Pablo Yglesias (aka DJ Bongohead) and Brendan Rule (aka DJ Andujar) have long been turning people on to cool music any which way they can. Besides spinning records at parties, dances and venues, they’re musicians who run their own vinyl-only record label, Peace & Rhythm.
Now, for the first time, Yglesias and Rule are curating “Dean’s Beans Latin Night” at the Green River Festival, which takes place this weekend on the grounds of Greenfield Community College.
Their four-band bill will fill the Four Rivers Stage Friday, beginning at 5:30 p.m., starting with C.A.M.P.O.S., and followed by Mariachi Flor De Toloache, XIXA, and Ola Fresca.
“Since both Andujar and I are deejays and percussionists, we appreciate making audiences dance, and we wanted to bring more ethnicity and ‘sabor’ (Afro-Latin flavor) to the festivities,” Yglesias said in an interview last week.
C.A.M.P.O.S. stands for Cumbias And More Psychedelic Original Sounds and it’s the project of bandleader Joshua Camp (also a member of the group Chicha Libre), whose homemade music — a personal brew of synthesizers, drum machines, traditional rhythms and acoustic instruments — has been described as “Brian Wilson on vacation in early ’70s Peru, in a garage jamming with Elliott Smith, Cluster, and Ennio Morricone.”
Mariachi Flor De Toloache is a unique all-female mariachi band that formed in New York City in 2008; in recent years the group has been nominated for a Latin Grammy and made waves with appearances on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert and at international festivals. They’ve also toured and collaborated with The Arcs, the new project from Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.
The Tucson, Arizona, group XIXA has connections to the bands Calexico and Giant Sand and a sound that’s “a mix of cumbia and desert Americana,” according to Yglesias.
Headlining the night is Ola Fresca, a Brooklyn band led by Jose Conde that describes its music as a “swinging, fearless tropical Latin sound.” Yglesias calls it “a genre-bashing salsa band.”
Peace & Rhythm has previously worked with most of the above artists, having released records by Ola Fresca (their most recent full-length, “Elixir,” on a 180-gram LP) and Mariachi Flor De Toloache (their first-ever piece of vinyl, a 45 featuring two swaying Latin dance numbers). The C.A.M.P.O.S. debut double LP, the 31-song “Miracles & Criminals,” is due out sometime in October.
Yglesias says the four diverse acts all have something in common: “They all take ‘traditional’ or ‘classic’ Latin musical forms and manipulate them, turn them on their head, fuse them with other flavors.”
He’d seen Mariachi Flor De Toloache at a couple of events over the years — “The ladies blew me away with their musicianship, grace, humor, eclecticism, and fearless fusion of trad and rad” — and found out that Jim Olsen, founder and President of Signature Sounds, already wanted to have them on the Green River Festival bill. “A happy coincidence,” Yglesias said.
Yglesias moved to the Valley in 2002 and has attended as many of the Green River Festivals as his schedule has allowed.
“The vibe is really relaxed, it’s community and kid-oriented, low-key, beautifully situated and fun. It’s like a good ol’ time classic music event, but not in a messy mass of humanity, Woodstock or Glastonbury mud-hippie-fest way. This is the sort of mellow, hip gig that I always look forward to visiting. You can rotate from stage to stage, concession to concession, and just drift around and get exposed to music you may not ordinarily get to experience.”
The Green River Festival will run Friday, Saturday and on the main campus of Greenfield Community College, 1 College Drive in Greenfield.
Tickets can be purchased online and, locally, at The Parlor Room and Turn It Up, both in Northampton, and at the World Eye Bookshop in Greenfield.
A three-day pass costs $119; a two-day pass (Saturday and Sunday) is $99; and a one-day pass (Saturday or Sunday) is $64.99.
To purchase tickets online, or for all the festival details, visit www.greenriverfestival.com.