DJ Le Spam anchoring The Spam Allstars
A version of this piece was posted by Artburst Miami in April, 2017
Ask about the Miami Sound to 10 people in South Florida and you’ll get 11 different answers. And yet, for more than 20 years, the Spam Allstars, a group founded and anchored by DJ Le Spam (aka Andrew Yeomanson), has been an unquestionable reference in the Miami music scene. For a city with a notoriously short memory and an insatiable appetite for the latest shiny thing, it is a remarkable achievement.
The Allstars’ music is an untidy mix of turntable scratches, loops, samples and spirited live playing. It’s built on driving grooves that draw freely from funk, R&B and Afro-Latin music, topped by shout-out-loud, jazz-inflected improvisations. And it’s also music that makes its statements subtly, making you move while threading the needle through Miami’s music and social history, with echoes of local labels such as Deep City, Saadia Records and TK Records, and the layers and layers of sound from the Caribbean and Latin American migrations.
DJ Le Spam and The Spam Allstars are presenting Trans-Oceanic, their new album, 10 years in the making, in a party at the North Beach Bandshell, Saturday, April 29 at 7:00 p.m.