Callings Out of Context: Ratking + Gabriel Garzón-Montano
Overview
“You can feel this distance dissolve when what’s before you is a kind of frenzy of recombination, of translation, of an artist diving all the way into his or her material, certain there is a secret in the noise and speed… certain that the artist can find the secret and make it into a story anyone can understand.”
—Greil Marcus, from ‘No Money Down: Pop Art, Pop Music, Pop Culture,’ 2002
Call it 'no wave' rap. Call it 'no school' hip-hop. The New York–based trio Ratking are raw, philosophical, and utterly reactive. Piecing together detritus from the scorched earth of New York's musio-social landscape—where bloated, self-satisfied hip-hop bumps elbows with the nihilist refrain of dead end punk; where delicate, perfumed beauty sits directly beside rancid, mangled poverty—Ratking's music revels in subversive bricolage and bold recombination. Known for their “rabble-rousing gusto and a reputation for wild live shows” (Pitchfork), MC’s Wiki and Hak act not only as mischievous tour guides but as dual ends of our own conscience: one sharp-witted, vulnerable, and seemingly anti-social; the other feral and poetic. Sporting Life weaves a teeming Big Apple backdrop littered with referential gems, intelligent hooks, and sheer immediacy.
Opening the evening was singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Garzón-Montano, who exemplifies hybridity in his music. His songs infuse a soul/R&B sensibility with gauzy and impressionistic arrangements betraying a classical austerity. Fresh from a collaboration with Lenny Kravitz and featured on Drake's latest album, Garzón-Montano is a colorful and authentic musical voice.
Watch Ratking give a tour of their Harlem, New York neighborhood with Complex
Watch Gabriel Garzón-Montano perform in a BBC Radio Basement Session
Guest Curators
Co-presented by REDCAT
About Callings Out of Context
Featuring some of today’s most exciting and transgressive musicians, Callings Out of Context is an aural complement to the Pop art of the Broad collection. The series features hybrid-minded contemporary musical artists that engage, point to and tell stories about the modern market they are a part of, while opening our ears to new perspectives on genre, repetition and mass production. Each program pairs artists from divergent corners of musical categorization, from the heart of indie rock to the fringes of hip-hop and electronic music to the experimentalism of the avant-garde. The series title was inspired by the Arthur Russell song “Calling Out of Context.”
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