The thing about Que Bajo?! parties in New York City is that there's this core group of crazy fans who never miss a night. Even when the party was a weekly event around the summer of 2010 their fans remained faithful and excited—and Uproot Andy and Geko Jones rewarded them with the best dance party of their life, every time. During the Red Bull Music Academy Culture Clash they were the underdogs, and most people attending didn't even know who they were. But it became immediately clear that their crowd was the loudest, most rambunctious bunch in the building, and they obviously had the best homemade fan gear.
After five years of Que Bajo?! nights Andy and Geko decided to start their own label and name it after their party. They celebrated the launch of their imprint with Uproot Andy's "Worldwide Ting" Mix (now clocking in at 80,000 plays), which was later followed by a brand new record from the man himself. Andy and Geko have done plenty of traveling over the past few years which makes this worldwide theme appropriate. After listening to both the mix and the record I asked Uproot Andy about his favorite worldwide 'tings and he accomodated.
As told to Jessica Gentile:
LA TROJA
La Troja is an outdoor bar occupying a street corner in Barranquilla, Colombia where the DJs play the best salsa, champeta, African music, and Colombian carnival music and everyone dances apretao. If it's carnival time you'll be doused in cornstarch and foam from spray cans while you're dancing.
QUESO OAXAQUENO
Apparently the result of Italian cheese-making methods brought to Oaxaca by Dominican Monks, Queso Oaxaqueño is stringy, salty and delicious. The best stuff I had we got at the market in Oaxaca and ate it with everything, the tlayudas we had for breakfast and the mezcal we started drinking afterward. On a side note I also ate a bunch of grasshoppers (chapulines) at that market—they're good and crunchy and everything, but basically just a vehicle for salt and chile.
OZ GAZIANTEP BAKLAVALARI
This Bakery in the Turkish neighborhood of Neukölln in Berlin sells only baklava—or at least it all looks like baklava to me. Probably there's a bunch of different names for the different options but they're all amazing, sweet, and dripping with honey. Pick a bunch and they'll box it up and sprinkle pistachio dust over top, then go call some friends to help you eat them all.
FESTIVAL PETRONIO ALVAREZ
The festival in Cali, Colombia dedicated to the folkloric music of the Pacific coast is the only place I've ever seen people crowd surfing and moshing to the marimba. Inside they only sell artisanal liquors made with viche (a spirit made from sugar cane similar to cachaxa but totally unstandardized and sold in plastic bottles) and water—no beer, no Coca-Cola. And outside the food stands sell all kinds of pacific coast seafood dishes like fish stew with coconut milk and cockle empanadas.
FAIRMOUNT BAGEL
I live in New York but Montreal bagels are the best. Sorry to say it. There's basically two places—Fairmount and St. Viateur, and they're in the same neighborhood in Montreal and you can pretty much always walk in there and get a bag of hot bagels right out of the oven any hour of the day or night.
BELGIAN TRAPPIST BEER
Delicious beer made by monks, twice as strong as your average beer so you don't have to drink so much that you're all bloated by the time you get to the club.
LA FIERA MEZCAL
Mezcal is popping off in Mexico right now. Everywhere you go in DF its mezcalerias, and unlike tequila, mezcal production isn't hyper regulated and dominated by big manufacturers, so mezcal lists look a lot more like wine lists and are similarly diverse. La Fiera seeks out the best independent mezcal producers in Guerrero, bottles it in hand-painted bottles and sells it from their apartment in Coyoacán. Basically they got the good shit.
CARNIVAL DE BARRANQUILLA
A week of street parties, parades, cumbia concerts, champeta verbenas, seeing folklore legends performing right on the block, drinking aguardiente, dancing morning to the next morning, basically the best week of every year in Colombia.
PLAZA GARIBALDI
This plaza in Mexico City stays full of mariachis all the time who are waiting to get hired for your private party. But on nights when its poppin', the plaza is the party. You get a big michelada in a styrofoam cup and have different bands play your favorite tunes for you and your friends.
BED-STUY
I love traveling but there's also a reason I've stayed in Bed-Suy, Brooklyn for the last 10 years. Like a microcosm for New York as a whole, Bed-Stuy has become an international scene where Caribbean immigrants, Mexicans from Puebla, Hasidic Jews, West African Muslims, African Americans and hipsters offer their cuisine and culture in separate but overlapping pockets of the neighborhood.
