DJ Icewater, performing with…

Aju Soulaju and…

…Molina Soleil, who together make up the hip hop group: Soulaju.

Okay, let’s start with this: THESE CATS SPIT IN FIVE DIFFERENT LANGUAGES!!!

Equally important: they drop hip hop with consciousness

…and on top of all that: they’re hot ass eye candy.

Oh, and DJ Icewater: spins ol’ school hip hop and classic beats/bass lines.

phew! damn. : )

They’re playing in Denver again this Friday. My advice: GO! Here’s their myspace: http://www.myspace.com/soulaju

Soulaju is creative, conscious, energetic, sexy, intellectual, and overall: bad ass. i left with the tremendous hope that hip hop, as in conscious, intellectual, and soulful hip hop is making a comeback.

…as if that wasn’t enough, they were joined by these cats:

Mike Wird

DJ Cavem

…and of course, Pablo Kee of Debajo del Agua. I really appreciated this, actually. I rarely have a chance to photograph my band mates performing. I’ve taken the camera on stage during performances before but it’s a little too nuts to deal with and I can mostly only get pics of the sides/backs of everyone’s head.

I’m really happy with the way the pics turned out. You can check more of them here: http://gallery.behindthelens.net/Music/

Soulaju, can I drop a bass line for you guys some time?  please?  pretty please?  : )

Please consider sharing this blog on Facebook (click below).  I’d like Soulaju and socially conscious groups like Soulaju to get more recognition.

‘Merica! The stock show was in Denver last week.

tractors rolled through downtown.

I think the red tractor is by far more gangsta than the green tractor.

PONY! If I was out jogging I’d also wanna jog next to cute cowgirls on cute ponies, hell yeah. PONY!

More partners.

howdy city slicker.

this is now a very common sight in Denver. Dispensaries are all over the place. the Westword, Denver’s alternative weekly, has literally 12 (TWELVE!!!) pages filled with advertising for medicinal marijuana. it’s out, it’s official. the people in Denver have voted time and again to ease restrictions on marijuana and now the government has acknowledged its medicinal value. crazy world. …what next?

next we’ll discover that the coca leaf has every vitamin under the sun along with the calories that could help ease famine. i can tell you from experience: chewing a wad of coca leaves is comparable to the amount of energy you’d get from having one cup of coffee per hour MINUS all the nasty side effects of caffeine. it’s quite the perfect plant. it’s problem? it’s eradication is justified by the fact that it takes massive quantities of coca leaves to make cocaine.

…and then someone will discover that one acre of hemp produces as much paper as four acres of old growth forest.

me.

PLEASE! HAS ANYONE SEEN THIS DUCK?!

A thing grows in Denver.

metal.

steel.

Musicians: please note that I could create similar blog entries for your bands. The final product gives you awesome performance and “hanging out with the band” shots. I’m open to all types of ideas with this so please contact me if you’re interested.
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On January 9th, 2010 Debajo del Agua played a show in Winter Park, Colorado.

We congregated outside our practice space in Denver.

Zay was the third one to get there. He brought his bling.

On route.

Being in a band can be difficult at times.

If it weren’t for the support of our loved ones, i think we’d all snap.

so. freakin’. cold.

To me, this pic speaks to one of Debajo’s most stubborn and insurmountable obstacles to date: achieving greater recognition.

Zay getting ready to do it tiger style.

Zay. thinking about doing it tiger style.

I already had this image of Rogelio burned into my mind. Tonight I photographed it.

We were on fire from sound check to encore.

Dov didn’t like his shot of…whatever it was.

So I drank it.  …but i held it together better than Crunkasaurus Rex (in the background).

Intermission.

A tender moment with a seated hunchback.

This guy got in a lot of pictures.

Pablo, Pepe, Fafo.

This guy got in a lot of pictures.

Gettin’ the crowd CRUNK!

This is what it looks like when you fall on the ice in front of your “friends”.

Unless the band recognition gods align the band recognition planets in our favor, Pablo will be starting graduate school this September…in Florida. For those of you who don’t know, Pablo and Dascrybe are the main composers in Debajo del Agua. Without them it’s kinda hard to call it Debajo del Agua.  Chances are: we’re going into a long hiatus.  At the moment the band is undecided about future shows/recordings.

Pepe.  a smile.  a skull.

That’s us. In chalk. Above the bar.

Awwww….

Handsome ass band. Standing L-R: Pepe, Zay, Rogelio. Squatting L-R: Dov, Pablo, Me, Fafo.

Over the past four years my band mates have played a unique/beautiful role in my life.  As individuals I think we all have other people we call on Friday/Saturday nights but once or twice a week we get together to share our souls with each other.

Hm. Pablo is leaving in August.  What to do?  What to do?

Wuttup…welcome to the music section of my photo blog. Music is my other artistic passion so I plan on photographing musicians A LOT.

That being said, if you like Reggae and live in the Denver area, I would check out Mono Verde’s CD Release party this weekend. This show is gonna be hot and I’ll be there, camera in hand.

Rafa, Mono Verde.  Photo: Ric Urrutia

They’ll will be playing with another one of my favorite bands: Quilombo. These cats mix up the reggae and the cumbia and also get the crowd CRUNK.  Onda and Huerfano will also be there.  I’ll be seeing them for the first time.

Ysmael, Quilombo.  Photo: Ric Urrutia

Chances are I’ll be blogging about these cats a lot. This is Debajo del Agua, the band for which I play bass. Standing L-R: Fafo, Dascrybe, Zay, Dov, Rogelio. Squatting L-R: Pablo, Pepe, me.

Me, Ric Urrutia.  Photo: Drew York

Our band is composed of musicians from Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru, El Salvador, and France. We mix hip hop, Andean, Bossa, Cumbia, Reggae, Cuban Son, Funk, and other types of music and layer some bad ass revolutionary lyrics on top.

Chances are Debajo del Agua won’t be around after August. Sucks. Really sucks. I’ll leave that for Sunday’s blog though.