got the very Arabic intonation and yet the singing is in Spanish.

That's right. And what you will find interesting is that that song actually originally was a Persian love song that Javier translated the lyrics into Spanish. [Music]

So I want to know what dreams do you have of pushing this even further? I mean, are you thinking of Arabic salsa or mariachi with Arab lyrics? [laguhter]

Right. Actually, Kamran had somebody talking about it. Why don't we go into something like salsa?

That would be one level. We're actually making it a dance, much more of a dance music. Of course, we don't know where it's going to go. We did this because we really loved to do it. But where it goes, it's God willing.