Congressman Pulido

As a global thinker, the seismic political shifts of the past week have been full of welcome news in general, with a few especially welcome surprises in specific races. 

The first that got my attention was the ascendency of Scott Colom in Mississippi. President Biden had appointed him as a federal judge, but his home-state senator blocked the nomination without giving an explanation aside from his race. When I turned off my computer on election night, he was leading her by 43 votes out of about 950,000 cast. Even the possibility of this outcome was almost unfathomable to me, Mississippi having fought more violently than any other place in this country against the right to vote. (See my Just Read post for more on this.)

As the count continues, he is ahead by a larger but still very close margin -- a gap of about 2,500 at the time of this writing. As I heard today during an interview with experts from the NAACP and other organizations, if Colom wins, it will be the next chapter in the story of Medgar Evers and countless others whose sacrifices led to this moment. And once he is seated, I am hoping that he will serve on the Judiciary Committee and to have it resume its Constitutional mandate. 

This was all front of mind when I noticed an even bigger surprise -- so surprising that I needed to verify it right away. If I were to move back to my former home in Pharr, Texas, my next Congressman would be a rock star. Well, technically a Tejano star: Bobby Pulido. 

When I actually lived on the border in the 1990s, I did not appreciate or understand the music. As i delved into it later, this song became one of my favorites.

As I explain in my post Nopal, I learned of this song through a different version on a CD by the McAllen-based Frijoles Romanticos, on which he was featured as a special guest. 

His return to the spotlight is part of what people are calling a Blue Wave, which is a national pattern that is made up of dozens of local stories such as his. Representative Pulido overwhelmingly an election in a district that the incumbent had won by large margins in a district that had been gerrymandered for her benefit.

Despite that hurdle -- and perhaps fueled by his vocal advocacy for more humane immigration enforcement -- this local legend won by 24 points among the same hand-picked voters the incumbent had carried by 22 points. 

Somalia Sounds

Somalia is currently in the news because many people outside of Minnesota are angry that the people of the 5th Congressional district of Minnesota elected a US citizen of Somali descent to Congress, where she has served since 2019.  Rep. Ilhan Omar has been a citizen in 2000 at age 17, meaning she has been a citizen longer than the First Lady of the United States and her frequent critic and fellow African Elon Musk.

At the time of this writing, the Department of Homeland Security has been scouring her apartment for evidence of unspecified criminal activity, weeks before an election she is nonetheless very likely to win. 

None of that is about music, but since some of the political attacks on her are SOLELY about her country of origin, it is in the spirit of the singing planet to share a couple of musical highlights from Somalia. 

I will admit of not knowing much about the music of the region and that I know mostly tragic stories of poverty and violence. But those stories do not fully define a place, and certainly they do not define its people. 

What I have found so far include the anthem Wavin' Flag by K'NANN and a Tiny Desk concert by the same performer. I have also found an excertp of LA MIA GEOGRAFIA by Saba Anglana. I love the title ("My Geography") and can almost understand the Italian lyrics. Further research into both of these artists is warranted!

The States of Somalia map is from World Atlas.

Afro-Peru: Tony Succar

I am talking about Peru in my Latin America survey course this week, drawing mainly on my only experience (so far) in the country, which was a 2014 birthday adventure with my spouse in Cuzco, Huarocondo, and Machu Picchu. Because this entire experience was in the Andes, I prefaced the discussion with El Condor Pasa -- this video pairs the audio of the Simon & Garfunkel studio with assorted Andean visuals. There being no decent concert video available, this has been the choice of  100,000,000 YouTube viewers. 

As the Andean conversation continues, I decided to bring in another kind of Peruvian music. I remembered learning about Afro-Caribbean music from the 1995 Luaka Bop collection The Soul of Black Peru, but I decided to look for video because I'm too lazy both to locate that CD and figure out how to play it in my classroom.

It was thus that I learned about the brilliant Tony Succar. He moved from Peru to Miami at the age of two and went on to earn two music degrees at Florida International University. I discovered this video from a 2016 TEDxFIU event. This is the first time I've notice a musical contribution to a TEDx event. This alumnus performance is a fabulous blend of music and dance from several genres -- from jazz to rumba to samba and beyond. 

I usually advise not to read the comments -- especially on YouTube -- but in this case, many viewers from all over the planet express their appreciation for the music itself and the diversity of the performers. My favorite comment is EL PERU ES DE TODAS LAS SANGRE -- Peru is of all blood. 

This video led me to an earlier one TEDx FIU performance led by this same alumnus, but with a different band. It is their tribute to Michael Jackson, and in this one Succar does speak a bit between numbers to explain his musical/cultural project. Both of these are well suited to the event motto "Beyond the World You Know." 

The choice of FIU to include live music in an otherwise verbal event reminded me of our recent experience in another US Latin American City. The opening session of the 2026 New Orleans Book Festival included very serious discussions by very serious writers. That alone would have been quite rewarding. But because all of the humanities matter, that opening session ended with a very memorable drumline.

Halftime Opera

NOTE: THIS IS STILL (Feb 11) A WORKING DRAFT. I PROMISE -- I HAVE A LOT MORE TO SAY HERE!

This post is, of course, inevitable. The Planet Sings cannot not include some reflections on the Super Bowl LX Halftime Show featuring Puerto Rican phenomenon Bad Bunny. The possible titles for such a post are as plentiful as the comments overflowing social media this Monday morning. 

It was from among these that I picked up the opera connection. People have enjoyed opera in languages they do not understand for as long as there has been opera -- because the story-telling is so good. And that is certainly the case here. As others have pointed out online, we often do not understand all the words in songs we love in our own languages. ("Excuse me While I Kiss This Guy" is one of my favorite examples.) 

