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04 March, 2024
Not as many as regular for you this month, which isn’t to counsel a paucity of fine new music, however extra maybe that I get up to the mark – for as soon as in my life. Or… possibly I needs to be making this a bi-monthly column. Solutions please on a postcard.
Grupo Irakere: Teatro Amadeo Roldan Recital (Mr. Bongo)
Final month, I flagged up Grupo Irakere’s eponymous 1976 album. Following exhausting on its heels, Mr. Bongo have now reissued the group’s debut album from two years beforehand because the third instalment of their new Cuban Classics sequence. It’s uncooked, rambunctious and a little bit tough across the edges, as befitting a debut and as exemplified by the semi-legendary opener, “Bacalao Con Pan”. It’s adopted by the unusual “Danza Ñañiga”, which sounds extra like a Swamp Dogg manufacturing for an obscure southern soul label than the sort of factor we’ve come to affiliate with the island’s premier Afro-Cuban jazz outfit. However then they hit their stride with tracks like “Taka Taka Ta” and the percussion-laden “Misaluba” to point out simply why Irakere have been destined for such huge issues.
Ëda Diaz: Suave Bruta (Airfono)
Right here’s one other worthy debut, this one from a younger Franco-Colombian singer and classically skilled pianist who discovered solace and skilled a sort of epiphany in taking over the double bass. “With out it I won’t have devoted my life to music,” she confesses. Maybe it was synonymous with all of the Cuban tumbaos on which she was raised within the household dwelling in Medellín. Fairly aside from the digital experimentation and manufacturing methods, there’s an entire lot happening and an entire welter of influences (she takes her album title, for instance, from a Joe Arroyo basic) in these 11 multifarious tracks, together with a pattern from the nice Colombian huge band chief, Lucho Bermudez. Regardless of Diaz’s pretty vocals, I confess that it has taken me some time to get into it. As a champion of the human contact slightly than that of the machine, I used to be unsettled maybe by the staccato digital rhythms. I see now, although, simply what an thrilling and authentic expertise this artist is. There’s one thing about Björk at her wackiest in Suave Bruta and the publicist’s description of the music as “haute-couture pop” is spot-on.
Numerous Artists: Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación (Bongo Joe Information)
This rousing compilation of exuberant accordion-rich meringue was assembled by Xavier Daive, or Funky Bompa as he’s recognized to his associates, for the way-out wacky Swiss label. The Belgian vinyl hunter rifled the crates of post-Trujillo-era Dominican Republic for 7” gems from the ‘60s and ‘70s representing a golden period of meringue típico. The style has a protracted and distinguished historical past and listening to those traditional-sounding 10 cuts, one can’t assist however really feel the reference to, say, Colombian vallenato music, to which Ëda Diaz’s grandmother would in all probability have launched her. It’s exhilarating good-time music that tends to coalesce (upliftingly), so it’s not simple to select particular person highlights – suffice to say the primary single from the compilation, Fefita La Grande’s “Caña Brava”. Unusually in a world dominated by male lead instrumentalists, she was a pioneering feminine accordionist – who continues to be performing at present as an octogenarian, now calling herself La Mayimba.
Sergio Krakowski Trio & Jards Macalé: Mascarada: Zé Keti (Rocinante)
Jards Macalé has obtained a kind of voices – a little bit like Leonard Cohen’s maybe. I got here to embrace the Candadian crooner’s throughout his post-bankruptcy renaissance, however I nonetheless battle with this legendary Brazilian’s. To those ears, he appears like somebody getting over a nasty bout of flu. Because of this, this slightly extraordinary album, which got here out again in January, isn’t what you would possibly name simple listening. It’s a tribute to a samba grasp, however could be very a lot a jazz album – and leaning in direction of avant-garde jazz at that. The 11-minute title monitor, for instance, is an instrumental woven round very transient snippets of the melody Kéti composed in 1964 with Elton Medeiros. The brainchild for the collaboration was guitarist Todd Neufeld’s, one third of the New York-founded trio together with pianist Vitor Gonꞔalves and grasp percussionist Sergio Krakowski. Apparently, that they had been experimenting with samba when the guitarist threw within the concept of doing the tribute album with the veteran songster. Jards had a historical past of avant-garde dealings and had met the sambista proper firstly of his personal profession. Krakowski explains, “What unites Jards and the trio is the reverence for silence. The implied greater than the express.” I concur, besides would file this underneath “attention-grabbing”.
Maria Rita: Brasileira (Mr. Bongo)
Right here’s one other attention-grabbing launch, however with none of the difficult subtext. It’s an album that first noticed the sunshine of day in 1988, but sounds remarkably up to date with its fusion of New Age electronics, Afro-Brazilian rhythms and the singer’s clear, assured vocals – which reduce powerfully via the Amazonian rhythms of “Cântico Brasileiro No.3 (Kamaiurá)” and resonate brightly accompanied solely by some shimmering percussion within the pretty “Lamento Africa/Rictus”. It’s a voice that dominates and leaves a long-lasting impression in the identical manner that Virginia Rodrigues’s did on her startling 1997 debut, Sol Negro. To not be confused with Maria Rita, daughter of Elis Regina and profitable singer in her personal proper, I can’t let you know what grew to become of the well-known one’s namesake, but when nothing else she gave us a texturally wealthy, various and quietly exceptional album to discover.
Fer Franco: Ritos de Paso (Impartial)
Which simply leaves us this new digital album from Mexico Metropolis courtesy of a Guatemalan artist and producer by the identify of Fer Franco. The truth that he enlisted the assist of fellow Guatemalan Mabe Fratti and Hector Tosta, each of the estimable Titanic fame, pricked my curiosity, even when this model of heavy techno/digital music with a twist of kraut-rock thrown in for good measure isn’t actually my cup of natural tea. It has loads of moments, although, such because the atmospherically charged “Eliminar Lo Innecesario” and “Tu Señal”, whose robotic rhythm incongruously underpins the deliciously candy vocal of Mabe Fratti.
See you in a month – or two, relying on the postcard response.
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