"I like the term world music," says Pablo, "but it should apply to everything. But you gotta call it something." Tony adds, "Nowadays it's hard to categorize music; we're schizophrenic now ... "

The Shake and Bake Show defies clear categorization, and that's part of the fun for its two hosts. If there is a theme, it's fusion.
 

Tony and Pablo's approach to programming		Tony and Pablo talk about international music
How Tony and Pablo came to the Twin Cities		Some local music played on the show
Tony and Pablo's takes on the Twin Cities scene		A glossary of genres of The Shake and Bake Show
Some of Tony and Pablo's favorite music venues		Visit The Shake and Bake Show website

Tony at the sound board in Studio 4 at KFAI June 3, 2002 (Pablo couldn't make it that day)

Tony and Pablo's approach to programming

Tony: "I love to hear two different styles come together, I love all that mixing stuff, I really do, cause I think that is going to get a lot of folks involved in listening to other music, when they hear the fusion and they want to check out the original or whatever, I think that’s gonna get a lot of people involved in checking out all kinds of different styles of music."

Pablo: Basically Shake and Bake to me personally meant that I could share a little bit of my musical taste with other people ... whatever we hear that sounds good to us, we play ... we’re pretty much open. You might be listening to a song from guys who recorded it last month, and you might be listening to something that was recorded in the '40s on our show. That variety is very important to me.

Tony: And there’s always a common thread ... For example, today (April 22) is Earth Day ... you know you gotta have something that relates to Earth Day, or if it’s a nice sunny day you play some music about sun, if it’s a full moon, I try to play music about the moon ... also about children, love, getting together, some days it’s just party stuff.

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How Tony and Pablo came to the Twin Cities
Pablo is originally from Uruguay. He grew up there under a military dictatorship, (which lasted from 1974 until 1985) where many kinds of music were prohibited, so his early musical diet was mostly American pop music and old traditional folk music. Only as an adult when he came to the U.S. did Pablo discover the vast world of more contemporary Latin and African music. (See the glossary to get an idea of why leaders concerned about political control would ban these types of music.) Pablo fell in love with an American and came to the area permanently in 1988. He now owns a painting/interior decoration business and lives in Stillwater, Minnesota, with his wife and three kids.

Tony is originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies. He came to the Twin Cities in the late '70s for a vacation, later stayed to attend Augsburg College, and ended up becoming a permanent resident. Tony's early music exposure was, contrasted with Pablo's, quite diverse. Trinidad and Tobago was a musically cosmopolitan place, and many kinds of music, from African, to Latin, to Caribbean styles were played on the radio there. When he's not at KFAI, Tony is a percussionist and does work in children's theater. He lives in Minneapolis.

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Tony and Pablo's takes on the Twin Cities scene
Pablo says he and Tony are very aware of their international audience, and their listeners from all over the world turn them on to new music just as their listeners find out about new sounds from listening to Shake and Bake. Besides the strong presence of local immigrant groups bringing new music to the area, established Twin Cities people in the area are, says Pablo, especially open to learning about music from other cultures: "We are immigrants, we have no choice but to open ourselves to the culture. That's good that you meet people like that, who want to learn about other music."

Tony gets out a lot locally to see shows of all kinds of music, from the African, Latin, and Caribbean beats of the show, to Japanese punk rock, etc.:"You name it, I go there ... There are a lot of good venues here in Minneapolis, we're fortunate to have a whole lot of different styles of music ... from different parts of the country, different parts of the world ... basically it's up to you where you want to go, there's something happening at some venue every night here in the Twin Cities ... as far north as we might be, as cold as some people think we are here, we get everything here."

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Tony and Pablo's favorite local music venues

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Tony and Pablo talk about international music
Tony and Pablo get excited talking about music scenes and industries in other parts of the world. Pablo describes the way music migrates all over the world and creates its own history that way. He talked about an African group called Africando, a salsa group that sometimes sings in Spanish. Pablo liked the observation made by a local music writer that salsa has come full circle—"what a beautiful way to describe what music has done"—with African music coming to the American continent, influencing the natives there, then returning to Africa as African salsa. Pablo says the pop music of his homeland, Uruguay,  is based on an African rhythm called Candombe (can-DOM-bay), while Brazil has more musical styles than you can shake a stick at, with its own recording industry since early in this century. He said the Middle East and North Africa are also incredibly musically rich.

Tony added that Jamaica, as quiet as it's kept and as small as it is, produces a lot of records, with hundreds of studios throughout the country. He said at one point, Jamaica produced more records than any place in the world on a daily basis, with people recording in studio one night and people selling the recordings on the street the next day.

Pablo pointed out that the last generation of immigrants to the U.S., whose children were born here, have mixed their own cultures with that of American pop or rock music, fused the styles of diverse cultures, and then made the new fusion music more accessible to established Americans more familiar with originally American genres like jazz, blues, and rock. Record labels like Putumayo, for example, (see their website at www.putumayo.com) have opened up the so-called "world music" market. Tony and Pablo are not purists by any means; they play a lot of fusion genres, for example hybrid groups that do traditional Latin beats, but with rock-influences electric guitar riffs. Some of their favorite fusion genres are soca, which is soul music and calypso music together, samba-soul-rock, such as that played by Trio Mocató from Brazil, rapso, rap music with calypso beats underneath, chutney, which is a Trinidadian fusion of calypso with classical and popular Indian music influence.
 

(See the glossary page that describes some of the characteristics and histories of the genres Tony and Pablo play on The Shake and Bake Show.)

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Some of Tony and Pablo's local music picks:

Eliezer Freitas Santos, a local percussionist, originally from Brazil, who sits in with various local bands who play South American music

Innocent, a local reggae artist
For more info, go to http://nozipcode.net/mplsreggae/
(often plays with Les Exodus)

International Reggae All Stars, a local reggae band
For a brief review in the 1998 City Pages, go to http://www.rounder.com/Album.asp?catalog_id=3885

Ipso Facto, a local pop-reggae band
For a brief review of their greatest hits album, go to the City Pages web site at  http://www.citypages.com/databank/19/936/article6485.asp

Kwame, a reggae artist in the local Ananse band
For a biography, go to http://nozipcode.net/mplsreggae/

Proyecto La Plena, a local Mambo/African beat/Latino/Folk/Caribbean group
(see http://www.mbus.com/bands/genadm/Proyecto.La.Plena.htm for more info)

Sabor Tropical, a local 13-piece Afro-Cuban Latin orchestra
(see their web site at http://www.sabortropical.org/)

Sensación Latina (Previously known as Expression Latina and Latin Sounds)
The weekend house band at the downtown Mpls. Café.

Shalita, a local African/zouk/kwasa/Soukous/Reggae artist
For more info, go to www.mp3.com and enter "Shalita" as a search term.

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