This week, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the professional group representing papers like SF Weekly, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, LA Weekly, and Village Voice, announced the winners of its annual awards. Now these aren't the Pulitzers or anything, but for alternative weekly newspapers, which exist in most major cities in America, they matter a good deal. Alt-weeklies rake a good deal of local muck in these United States, and they're some of the last remaining purveyors of serious local arts criticism -- particularly of pop music.
The list of this year's AAN Awards winners, published Saturday, looks pretty normal -- until you get to the section on music criticism. In the over-50,000 circulation category for music criticism, which includes the nation's largest alt-weeklies, you will find only these words: "No award." Under the music blog category, you'll find the same thing. But the organization did give a music criticism nod to papers with a circulation under 50,000. (Congrats, by the way, to first-place winner Jeff Klingman of INDY Week and to Sam Lefebvre, a regular SF Weekly writer and columnist who won third for his work at the East Bay Express.)
So was the lack of award for the larger papers a mistake? Some application error? Or did this year's judges -- students and faculty at Georgetown's graduate journalism program -- truly feel that no award was deserved?
When Earth was a young, throbbing orb, it consisted of one super-ocean of turbulent water and one supercontinent that later broke apart into the global map we're familiar with today. That continent was dubbed Pangea by paleontologist Alfred Wegener in 1915. The members of the world music band known as Pangea Futbol Club chose Pangea for their name to remind listeners that the human race is still a single family, one that dances to a never-ending global groove. The band came together in San Francisco almost a decade ago, and includes lead singer Damian Nuñez, who also plays charango and keyboards; acoustic guitarist Richard Barnes; Colin O'Leary on bass; Marco Casalegno on electric guitar; drummer Elia Lewin-Tankel, and percussionist Garsha Shabankali. They've been knocking out local audiences with their eclectic blend of international grooves ever since their formation. They're currently celebrating the release of their first album, Mira Cuantos. Ahead of shows this Thursday, July 17, at El Valenciano, and Friday, July 18, at Revolution Cafe, singer and songwriter Damian Nuñez spoke to us about the band's history and ethos.
