Dear friends, 

Today we welcome into a mad world the debut album by Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff, a riotous thing of beauty by our favorite 14-person Senegalese drum collective. Scroll down to finally hear it in full. 

This Sunday, the Mississippi shop in Portland is hosting a rare screening of director Emilio Fernández’s VICTIMS OF SIN, a 1951 Mexican film noir/musical that is also a remarkable archival rescue mission. We spoke with Viviana Garcia Besne, head of Mexico’s Permanencia Voluntaria (Voluntary Permanence) Archive about her family’s role in Mexican film history and her mission to preserve movies deemed “not art” by the establishment. Read the fascinating interview below, and come out for the film if you’re in Portland.

Finally, we’re ending the year with a big sale on the Mississippi site - clearing out some warehouse space and shining light on our favorite records. We currently have the largest Mississippi back catalog in print in our 20 years in the game. If there’s anything you’re missing, now is the time!

We started this newsletter during dark pandemic days, as a way to connect and share music. We’ll continue to do so, through the grief and anger that I know is shared by so many of you, with faith in the artform that has never let us down, and with the recognition that the “discarded music of the world” often comes from the people discarded by the world - in Palestine, Tigray, Sudan, Afghanistan. Care for them the way you care for their music, in any way you can. 

All the love, 

Cyrus and Mississippi Records

***
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ONLY ON THE MISSISSIPPI SITE
FREE SHIPPING ON ORDERS OVER $100!!!
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• Dozens of Mississippi favs, cheap as they’ll ever be…

• New merch + gift cards!

• Give the gift of a membership to the CSR! Directly support the label, get discounts all year long, guaranteed copies of every release, and one-offs and ephemera…

Praise for Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff’s Magg Tekki

"At times they create a mysterious atmosphere of grasslands, and at other times, play a more serenaded song on the boulevards that lead down to the sea. On fire then, when in full swing, but able to weave a more intricate gentler sound too, the AGBDGY prove an exhilarating, dancing combo with much to share: the ancestral lineage leading back centuries, but lighting up the present.” - Monolith Cocktail

“The assurance on display is especially impressive given that this is the outfit’s first record, but then again, their impact on Dakar’s nightlife is described as considerable, a statement that rings true as it seems unlikely that a collective could bring this kind of heat without ample preparation.” - The Vinyl District

Rarely screened in the United States, Victims of Sin (1951) is famed Mexican director Emilio Fernández’s unique blend of film noir and musical. Acting-dancing sensation Ninón Sevilla plays Violeta, a cabaret performer who adopts the abandoned child of Rita (Rita Montaner) and Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta), her murderous pimp. Motherhood forces Violeta to give up her career, but the kindhearted club owner Santiago (Tito Junco) saves her from a life of poverty and prostitution - until Rodolfo, freed from prison, seeks to reclaim his son.

Ahead of the film’s one-time screening at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre this Sunday, Mississippi label coordinator and journalist Maria Barrios talked to Viviana Garcia Besné (Permanencia Voluntaria/Mexico) and Peter Conheim (Cinema Preservation Alliance/USA) about the restoration process for Victims of Sin, classism in cinema, and their larger mission to create an independent archive to preserve Mexican film.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. TICKETS HERE

Maria: How did [Mexican Film Archive] Permanencia Voluntaria start?

Viviana: Permanencia Voluntaria started in 2011 when a collection of films made by the production company Cinematografica Calderón was about to be thrown into the trash. The collection was stored in one of my relative’s home, which was about to be demolished. So I made a first attempt at accommodating thousands of film reels in different Mexican institutions that are dedicated to preserving film. At that time, I noticed a lot of classism surrounding film. These institutions would tell me “We will keep these films, but not these others” and I felt that everything that was in that cellar was a collection that told a story. A story that told most of all what audiences wanted to see in a period ranging from 1930 to the 90s, because it was created by a family inside the cinematographic industry that was dedicated to pleasing their audience. So I thought, I will create a space in which we can host the entire collection, and reinterpret its story, which I felt was not entirely told correctly. It was only being told from the perspective of film critics, but not from the perspective of the audience, which I think is super important. So ever since Permanencia Voluntaria started in 2011, my mission has been to give credit to people and to understand that some films were made with the motivation that people went to the movie theater.

Maria: What is that classism based on? Why did institutions discriminate against certain materials?

