All Pib Slow Play is a decelerationist music and food programming project. It sets cumbia rebajada (slowed cumbia) and ambient sounds to the cooking of tamales in an underground earth oven: the Pib.
Volume I of All Pib Slow Play took place at Yale Farm in spring 2022, and Volume II was held at Cactus Store NY in summer 2023.
For more details and to hear the mixes, visit the website, Soundcloud and Mixcloud, and read more on this page, Mold Magazine and Yale Farm.
For more details and to hear the mixes, visit the website, Soundcloud and Mixcloud, and read more on this page, Mold Magazine and Yale Farm.
The pib installation during the first stage of All Pib Slow Play Vol. I at Yale Farm, with stones firing in preparation for cooking.
All Pib Slow Play synthesized after learning about Rosalia Chay Chuc’s traditional cooking methods in the Yucatán, which sparked memories of my family's tamales and pib (pronounced peeb in Yucatec Mayan) cooking in Southwestern Guatemala. Revisiting cumbia rebajada videos online, I saw potential in combining the pib’s ancient slow cooking techniques with slowed cumbia’s rhythms.
The project's original title — All Pib Slow Play: A Sedimentation of History and Sound — draws from DJ Screw's 1999 record All Work No Play and a letter to Elysia Chuquimia Crampton. It developed as a means to research, practice, and evolve traditions kept alive by my family and diasporic generations rooted in the Mayan region—resisting the erasure of colonization—while celebrating the fruits of the soil. I see it as an altar to slowness as a vehicle and embodied acts as methodologies and essential modes of representation and knowledge, to awaken a resistance to destierro (uprooting) through memories of home/lands and land practices.
Through social sculpture and programming, All Pib Slow Play combines pib and soundsystem forms, and gathers members of kindred art and food communities. It offers opportunities for people to slow down by experiencing rebajada sound and food in community, celebrating and responding to each iteration’s local terroir. The project is an experiment in the potential for socio-ecological interfaces — tactile acts blending nature and culture, the ancient and contemporary, through living media — honoring the earth and echoes of ancestral scents and sounds, all to undermine the accelerationist project of modernity.
The project's original title — All Pib Slow Play: A Sedimentation of History and Sound — draws from DJ Screw's 1999 record All Work No Play and a letter to Elysia Chuquimia Crampton. It developed as a means to research, practice, and evolve traditions kept alive by my family and diasporic generations rooted in the Mayan region—resisting the erasure of colonization—while celebrating the fruits of the soil. I see it as an altar to slowness as a vehicle and embodied acts as methodologies and essential modes of representation and knowledge, to awaken a resistance to destierro (uprooting) through memories of home/lands and land practices.
Through social sculpture and programming, All Pib Slow Play combines pib and soundsystem forms, and gathers members of kindred art and food communities. It offers opportunities for people to slow down by experiencing rebajada sound and food in community, celebrating and responding to each iteration’s local terroir. The project is an experiment in the potential for socio-ecological interfaces — tactile acts blending nature and culture, the ancient and contemporary, through living media — honoring the earth and echoes of ancestral scents and sounds, all to undermine the accelerationist project of modernity.
Collaborators playing mixes, and tamales being placed in the pib.
The pib covered in soil during the cooking process.
A laser-etched banana leaf offered as a placemat for Vol. I.
The installation for All Pib Slow Play Vol. II at Cactus Store, showing the combined grill and soundsystem.
Elysia Crampton Chuquimia performing on the soundsystem, and tamales with other neo-Mayan dishes made by Ix Restaurant.
A tweeter speaker mounted in a palm, homewares by Mmundo on the installation with Maria from the Street Vendor Project out of frame handing out free fruit to guests, and Nudo performing on the soundsystem.
Flyers from Instagram slide posts announcing key events for All Pib Slow Play Vol. II.
All Pib Slow Play, Volume I: A Sedimentation of History and Sound
2022
Yale Farm, New Haven, CT
Local soil, stones, speaker components, banana leaves, food, and audio
4 × 4 feet
Produced with Geovanni Barrio, Isabel Rooper, Jacqueline Munno, Jeemin Shim, Kyle Richardson, Pancho Blood, Sandra Trigueros and family, and Zoila Coc-Chang
Event featuring Adrian Martinez-Chavez, Cody Boyce, Darnell Henderson, Geng PTP, Jonathan Herrera Soto, Julio Correa Estrada, Kyle Richardson, Lester Rosso, Maya Perry, Mike Tully, Pancho Blood, Rainstick, Plyxy, and Samuel Reinhard
Photography by Claire Hungerford and Geovanni Barrios
Yale Farm, New Haven, CT
Local soil, stones, speaker components, banana leaves, food, and audio
4 × 4 feet
Produced with Geovanni Barrio, Isabel Rooper, Jacqueline Munno, Jeemin Shim, Kyle Richardson, Pancho Blood, Sandra Trigueros and family, and Zoila Coc-Chang
Event featuring Adrian Martinez-Chavez, Cody Boyce, Darnell Henderson, Geng PTP, Jonathan Herrera Soto, Julio Correa Estrada, Kyle Richardson, Lester Rosso, Maya Perry, Mike Tully, Pancho Blood, Rainstick, Plyxy, and Samuel Reinhard
Photography by Claire Hungerford and Geovanni Barrios
All Pib Slow Play, Volume II: Del Suelo al Cielo (From Soil to Sky)
2023
Cactus Store, New York, NY
Plywood, salvaged bricks, cement blocks, burlap, stucco, local soil and leaf litter, sand, stainless steel wire grill, stainless steel sheet, speaker components, Blue Cónico corn seedlings, food, charcoal, and audio
10 × 14 feet
Produced with Alex Kapsidelis, Andrea Bonin, Christian Cummings, Eduardo Reyes, Jeemin Shim, Joe Valle, Pancho Blood, and Tony Lowe
Events featuring Adrian Martinez-Chavez, Discos Rolas, Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, Geng PTP, Guarionex Rodriguez Jr., Hellotones, Ix Restaurant, Joe Valle, Jorge Balleza, Mmundo, Mold Magazine, Nudo, Rainstick, and the Street Vendor Project
Photography by Guarionex Rodriguez Jr., Jeemin Shim, et al.
2023
Cactus Store, New York, NY
Plywood, salvaged bricks, cement blocks, burlap, stucco, local soil and leaf litter, sand, stainless steel wire grill, stainless steel sheet, speaker components, Blue Cónico corn seedlings, food, charcoal, and audio
10 × 14 feet
Produced with Alex Kapsidelis, Andrea Bonin, Christian Cummings, Eduardo Reyes, Jeemin Shim, Joe Valle, Pancho Blood, and Tony Lowe
Events featuring Adrian Martinez-Chavez, Discos Rolas, Elysia Crampton Chuquimia, Geng PTP, Guarionex Rodriguez Jr., Hellotones, Ix Restaurant, Joe Valle, Jorge Balleza, Mmundo, Mold Magazine, Nudo, Rainstick, and the Street Vendor Project
Photography by Guarionex Rodriguez Jr., Jeemin Shim, et al.