El Poeta

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El Poeta
Country	San Diego, California, USA
Years active	2005 – present
Genres	IDM, Jazz, Funk
Labels	Imputor?
Members	Angelo Emile Gastelum
Website(s)	http://www.elpoeta.org/

El Poeta is the musical alias of San Diego-based Angelo Emile Gastelum. His styles can be categorized as a mixture of jazz, indie, funk, and IDM.

[edit] Biography

Son of a jazz guitarist, Angelo is a classically trained pianist and self taught multi-instrumentalist. He spent his teen years woodshedding with an acoustic guitar. In the tradition of his native blood he studied percussion under a sacred drummer in order to one day incorporate the secrets of clave in his own music. After a period of DJ and live P.A. performances in the 1990s, Angelo focused on his own music by exploring the fusion of recording random sounds with instruments, then layering them with computer edited sequences. With no formal outline or approach he retreated to a bedroom studio for several years, patiently cultivating his own distinct sound; a melting pot of jazz-funk, nu-folk with lush avant-garde minimalism and off clave beats adorned with scattered pieces of malfunctioning machines.

The fruits of this journey can be heard in the indie-electronic swirlings and flamenco sketches of El Poeta's debut EP Musically Speaking, released on June 7th 2005 by the indie label imputor?.

El Poeta moved to Tijuana in the winter of 2005 and immediately joined the ranks of the RadioGlobal DJ’s, playing at several monthly events and collaborating with local artists. With more and more artists reaching across the international divide, El Poeta and friends formed the Borders Collapse movement --- a non-profit organization dedicated to the cross-pollination of musical culture through a series of events at venues in San Diego & Tijuana. This has created a porthole into the US specifically for cutting edge electronic musicians from Mexico to share their music.

El Poeta is currently working on his second effort formatively titled, Save Changes?, a homage to the grueling lessons behind hard drive crashes and the importance of backing up data. His live act of constantly evolving basement jams and live mash ups can be caught at various venues on both sides of the border. He can also be heard every Thursday from 2-4pm on radioglobal.org for the Like Leaves on Trees program --- an eclectic mix of past, present and future music.