Viviana: Classism is accepted, or internalized, in Mexico. We have accepted it, grown up with it in a very natural way, and often do not realize how internalized it is. So when I saw classism in institutions, when directors of those institutions say “These films are not important for our film industry because these are films that were only liked by a sector of the population,” well that to me is classism. So I believe that my mission is to work as a bridge because I can perfectly understand the minds of the people who run these institutions and appreciate art films but I can also understand those who feel underappreciated because their films are not protected, preserved, or promoted.

Maria: You mentioned the idea of telling a story through popular cinema. What’s your family’s background? Can you tell me about the Calderón/Azteca studios and their movie theaters?

Viviana: It was clear that my family would dedicate themselves to making films for the popular class because they came from that. They were very lucky to get their first movie theater, which they bought from some Americans who fled during the revolution led by Pancho Villa. It was then that they realized the movies played at most theaters were very humiliating for Mexicans—there was a whole series of films produced in the States that were about “greasers.” These movies denigrated Mexicans so my family thought “Why would we play these films that disparage Latino people when it is Latinos who go to the movie theater?” so they got to work and started to produce their own movies. They were a family living in the frontier between Chihuahua, Mexico, and El Paso, TX, so they were between two cultures, so they decided to make movies that made Latinos proud of their culture, and that’s why they started to tell stories that belonged to the popular class. What they also did in all their movies was to insert scenes that appealed to the feeling of homesickness that Latino immigrants feel in the States. That was super important because the movie theaters they had in the States were centers where Latinos and immigrants congregated, and were one of the few places where immigrants felt at home. Being so far away from their families, families were made at the movie theater.

Maria: Watching Victims of Sin I noticed it has a lot of popular sayings I haven’t heard in a long time. I loved that.

Viviana: And I love that you notice that because when you talk to people who don’t know about the history of Azteca Films, which was the first distributor of Latino films in the United States, with around 500 movie theaters that only played films in Spanish, can you imagine what that did, what films did for the Latino community?

Maria: Right! How did that huge archive end up in your relative’s house, about to be demolished?

Viviana: Well there was like a period of decadence in film. My family was involved in showbiz from 1892 until around 1992, that’s 100 years. By the end, they were making a genre called cine de ficheras, which was a very criticized genre, that at the same time, kept the industry alive and vibrant at a time when barely anyone was producing. No one was making money, and people had abandoned movie theaters. It was a very lambasted genre and clearly something my family did not want to talk about. I feel at the end they felt very humiliated, no one in the family wanted to talk about it. So the archive was there, abandoned, and I say it was a blessing for me because I found a treasure. I won the lottery.

My family started as movie theater owners and what interested them was the collective experience that was made in a movie theater. Many times they wanted people to start dancing in the hallways while the movie played. That helps you understand something like cine de ficheras [from the late 70s into the 90s], which is a direct consequence of the films made in the 50s with actresses such as Ninón Sevilla [the lead actress in Victims of Sin]. They have the same formula, which is the cabaret, the music, the strong women, right?

Maria: I notice a parallel between the work you and Peter do, finding these archives and bringing things back to life through restorations. It is somewhat similar to what Mississippi Records does with “discarded” or forgotten music. How did you meet and start working on bringing back Victims of Sin?

Peter: Victims of Sin was already one of my favorite movies since I was in my twenties and saw it at the Pacific Archive in Berkeley, where I used to work. I remember thinking then, this film is beautiful, you know, who made this movie? Then I was introduced to Viviana through mutual friends, and we were instantly buddies. When I found out it was her family that made the movie that I loved, and I was already fascinated by what Viviana was doing, I thought, “Oh my god you have to work on that movie!” This was seven years ago. We needed access to the nitrate original negative, because we determined that what Viviana had was all duplicate material. Then it became a process of access, and then the money to scan it, because scanning nitrate is a little more expensive.

Maria: The narrative elements of the film are very universal. It's all themes that any audience would really relate to or be entertained by–

Peter: Oh right, who wouldn't relate to a baby being thrown out in the trash can?

Viviana: I think you need to know the story behind that baby. One thing that Peter and I also love is not only restoring the films, but restoring the stories behind the films. In this particular case, the story of Ninón Sevilla is super important because she was never credited as a producer of her films—and she was indeed a producer of her films. 

The story is my great uncle, Pedro Calderón, saw her dancing in Mexico City and he immediately fancied her. He asked her if she wanted to go out with him, “Oh, I'm a movie producer and will make your movie star” and Ninón said, “You first make me a movie star and then I will go out with you.” 

