El Dusty's "Americano Beat Tape Vol. 1" Sounds Political without Saying a Word

The Corpus Christi-based DJ/producer’s new mixtape makes a statement with the way it exists.

2020 has made everything political. Five years ago, El Dusty’s Americano Beat Tape Vol. 1 mixtape would have arrived as just another cool compilation of dub, soul, hip-hop, and Latin sounds, but this year and particularly in this election season, the clear, strong statement it makes for music associated with people of color comes off as powerful. The words don’t carry that message because there are only a few of them, and they’re remnants of the host track echoed until they register almost as another texture in these dub instrumentals. No, what makes Americano Beat Vol. 1 feel significant is the casual swagger with which the Corpus Christi DJ/producer and the artists on his Americano label assert a place for their musical hybrids. 

The first bars of “Cara Linda Mix” with Crooked Stylo boom as if cars have always rolled through neighborhoods bumping Latin hip-hop R&B dub. The unassuming tempo and uncluttered beat make no concessions to the possibility that they have to convince an audience, and El Dusty is judicious in his addition-by-subtraction dubs. He and his collaborators treat the songs as if they naturalize themselves, and in the process they do. 

El Dusty’s work on his own doesn’t insinuate itself quite so effortlessly, in part because it has a clear agenda. He has been mining his Mexican heritage, his parents’ record collection, and cumbia rhythms to create a distinctive, contemporary, DJ-based electronic sound that honors the cultures that give him roots. He released a funny, compulsively danceable remix of of DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” in 2014, replacing signature keyboard parts with an accordion sample, and he has similarly remixed Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” and Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” to find the place where hip-hop and cumbias coexist on the dance floor. Original tracks like “Cumbia Anthem” come with a side of obvious ambition as El Dusty tries to carve out a niche for his music, but they also sound like natural extensions of who he is. Inventions like “nu-cumbia”—in the words of one critic—can often sound gimmicky, but his tracks are logical. Why wouldn’t a DJ in Texas with Mexican heritage make music like this in 2020? 

Americano Beat Tape Vol. 1 serves as an ad for the artistsi in the Americano Records orbit, but that’s its least persuasvie function. For me, his dub versions of Soulfiya are more compelling that Soulfiya, and while I like Meta’s voice, the grooves speak to me more than his stories, which need to be more reportage or reflection to come to life. I do want to pay more attention to queer R&B singer Quentin Arispe, who gets some cool, evocative beats that draw from early ‘70s R&B and Mexican soul, and the conscious hip-hop of Third Root is pretty strong as well. Unfortunately, hip-hop cycles through sub-genres so quickly that they already sound 10 years old. His grooves, on the other hand, sound evergreen and fresh at the same time. 

Without voices or pre-existing versions to define the songs’ contexts, El Dusty’s remixed grooves sound like a statement for not only who he is but for all the remixed people of color—those who use their roots in the cultures they inhabit to create personal identities. Racist rhetoric erases differences and lumps people together as an undifferentiated “they,” but an individuality that takes its place in our national discourse while remaining matter-of-fact and drama-free feels radical today.  

Our interview with El Dusty from 2015.