Of course, I expected a lot, but I realized we were going to have even more than a lot when I caught a glimspe of the field in those minutes between the last field goal of the second quarter and the launching of the Benito Bowl. I saw huge clumps of sugarcane being brought onto the field, and I realized we were in for a real geography lesson. Bad Bunny and his amazing team did not disappoint. 

Sixto

Because I had already introduced the Sixto Rodriguez story to students in my Honors colloquium Detroit: Arts City, I mentioned him when working with those students to create a map of the city's points of interest. They were developing a map for the BSU delegation that traveled to Detroit for the annual meeting of the AAG, and I wondered aloud whether there might be some kind of monument to visit. It took the students less than a minute to find the building where he had worked in anonymity for decades. 

I was able to take this photograph a few months later, and to include it in my presentation at that conference.

For years, my friend and colleague from South Africa had been telling me about the 2012 film Searching Sugar Man. When I finally got around to it, both my spouse and I were big fans. I ordered a Sixto Rodriguez CD before we even finished the film. The trailer is full of spoilers, but the story is riveting, even if you know how it ends.

A very nice introduction to his music is the orchestral performance of Crucify Your Mind on Late Night. As David Letterman remarks, the story is fascinating and impossible and true, all at the same time.

Seun Kuti

I recently realized that I had included Egyptian musician Seun Kuti in my Africa regional class, but had not remembered to mention him in this class, where his story is even more appropriate. 

Photo: seunkutimusic.com

I found myself returning to his story because we are doing some work on economic geography that relates to the outsized role of IMF on the continent. 

As NPR journalist Anastasia Tsioulcas reports, he "is the youngest son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. He began playing with his father's band Egypt 80 at age 8 — and took it over upon his father's death just six years later." 

Please read the text that accompanied her "First Listen" audio story -- it describes many of the tracks (including one entitled IMF) and has links to related music, including some from his father. For the IMF video, I recommend enabling the closed captions on YouTube, even though the song is in English. Note that the captions skip the part where Kuti renames the "Monetary Fund" part of IMF to a more commonly used meaning of MF. 

Lagniappe 

When I was attending a meeting in my hometown (Washington, DC) with students from Brazil circa 2010, the walk from a hotel we could afford to the university hosting the meeting had us passing a lot of landmarks. When we passed the White House my students craned their necks in hopes of glimpsing then-president Obama. They were disappointed when I told them an arriving motorcade of 6 vehicles was probably a cabinet secretary, and that we would be nowhere near the place if if were the president.

But I digress: the relevant landmark was the World Bank (which is the conjoined twin of IMF). My otherwise lovely and polite students seemed ready to spit on the building. I have to admit being a bit impressed, but it should not be surprising. Educated people in the Global South recognize the damage that WB/IMF have done in the name of "development." 

My presentation Sovereign Debt and the Erosion of Sovereignty tells the deep back story. I first gave this presentation in 2001, and sadly I have only needed to update some of the details -- the basic story has not changed at all. It is particularly poignant that Kuti is from Egypt -- the story begins there, when his father was still young.

Landfill Harmonic

Because this film is important, I showed the trailer to students in The Planet Sings seminar. 

Before two minutes had passed, I realized that I need to share the entire film. Because it exceeds the length of a single class session, we are now spending much of this week with this film. As of this writing, we have watched the first half of this remarkable story. 

I have managed not to divulge the spoiler that comes in the second half, when the kids from Cateura (on the outskirts of Asunción) make a surprising connection with musicians in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, we have seen the unfolding of a tale that is remarkable -- and relevant -- in several ways. The first protagonist is an environmental educator who pivots to a music education, illustrating the value of humanities education, even in extremely limited circumstances. Just as many middle-income communities in the United States were busy gutting music education in the pursuit of lower taxes, he was working with industrious and ingenious neighbors to build an orchestra with literal garbage. 

Connections 

The "Planet Sings" course and broader project have led me to involve music in my teaching in much the same way I have involved coffee over the past two decades. That is, I am now using geography to learn about music and music as a way to learn about geography.

This means that watching this film with students caused me to pursue a lot of geographic tangents. For example, we discussed the antipodal example of nearby Formosa, Argentina (the exact opposite of Taiwan's home island of Formosa) and the distinctive linguistic situation of Paraguay.

Another example is chimarrão. Because Landfill Harmonic is set in the Paraguay, many people are seen drinking the tea known as yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis). This tradition is shared with neighbors in Argentina and southernmost Brazil. It is sometimes described as a gaucho tradition. Between the two halves of the film, a friend posted this online -- the sign reads "Entry Prohibited without Chimarrão." 

Image: Bruna Silva Mendes

In Brazil, it is known as Chimarrão and because of internal migration, I first learned about it in 1996 many hundreds of miles to the north, in Porto Velho. I have enjoyed it during most of my visits to Brazil, north and south, including my 2019 return to PVH.

Photo: Dr. Miguel Nenevé

Bigger Picture

In addition to some interesting details of cultural geography, the story brings to mind some important ideas about geography writ large. Specifically, the teacher Favio Chávez impresses me as a MOBAL in the parlance of geographer Harm de Blij. Our department was fortunate to host Dr. de Blij (du-BLAY) for visits in 2006 and 2009. During the second visit, he was the distinguished Class of 1942 lecturer, and his comments emerged from his book The Power of Place. My brief review explains how I think of this term,  in the context of the book itself.

During his second visit, Dr. de Blij was among the first to visit EarthView. 
He is the rather professorial chap in the back-left, wearing a red tie.

Lagniappe

See the 2022 post Musica: Paraguay on my main blog for further thoughts.