Two weeks after that Ninón had a role in one of Pedro’s movies, called Carita de Cielo. It's not a rumbera film [a film genre centered around dancers of Afro-Caribbean musical rhythms] but it has a dance number, and it has nothing to do with the film: you can see that it's just there so he could keep his promise to her of making her a movie star. 

So they started a relationship that was very long and tormented. Pedro was never allowed to marry her. My great-grandfather was a film mogul and he controlled all the lives of everybody - he would never allow his son to marry an actress. But Ninón was the one who had all these wonderful ideas like bringing Perez Prado and all of these fantastic musicians from Cuba or doing choreography and getting a fantastic scenographer. 

Slowly, the producers realized her choices for the films were very good decisions. The fights between Ninon Sevilla and Emilio Fernandez during the shooting of Victims of Sin are epic. Ninón Sevilla was poking into the scripts and seeing how to make the films more elevated, more artistic. So at some point, she decided that her life needed to be told through these movies so she could relate to who she was playing. Three weeks before the shooting of Victims of Sin, Ninón Sevilla was forced to have an abortion. So if you know that, and then you watch the film, it is a completely different film. I cry, I get goosebumps every time I watch the film because I know that everything she feels for that child [in the movie] is real.

Maria: That definitely puts in perspective the relationship she has with the child… You mentioned the fights between Ninón Sevilla and [film director] Emilio Fernández were “epic.” Did your family tell you those stories?

Viviana: I heard these stories from two different sources. One was my great uncle Guillermo Calderón, who was a producer of that film, and the other was an artist representative, Blanca Estela Limon, who was there during the shooting. Although I don't know the specifics of what they were fighting for, I can tell you Emilio Fernandez was super macho, and Ninón obviously wanted things to happen with her vision. So how come a woman is gonna tell the great Emilio Fernandez how to do things? I know that at some point Emilio left the set. He was super angry and left the set. When the fights started, the producers would leave the set and let Ninon and Emilio handle it. The producers would try to hide from Emilio so he would have to deal directly with Ninón Sevilla because Emilio was under contract so Ninon was in a position where if Emilio Fernandez bailed, she could sue him. So he would have to come back to the set and work [under her direction]. As you can imagine, it was a lot of ego, and she also wanted to make sure she looked beautiful.

Maria: When I was watching the film I really loved how everyone… everyone in the film looks beautiful. There is a deep focus on portraying all the singers, and all the musicians, even in the parts where there is conflict everyone is beautifully portrayed. Even the part after leaving jail, after six years, I thought “I don't think anyone looks this beautiful after leaving jail”... Anyway, is this film considered cine de rumberas, and can you tell me a little more about what that genre entails?

Viviana: In cine de rumberas everything revolves around the cabaret, the nightclub. There are always musical numbers and it is an excuse to show beautiful women dancing with very little clothes on. Basically, the musical numbers are just an excuse to be able to show these, because things were very strict at the time. So the first time you have a “rumbera” sequence in a film was in Carita de Cielo. At the time the censorship didn’t know what to do with that number, they let it pass but it is the only time you see Ninón Sevilla or any other rumbera sliding with her legs open towards the camera. You’ll never get to see a take like that in any other film. So this is why I love this film so much, even though Ninón has a very short part in it. But, I feel like the cabaret [in the film] is an excuse for women to do their musical numbers, and stories are highly dramatic because in order to pass censorship these women needed to be punished, because they are “sinners,” because they cannot have happy endings. So this is why in all of Ninón Sevilla’s films she really struggles, or goes to jail, or gets cuts on her face, or loses the person that she loves. Happy endings are not really happy endings. They need to be “punished,” these women. 

Peter: I think it's also worth mentioning that Calderón films are kind of infamous for even if it's not strictly a “rumbera” picture, there's almost always a musical number stuck in there.

Viviana: As I was telling Maria before, it's kind of the formula for the Calderón films and the Latino immigrants in the United States. Music was always a huge part of that. So in the early 30s, it was Pedro Vargas, but then later it was Agustín Lara, and then the flamenco was a huge thing. So whatever was trendy, they [the Calderón studios] would use.

Maria: What has been the audience’s reception to the film’s restoration so far?

Peter: We are just starting the tour, it played at Film Forum in New York for a week. It got some great press and a review in the New York Times.

