The word mixtape has plenty of different interpretations. It used to be that mixtapes were actually DJ sets recorded on cassette tapes, but with the coming of the digital music age, the name remained the same, but the definition expanded. Nowadays, people call mixtapes many different things, some of which are not necessarily mixed and most of which were never taped. Here we try to cover them all. In this column, Juan Data gives you a worthy one every week.
DJ: Slim Jenkins
MIXTAPE: Me Gusta Como Bailas
We introduced DJ Slim Jenkins to you a while a go here on Remezcla, and many already know him as his alter ego Adam Dunber, the record digger extraordinaire and blogger behind the very informative and thoroughly researched Musica del Alma blog. Adam is an Oakland resident with one of the largest record collections I’ve ever seen, mainly focused on the soulful side of old-school Afro-Latin music. He frequently travels the southern part of the continent in search of obscure, forgotten, musical gems in vinyl format and brings them over to the states where he shares them with record collectors and fans through his blog or his live DJ sets throughout the Bay Area. It helps that his day job is as a cartographer, so traveling to odd places abroad is part of his routine.
He recently came back from the Colombian jungle where he managed to survive being kidnapped by the FARC and brought back a huge pile of records, some of them used here on this mixtape. But it’s not all cumbia and pachanga, after taking the listeners on a musical trip through the Americas, Slim Jenkins makes some unexpected stops in places like Ethiopia and Germany before the final destination of the trip, Cuba. All mixed live, with real vinyl records (no serato here!) and true DJ skills.