The first time I heard Silvio Rodriguez I was 21, on a visit to my native Guatemala, driving to Tikal with my dad and uncle. We had rented a Volkswagen Gol (that’s right, no f) and my uncle had an old pirated CD he popped into the player. I was coming from ten years of listening to the Beatles, the Wallflowers, Counting Crows, Paul Simon, and Cat Stevens. None of them had prepared me for this.
At the time I somehow felt more in touch with Latin America than ever before. Having spent my childhood in Guatemala City and my teenage years in California, I was falling in love with the culture of my birth for the second time – this time for good – and I needed to find a way to come to know it more intimately. As soon as I heard “La gota de rocío” (“Dewdrop”) and “Imagínate” (Imagine), I knew I’d found something I never should have lost. The songs were simple, with folk melodies, organic rhythms, and words that sounded more like literature than pop. I must’ve had about a million “man, why didn’t I write that?” moments the first time I heard them. That ride to Tikal lasted about ten hours, and that CD didn’t come out once.
Now, to the people who heard him in the ’60s, Silvio Rodriguez may have been a symbol of the Revolution, of the hope (or the dread) that Communism brought with it, and of protest against oppression. Years later, I’d read about all that in College. But for me, Silvio would always be a link to my country, to my uncle, to the road to Tikal. He would be a connection to the Latin America I never knew, to the years that passed in Guatemala as I attended high school in the States. Listening to his music would always help me feel more legitimately Latin American, more in touch with a cultural identity I was having to invent on my own, far away from where it grew naturally, like an exotic plant in a Phoenix greenhouse.
Next weekend Rodriguez will be playing in LA for the first time in 30 years. I’m gonna hit the road with my wife and little boy, and when we finally arrive in Los Angeles, I’m gonna sit down and listen as he uses his guitar and his metallic tenor voice to remind me that I’m far away from home.
Hey guys, just a few days ago I wrote about my greatest recent musical discovery – a Cuban-Canadian singer-songwriter named Alex Cuba. Well, he’s got a new album that’s about to be released in the U.S. (June 8th) and you can listen to it below, thanks to the awesome people at NPR Music. Enjoy!
Hey guys, I just noticed a few days ago that Javier Garcia has got a new album full of sweet caribbean-inflected alternative. Similar to his previous album, “13″, he explores world music, keeps a heavy dose of tropical rhythm, and keeps the party moving just fine. My favorite song on the album is “Olumbale”. Love the African choir…
You can listen for free on Garcia’s site. I don’t know when it’ll go on sale, but I’ll keep you posted.
This morning, while doing some snooping around on iTunes I found Alex Cuba’s new single, “Directo”. He’s a Cuban-Canadian singer-songwriter with one glorious fro. I’d never heard the guy before, and his music is amazing. He calls it Cuban Soul Rock, and the combination of styles is explosive. He has a gentle, mellow voice, and his songs are a disarmingly smooth blend of R&B, danceable Latin rhythms, and Rock.
Above is the video from the title track of his last album, “Agua del Pozo”. If you haven’t had a chance to listen, you should. Check out his website. Join the man’s email list and you’ll get a free track – “Caballo” – off his upcoming release. You won’t regret it.
Hey guys, just wanted to give you an update on our latest song. This week we went into the studio and laid down a few tracks. Matt laid down drums, Kevin laid down bass, Aaron did some of the rhythm guitar work, and I laid down the vocals. It’s still a bit rough, but it’s on its way. You can see a bit more of the Rumba influence, as well as a bit of the funk we’re shooting for on the choruses. We’re gonna keep working on it this week. We’ve still got a ton to do – Salvael needs to lay down percussion, Aaron is gonna do some awesome piano work, and then comes the mixing. Stay tuned for more!
We’re back in the studio, hard at work on our upcoming debut release with a new song named “Esperanza” (hope).
It’s been way exciting to write and record this one because it’s the first one we do with everyone on board – Kevin, Salvael, and Matt. Being together during the writing/arranging/producing process has been explosive, and we’re just beginning to see what everyone brings to the band’s sound. This song is an experiment in blending Funk and Cuban Rumba. You can listen to the first verse above, which we recorded with a built-in MacBook mic during one of our first jam sessions on the song.
We’ll be finishing up the recording and mixing in the next week, so we’ll keep you posted.
For those of you wondering what we’ve been up to all this time – we’ve been growing! We’re now a 5-piece band, and we’ve been working on our first CD – a self-titled EP due out this summer!
Here’s one of the songs from that upcoming EP, “Ya Va a Salir el Sol.” We’ve re-recorded the entire song, with our new band members playing their instruments.
Go ahead, listen to it!
Also, for the non-Spanish speakers, here’s an approximate translation of the lyrics:
They tell me that pain is your pastime
and that your only friend is your own solitude.
That suffering owns you
and that gravity keeps knocking you to the ground.