Viviana: The only time that I've seen it with an audience was at Telluride, that was the premiere of the restoration. Telluride obviously is a mix of cinephiles and people from the industry, it was an incredible crowd. I wanted to leave because I had seen the film so many times and I get nervous, but immediately everyone was so hooked to the film, you couldn't hear anything from the audience. Then all of a sudden, [Viviana describes a crucial scene in the film] everyone was clapping and shouting and the people in Telluride told me “We’ve seen this only twice in our lifetime, and it is a fantastic reaction from the audience.”

Maria: I played that scene five times in a row.

Peter: It’s one of the greatest Mexican film scenes, it’s great.

Maria: And that’s why it's such a shame that preserving this material becomes so hard, it's challenging to put it out into the world. So when I see something like Victims of Sin I think “Everyone should know about this”. It needs to be a packed house for the film because it’s absolutely wonderful.

Peter: The movie is just an inherent hit, it has all the makings of an audience pleaser. It's not a tough film, it’s not a hard sell to people. It’s not even as hard to sell as Orson Welle’s The Trial which is beloved, but it’s a much tougher movie, you know? Everyone loves this movie. Of course, we knew that this is gonna kill people. That’s the magic of these things, they are timeless.

Victims of Sin is screening at Hollywood Theater (4122 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland, OR ) this Sunday, November 12, at 6 pm. $12.

Special thanks to Brian Belovarac at Janus Films for making the connection and setting up this interview. 

VICTIMS OF SIN
Sunday, November 12th
HOLLYWOOD THEATRE

6:00 PM

A 1951 golden age Mexican film starring music legend Ninón Sevilla. The movie features some incredible African, Caribbean, and Cuban musical numbers alongside a moving noir melodrama, beautiful shadowy B&W photography, and shocking plot twists. We're showing a newly restored version of this seldom-seen gem. A killer!

Tickets

LONNIE HOLLEY
ACCOMPANIED BY
MARISA ANDERSON 
ROMAN NORFLEET AND BE PRESENT ART GROUP 

Monday, November 13th
7:30 PM
Doors at 6:30

POLARIS HALL

ALL PROCEEDS GO TO MISSISSIPPI RECORDS FIRE RECOVERY

Atlanta Georgia's Lonnie Holley is one of the greatest living musicians and artists around. His music is unclassifiable - a mix of cosmic jazz, soul, avant garde, folk music and pop. Lonnie never plays the same song twice, always channeling in the moment from some deep well of inspiration. His last performances in Portland left the audience inspired and transformed. No joke! One of Mississippi Records favorite artists 

Lonnie will be playing two sets. For the first, he'll be backed up by virtuosic guitar wizard Marisa Anderson. For the second set he'll be backed by Portland's premiere practitioners of Great Black Music, Roman Norfleet And Be Present Art Group. 

DJ Eric Isaacson will be playing records before and after the show. 

All proceeds from this show go to the Mississippi Records fire recovery fund!

Mississippi Records Website
Visit the site to get our label's records and tapes direct from us - we are constantly rotating our selection of mixtapes, new records from labels we distribute, and discounted out-of-print records, so be sure to check in often!
www.mississippirecords.net

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(our stereo repair and retail shop is open Friday - Sunday, 1 to 6 PM).
WE ARE EXCITED TO BUY YOUR RECORD COLLECTIONS!
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Our Community Supported Records program directly supports the label. Get each Mississippi LP at a discount as it's released, no matter how limited, plus special schwag and gifts on occasion. Limited to 300 spots. The CSR contributions help us pay for record pressings and generally stay afloat.
More details here:
https://www.mississippirecords.net/csr-page

Mississippi Records Bandcamp
There are hours and hours worth of albums available for free listening, and a whole lot of the releases are "pay what you want" if you want to download ‘em. Check it out -
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Toody Cole/Junkstore Cowboy
Toody Cole has shuttered her Junkstore Cowboy Shop in our basement, but that does not mean you can't get your Dead Moon / Pierced Arrows / Rats / Range Rats / Tombstone schwag and records still from her badass online store.
https://www.deadmoonusa.com/

Humboldt Neighborhood Association
The neighborhood association for the zone the Mississippi shop rests in recently got taken over by some social activists who are working on mutual aid projects, youth programs, anti-gentrification/tenants rights activities, and a community child care circle. If you are in the neighborhood and want to get involved, our first general membership meeting takes place on November 23rd. Check-in with the website for a link! We got some work to do...
https://humboldtneighborhood.org/

Red Hook Mutual Aid
We’re proud to have a little office in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, which hosts one of the most active mutual aid groups in the city. Learn more about the organizing activity here.