SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICK CUMBIA -LOS JAICHACKERS

After centuries of transcultural blending, Cumbia’s signature accordion-as-bassline-sound can be found throughout Latin America’s dance halls. Los Jaichackers (Spanglish for hijackers) is a project of artists Julio César Morales (based in Phoenix) and Eamon Ore-Girón (based in Guadalajara). Via installation, performance, and playlists, they deejay, curate music programs and lecture, tracking down the global DNA of emerging street & club music in Mexico, its borders, and the Mexican diaspora in the States and abroad.
Subterranean Homesick Cumbia, shot on the Amazonas and the Missisippi rivers, is the videographic keepsake of the artists’ journey to trace the mythological birth of Cumbia music, the first Latin American hybrid musical form. Its creation myth tells the story of a German merchant ship which crashed upon the shores of Colombia, spilling its cargo of accordions. These instruments were retrieved by local communities and incorporated into their musical tradition to form a new vernacular sound.
The relationship of the accordion to the landscape tells the story of the unstriated flow of social exchange and the unpredictable ways in which we engage with our environment.

Los Jaichackers (Julio César Morales and Eamon Ore-Girón) – Spanglish for hijackers – was formed by two artists in search of the global DNA of the underground club scene. To seize, divert, or appropriate something while it is in transit – the act, or art, of hijacking – is a metaphor for the collisions between dominant and migrant cultures that fly under the radar, often by design. Their work has been shown at San Juan Triennial, Puerto Rico, Prospect 3, New Orleans, SFMOMA, San Francisco, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, Muese Tamayo, Mexico City and the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt/Main.