Here is a thing with which you are now familiar: the story of roving troubadours in the Trans-Guatemalan Region of El Heneral Saumarez’s Southern Americas, and their ferocity, unmatched as it is in the annals of musical history.
The Alterna-Carribién genre was forged in a bloody paste poured into a hollowed-out skull carved from the head of a live ape. Ernesto “Twix” Fletcher was the bandleader of the local big band in the small hamlet of Saumarilche — a position for which he received no small amount of esteem, silver ingots, and portraits of General Saumarez. An attentive bandleader, Twix was always on the lookout for Young Turks from the horn section who might one day pose a threat to his regime. When one started to become too powerful, Twix would use his pull as a bandleader to have them shipped off to the colonies immediately, or summarily minced. As the horn section was the source of his big band’s true power, Twix was able to maintain his position through this system of constant vigilance and brutal reprisal.
This changed on one fateful day in the 34th Year of Saumarez. A local wedding was taking place, and — eager to monopolize Saumarilche’s musical scene — Twix insisted that his big band would provide the music. Upon being told that the bride and groom had hoped for a string quartet, Twix had them minced, and hired a violist named Esteban Villalobos, whose job was to “sit there and hold that wooden thing until everyone else shuts up about it. Villalobos complied.
For ten years, he sat at the back of the stage while the big band replaced string quartets at classy local gatherings. But in this time, he observed Twix’s methods of band control, and grew tired of his place behind the trumpets. Through blackmail, coercion, mincing, and his magical prowess with the viola, Villalobos crafted a network of well-connected members of the woodwinds; Villalobos’ influence encased the guitarists, the pianist, the drummer, and began to spread to the brass, via the saxophone, whose similar coloring confused and distracted a young trombonist. In a matter of months, Villalobos had almost complete control of the band, with Twix’s core of support in the trumpets rapidly waning.
It was no time at all before Twix was minced and shipped off to the colonies on the order of Villalobos. Nobody in the band knew the circumstances of Twix’s mincing, but they could not miss the transition. They arrived at their rehearsal stadium to find Villalobos standing alone on the stage. “My friends,” he said, “Twix is no more. I am Esteban Villalobos, and you are now my Deadly Compadres.” All were stunned, and almost all complied. Two trumpeters and the drummer escaped from the stadium through an artful bus hijacking, and (after kidnapping a local kazoo master) formed a quartet which would come to be called Enemies of Esteban. But Esteban Villalobos And His Deadly Compadres were now truly in charge of Saumarilche’s musical scene. They would be the town’s biggest and only-est band for the next 17 years, playing every venue and scoring every movie. The Deadly Compadres were without equal, and seemed unstoppable.
Hundreds of miles away, in the backwater metropolis of Ciudade de Yofmarez, the surviving members of the Enemies of Esteban had floated ashore after being ejected from their last paying job aboard a tour ship. One trumpeter and the enslaved kazoo master had made it to land alive, and, supporting each other’s emaciated frames, stumbled into the offices of an eager bandleader, Francizkiñha Plopso. She had heard of the Deadly Compadre’s riches — at this point, none alive save for Saumarez himself had not — and desired some of the silver ingots the Compadres were floating in. Eager for a way in, she hired the trumpeter and kazooist immediately upon hearing of their connection to the Compadres, and booked passage for her band on the S. S. Fat Maria, bound for Saumarilche. The citizens of Ciudade de Yofmarez looked on, aghast, as Francizkiñha And The Knifers — their town’s only big band — departed on the Fat Maria, never to return.
The Knifers’ passage across the Bay of Saumarillo was unkind, and over 400 members of their brass-waxing staff minced themselves after the first of several typhoons. They landed in Puerto Saumarilche after a 13-month trip, and immediately got to work assembling their stage in the local fish guts assembling hall. Francizkiñha prepared for local resistance, but was shocked to find that the people of Saumarilche were eager to get out from under the leather saddle shoe of the Deadly Compadres; despite Esteban Villalobos’ unmatched prowess with the viola, they had not heard anything but big band music since the reign of Twix, and were desperate for a new sound. “What kind of music do you play?” they asked Francizkiñha. “Ehhh, we play the ranchero-baroquestep hybrid beats!”, she replied, and they rejoiced to hear this traditional tuneform return to their shores.
Esteban and the Deadly Compadres would hear none of it. “Why do you want music that is not big band?”, he asked, “I am the finest violist in the land except for El Heneral himself, and even I know that big band music is the way of the future in this country.” The people were unimpressed. Francizkiñha And The Knifers had given them hope for new tunez, and there was to be no dissuading them.
It was agreed that a battle of the bands would solve this dilemma once and for all. The Compadres played to middling response, and the Knifers were assured of their victory. As they played their glorious final set, the furious Esteban and his furious Compadres turned their amplificados to 400, and played over the Knifers, a deadly breach of big band etiquette. The citizens of Saumarilche were shocked. But as they listened to the 200dB noise, they became aware of a new truth: these beats were fresh. “Do not stop!” they cried. “The pain of our eardrums is salvation!”
All of a sudden, a noise even louder than the battling Knifers and Compadres descended over the fish guts assembling hall. A golden Hind descended from the clouds, and all present were amazed to see the pilot’s hatch open — for it was Saumarez inside! The bands immediately stopped battling and dropped to their knees. “Do not stop,” he said. “I liked these amalgamated beats, and I will call the style that describes them ‘Saumaresque.'” With that, he got back in the Hind and took off. The bands knew that there could be no higher honor, and to this day you will find Saumarilche grooving to no beats other than the Saumaresque stylings of Francizkiñha Villalobos And Her Amalgamated Compadres.