That your memories of better days are no longer enough
to save you from the claws of this abyss.
That the hope that used to be the wind at your feet
now seems nothing more than a mirage
(Chorus)
But the sun is about to rise
and you’ll see how the darkness runs away.
The sun is about to rise,
sooner or later pain will yield to time.
The sun is about to rise
and you’ll see that suffering is not your only talent
You’ll see that the wound that hurts today
Will heal in love’s capable hands
And good-bye, and never, and the tears
won’t be able to hold back the approach of a better day
One day you’ll wake up and you’ll see it doesn’t hurt anymore
because summer has warmed your mornings.
That you no longer need silence to console you
Or loneliness to fill your weekends
Manu Chao is the kind of guy that can take everything you’ve come to expect from Latin Alternative and throw it out the window, but still make a fan out of you. A Spanish-French rocker who sings in a half-dozen languages, he writes songs that sound well-traveled and incorporate salsa, reggae, merengue, African folk music, pop, and rock, without ever really playing one or the other. His sound is such a cohesive amalgamation of all of them that it becomes a surprisingly simple kind of World Music soup, with bits of this or that genre popping up from time to time, and then fading back into the steady groove.
This particular album, Clandestino, was a breakthrough for Chao in many respects. After being one of the major driving forces behind Mano Negra, a pioneering European Latin Rock outfit, he traveled through Latin America and Africa, recording music as he went with pretty rudimentary gear. He was out to capture the soul of these regions, and in many ways he was successful. There’s something about this album’s sound that reminds me of the streets I grew up on; something about them that sounds like a poor neighborhood in Guatemala City in the ‘80s. And that’s what keeps me listening.
Let’s start with track 1, “Clandestino” (Clandestine). The track begins with an easy reggae rhythm, and has a bass line that you might expect to hear on a Tex-Mex record if you slowed it down to about a quarter of its usual clip. Right away, the song establishes the album’s signature sound: decidedly low fidelity recording, a lot of background noise – people talking, 8-bit synth sounds, etc., and lyrics that in a simple, folk-song manner tell the story of illegal immigrants with words like “I walk alone with my pain/ I walk alone with my condemnation/ I’m destined to be a fugitive/ For the lack of a piece of paper.”
Chao then does something interesting: in many Latin dance tunes, the singer will often have a kind of roll call. Something like “Mexico, this song is for you. Guatemala, are you there?, Honduras, dance to this. Ecuador, Bolivia, El Salvador…” and so on. Chao does the same thing, except with the nationalities of illegal immigrants in different countries of Europe and America. “Algerian? Illegal. Peruvian? Illegal. African? Illegal.” Thus, he turns what is usually a very sunny, party-like section in Latin music into a somber list of underdogs.
On track 6, “Lágrimas de Oro” (Tears of Gold), Chao begins with lines that empathize with the suffering he sees around him: “It’s not your fault, my love, that the world is so ugly/ It’s not your fault, my love, that there are so many shootouts/ You walk the streets crying tears of gold/ You walk the streets with tears of gold welled up in your eyes.” Then, he goes on to his signature party-laden revolutionary message: “My people speak, and reason speaks/ The music plays/ My mother dances/ And the drums of rebellion sound.”
A couple of things stand out about the track, musically. I love Chao’s use of a Brazilian soccer announcer’s voice. It’s totally the kind of noise you’d hear from the next door neighbor’s house while you’re trying to have a conversation. There’s also something about the tone of Chao’s voice throughout the record. It’s a nasal, almost metallic tone that bites right through each mix. I’ve heard people say they find it annoying, but to me it sounds like a good, cheap Mariachi singing and playing at a bus terminal in a bustling Latin American city.
All in all, that’s probably why I listen to Chao most: to get back to the noise of the busy streets of a sprawling, urban Latin America. My childhood there was full of bus traffic, street vendors, loud music and brightly painted Coca-Cola ads on corner store walls. And Manu Chao is the artist who can best take me there.
It’s true. Jorge Drexler has produced a new album, and I (unfortunately) wasn’t the first to hear about it. I found out about the new release last Saturday, listening to NPR, where Betto Arcos – who runs KPFK’s amazing Global Village show – let the cat out of the bag. I bought the album and have been listening nonstop since.
First, a bit about this record’s approach to music-making. It was recorded live in a studio in Madrid, in front of a small audience in four days. Check out this video of “Una Canción Me Trajo Hasta Aquí” to get a good feel for the album’s casual but meticulous vibe. Having said that, you may expect a measured, minimalist recording, but that’s not the case at all. Drexler’s usual appetite for unusual instrumentation is all over these songs. At the same time, the live playing gives the album an intimate feel. You can hear Drexler breathing, hear the fret noise of his guitar, and hear the tiny imperfections of the brass section, all of which make the album feel alive, fragile, human.
