By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The pandemic gave Enrique Chi and his bandmates in Making Movies a chance to reflect on what it means to be a band.
The band couldn’t perform. “There was a time there when we couldn’t even rehearse,” Chi said. “We were just talking about music and sending each other music that we were messing around with.”
The good part was they got a chance to discuss why they are band. From that came a new alignment with the music
“Now it’s the fun part,” Chi said. He was speaking by phone while on the road heading to a gig. He loves touring, he said. “It’s not easy, but it’s a blast.”
Making Movies’ travels this summer will bring them to the Black Swamp Arts Festival, where they will close out the Main Stage with a show Sunday (9/11) at 3:30 p.m. The festival opens Friday, Sept. 9, at 5 p.m. and runs through Sunday, Sept. 11, at 5 p.m.
Chi urged listeners to bring their dancing shoes. Making Movies intends to get the crowd moving with its blend of psychedelic rock and the incantations of ancient African rhythms.
Making Movies, which includes Enrique Chi, vocals, guitars, and songwriter, his brother Diego Chi, bassist and experimental vocalist, percussionist Juan-Carlos Chaurand, and Duncan Burnett, drums, is devoted to integrating African, Latin, and American rhythms into a vibrant whole.
These “ancient rhythms” are threaded through the band’s rock sound.
That West African rhythmic language arrived in the Americas 500 years ago by way of the slave trade. Their influence is felt throughout the music of the Western Hemisphere, Chi said.. It’s in the rich traditions of the Caribbean, the music of south America, and the various incarnations of rock. It’s in jazz and the blues.
Every decade, he said, people become fascinated by “some new invention that’s built out of the soup.”
The influence of those African rhythms varied by place. “When they got here they were already ancient,” he said. “Those rhythms were already part of the people, their language, and communication.
Cuba, he said, was such a large slave trading center with so many African captives coming through that the drumming from the continent had to be accommodated. In Mexico, there were fewer enslaved Africans, so it was easier to ban the drums. But the rhythms persisted in tap dancing and strumming patterns.
“We started to unpack that,” Chi said, “and became students of those traditions. … We do to the best of our abilities to go to that well … and we observe, study it, internalize it and realize it’s inside of us.
“That was a dark part of human history but an amazing lesson in the resilience of humanity. People had to fight really hard to keep it alive so we could inherit these rhythms.”
And Making Movies makes the most of that rich inheritance.
“There’s some musical ideas that we do that haven’t been done,” Chi said. While some musicians may layer various Afro-Latin rhythms within rock, he said, “we integrate them and thread them through the entire arrangement.”
That’s the quality that caught the attention of Los Lobos, he said, and led to Steve Berlin producing “XOPA,” which was released earlier this summer. This is the best representation yet of the band’s vision.
Making Movies had its roots in the Chi family home, first in Panama, and then in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chi brothers’ father loved rock ‘n’ roll, and was a particular fan of the band Dire Straits.
Even before Chi could speak English, the British band’s music spoke to him. He remembers dancing around to the band’s “Walk of Life” when he was a toddler.
One album confused him a bit. The band’s name and the title were in the same font and same size. Was this an album titled “Dire Straits” by the band Making Movies, or the reverse? Of course, it was “Making Movies” by Dire Straits, but well before the band took shape it had a name.
Chi also learned guitar from listening to Mark Knopfler on those albums.
The family moved to Kansas City when Chi was 6 so his father, who was an amateur rock musician, could go to school. Also, Panama was in turmoil because of the US overthrow of its leader Manuel Noriega.
“They liked it, so they found ways to stay,” Chi said of his parents.
The Chi brothers had developed the concept for Making Movies before they met Mexican percussionist Juan-Carlos Chaurand and the band took shape.
Like the Chi brothers his father was a rock musician, who was part of the legendary Mexican psychedelic band Los Spiders.
“We knew we wanted to make music that represented all parts of our identities,” Chi said.
Rock ‘n’ roll, cumbia, meringue, and other Latin styles were all cousins. All drew from the stream of African rhythm that flowed to the Americas, and still have the power to get people on their feet and dancing.
All the Festival sounds for Sunday, Sept. 11
Mike Williams on Sax will perform the National Anthem on the Main Stage at 10:50 a.m.
Main Stage
Sunday, 9/11; 11:00 am
Sunday, 9/11; 12:30 pm
Sunday, 9/11; 2:00 pm
Sunday, 9/11; 3:30 pm
Community Stage
11 am: Toraigh
12:15 pm: Greg Rich and the 4 P’s of Marketing
1:30 pm: Falcon Samba Bateria
2:45 pm: The Brain Weasels
4 pm: Foghorn Stringband
Family Stage
11 am: Falcon Samba Bateria
12:30 pm: Kazenodaichi Taiko
2 pm: Tito Villarreal
3:45 pm: Tuvergen
