I’m really digging this new Beirut release March of the Zapotec/Holland. It’s actually two separate EPs, with Holland being credited to “Realpeople”, the name under which Zach Condon composed early, more electronic work.
March of the Zapotec was recorded in southern Mexico with a local brass band that played funerals in the area. Whoa—this is the type of information that really perks my ears up.
There’s a couple of reasons why this really grabbed me on the first listen. The first is that I’ve never been to Mexico, yet I have this romantic vision of what parts of it are like (possible exaggerated, possibly not). I don’t have much knowledge of Mexican musical history, but the sounds I hear on this release fall right in with some of the imagery I imagine.
When I was in college, I took a short story creative writing course. We’d have to read the stories aloud to the class. I remember I once wrote a story that, in my mind, I really liked. It took place in a border town, and the music played a central role in the story. I tried to work the feel of the music into the linear piece of fiction and when it was read back it just didn’t work. The experiment failed, and was actual quite embarrassing. Oh well. Looking back I realize that what I was hearing—and imagining in my head—was something that really should have been written for a screenwriting or theater class, and not a fiction course. At least I got a good memory out of it.
The music that I was hearing in my head when I wrote that story could have been parts of March of the Zapotec. That’s the second reason.
