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SXSW review: Systema Solar and Anita Tijoux
Everything was running late at Flamingo Cantina — surprise, surprise — and Colombian collective Systema Solar was only about midway through its set at midnight Thursday, when Anita Tijoux was supposed to be on stage. For about 20 minutes, the place was as uncomfortably crowded as a subway train at rush hour, but the audience, including a puzzling number of men over 6-foot-3, was definitely digging the group’s bass-heavy fusion of polyrhythmic folkloric music with hip-hop, house, techno and dancehall. In addition to complex, danceable beats, the ensemble has two forceful MCs in Jhon Primera and Indigo, who played well off each other, and Primera danced with compelling abandon, at one point rotating his head and tossing his long hair so violently around that I wondered if one of the many people on stage was a chiropractor standing by.
The group also demonstrated visual panache with artsy, entertaining videos of people dancing, shown on a screen on a side wall of the club, and with their uniforms, which had a faintly military air, although the black backgrounds were decorated with glittering red, gold and green metallic patterns. The costumes looked like something Michael Jackson might have designed if he had decided to sponsor a Caribbean biathlon team. As 12:30 approached, the crowd started to thin a bit, but the large contingent remaining burst into applause and danced enthusiastically when Systema Solar played a kind of cumbia on steroids. A few long numbers later, they finally announced “This is our last song,” but then played a couple more, only quitting when someone in authority apparently finally impressed on them just how far over the time limit they had played. Although the band had outlasted at least half the crowd, many of those remaining begged for more, and a grinning Primera told them to come out to Speakeasy Friday night.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to set up for Tijoux, a Chilean hip-hop artist who works with a stripped-down, old-school setup. Her crew was just a clever DJ, wearing an Adidas track suit, yet, and a male sidekick, and she popped out on stage with little ceremony, wearing jeans shorts and a flowing traditional blouse in a bright shade of light blue. The petite Tijoux looks like she could be a telenovela star, with her sculpted cheekbones and bangs so thick, they would make Zooey Deschanel green with envy. But she’s a serious heavyweight on the mic, her words tumbling forth in a swift, percussive stream. Most of her Spanish was too rapid for me to follow, but her smoky voice and rhythmic phrasing were compelling nevertheless, and she spoke eloquently with her hands. She also knows how to work a chorus, as in “A Veces” and “Sube,” which she dedicated to her fellow Chileans suffering in the wake of the earthquake.
Tijoux closed with her hit “1977,” set to a spooky musical track and boasting a chorus as hooky as any pop song. It was almost 1:15 in the morning as she finished her 25-minute set, but although the crowd had dwindled considerably after Systema Solar, she captivated the diehards, and one tall guy in his 20s was even happily dancing with a slice of pizza on a paper plate in one hand and another slice clutched in his other hand, which waved enthusiastically in the air.
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