N.A.A.F.I. is one of the most active music gangs in D.F. They make their own music, throw their own parties and follow their “own rules”. One of those rules is collaboration. Each album they’ve released has had its own individual treatment, its own design, its own rhythm.
We recently premiered N.A.A.F.I.’s “Digital-Only Line” with O.M.A.A.R’s club-ready No! EP. But since 2013, the label-cum-collective has also made it possible for acts like Siete Catorce, Lao, Paul Marmota and DJ Smurphy to release physical CDs, each with its own artistic direction and creative treatment.
Last year N.A.A.F.I. decided to close the year in a very intergalactic / transnational / elegant way by throwing a three day beach rave in Oaxaca featuring Kingdom, L-Vis 1990, Ghazal, Imaabs, Zutzut, plus N.A.A.F.I. staples Mexican Jihad, Paul Marmota, and DJ Smurphy, to name just a few. Days earlier they released a triple-disc bomb, featuring full length albums by Javier Estrada (Prehispánico), Alan Rosales (Guarachero), and DJ Tetris (Costeño). Each of these album titles reflects an interpretation of tribal music’s conception and execution by three of the genres godfathers. They all feature original art by local graffiti artist Zombra, and now, DJ Tetris’ opening song on Costeño has a very unique music video which we’re excited to debut here. A collaboration with Mexico City’s documentary film collective Detona, “100% Costeña” showcases not only a very elegant music style based on classic samples and rhythm, but also portrays a quinceañera party in Oaxaca.
Detona Collective’s Antonio Hernández and Oscar Pichardo Isaak have been working together as documentary filmmakers for the past several years. They co-wrote Antonio’s Tránsito and Oscar A.D’d Antonio’s Vestigios del paraíso, a feature length about a local crew of surfing kids who want to enter a surf contest. It was shot on the coasts of Chacahua, Oaxaca. Antonio has been deeply interested in Oaxacan culture for years, he’s a “local” surfer himself as well there. And they’ve been close to N.A.A.F.I since their very first days. I can clearly place them both in the crowd at the very first N.A.A.F.I parties. A collaboration like this had to happen sooner or later. Describing the concept and collaboration, Pichardo Isaak said:
“The video we made for ‘100% Costeñita’ by DJ Tetris tries to mix visual ethnography with a music video. It seemed to us the best way to try and portray the hybrid condition of [N.A.A.F.I’s] music. We shot a Fiesta de XV Años in Zapotalito, a shore town in Oaxaca.
More than a purist’s ethnography, we’re interested in showing how music is danced to at those kind of parties, where it’s become pretty common to end up listening to DJ Tetris’ costeño tribal; this is a mirror to the rhythmic origins of tribal music, which crossed genres by combining rhythms brought from South America and indigenous/afromestizo zones. These are a pretty big symbol of Oaxaca’s cultural identity.
DJ Tetris mixes these rhythms with the kind of electronic music that people listen to all over the world. With a glance at how the rhythms that every Mexican knows actually originate from the candor of the afromestizo condition, our purpose was to generate an audiovisual work that portrays both the popular, and at the same, time reflects on the rhythms people dance to in Oaxaca, and their ancestral origins in their local cultures.”
This video takes you on a smooth ride down the sunset at a quinceañera party in Oaxaca – it all starts off in a very straight documentary style, but as the night comes upon the dancing crowd, a certain mystical possession takes place.