Drexler’s experiments with electronic sounds and synthetic instruments are gone this time around, replaced by a sound that is wholly organic, and exudes the kind of warmth that made the “Buena Vista Social Club” recordings irresistible.
The album’s opening track, “Tres Mil Millones de Latidos” (One Billion Heartbeats), begins with Drexler’s signature acoustic guitar work that makes you feel like you’re running through a forest. Then the rhythm section and the horns come in and catch you a bit off guard with how much body they add to the song. Drexler’s lyrical approach is as fresh and literate as ever. The song’s opening lines state “I’m here temporarily/ I’m a traveler/ I don’t want to take anything with me/ Or use the world as an ashtray.” Ultimately, the song is rank with Drexler’s intellectual existentialism, summing up life to its biological essentials: one billion heartbeats.
Track two, “La Trama y el Desenlace” (The Plot and the Ending) begins with a bluesy harmonica leading an articulately arpeggiated classical guitar. It’s a song about loving the moments as they pass, and once again the lyrics deliver, “I walk through Madrid in your company/ My hand on your waist, like yours on mine/ With a slow gait, as if yawning/ As if kissing the neighborhood as you tread on it/ Like someone who knows they have the whole afternoon/ With nothing to do but caress the sidewalks.” The song later builds up and a rhythm section that reminds me of the pop hits of the ’70s makes the song sunny and somewhat nostalgic.
Track 6 is easily one of my favorites – “Toque de Queda” (Curfew). A vocal duo with Leonor Watling (the mother of Drexler’s son), the song is a simmering Tango that moves subtly, intimately, and relentlessly. A muted trumpet solo, backed by a minimalist rhythm section and a marimba, add to the song’s natural allure. The song is a vignette of stories, that all share “the solitude of the curfew” as their setting.
Finally, track 7, “Una Canción Me Trajo Hasta Aquí” (A Song Brought Me All the Way Here”), which settles into an easy groove that reminds me of Josh Rouse (an American singer-songwriter currently living in Spain) and almost makes me wonder if they’ve been jamming together. The song is perhaps the album’s most accessible, with a simple theme and a great melodic hook- a song about a song and how it, through the years, defines you.
This album is already proving to be addictive. Jorge Drexler has done it again; he’s managed to make an album that bears his indelible fingerprint, but still manages to push your definition of his sound and convince you that this is the Jorge Drexler you love.
Ozomatli is an LA-based party band that takes musical genres, smashes them to pieces, and makes one sweet, danceable concoction. In anticipation of their upcoming “Fire Away” album, I figured it was about time to write about these guys. Their last album, “Don’t Mess with the Dragon”, was brilliant. Honestly, when I first heard it, I had several “Doh! Why didn’t I write that song?” moments.
They blend cumbia, salsa, merengue, funk, hip-hop, dub, rock, and (seriously) anything else they can find into songs whose lyrics range from comical to indignant, from lighthearted to urgent.
Before I get started, you’ve gotta hear this for yourself. Go ahead, listen on Lala.
Now first, let me say it’s impossible to pick just three tracks you should listen to on this record. The entire thing is excellent, and each song stands on its own, so consider this a quick sampling, not a definitive listening guide.
I’ll start with Track 5, “La Gallina” (The Chicken), which is a fabulously lighthearted tex-mex rock-cumbia that manages to make fun of the classic “funky chicken” dance tune with its accordion-driven riff without turning into a joke. The melody, the song’s party-hard attitude, and even the comical lyrics make it a classic tropical song. Something Selena could’ve sung, you know. At the same time, Ozomatli manages to turn it into rock with their usual flair. I’m telling you, this is a party waiting to happen.
Now, just to catch you off guard, let’s listen to Track 6, “Magnolia Soul.” What’s that? You didn’t know they sang in English? Well, now you know. This song is a rompin’ New Orleans Funk with one smooth lead vocal, some ear-candy rapping, and a whole lotta soul. As is often the case with Ozomatli’s lyrics, the Hurricane Katrina-centered message is both one of protest and hope, a balance I find refreshing and compelling.
Now let’s go to Track 8, “La Temperatura” (The Temperature), which is an exuberant Cumbia, complete with driving horns, African-tinged guitar work, and “Let’s go party” lyrics. I’m writing this at my desk, having a hard time staying in my seat!
Finally, I should say that the Ozomatli album experience is ultimately just an appetizer. You need to see them live! They’re meticulous, electric, on fire.
What has Rumbo Rumba learned from Ozomatli? How to put on a party, that’s what.
Manu Chao is the kind of guy that can take everything you’ve come to expect from Latin Alternative and throw it out the window, but still make a fan out of you. A Spanish-French rocker who sings in a half-dozen languages, he writes songs that sound well-traveled and incorporate salsa, reggae, merengue, African folk music, pop, and rock, without ever really playing one or the other. His sound is such a cohesive amalgamation of all of them that it becomes a surprisingly simple kind of World Music soup, with bits of this or that genre popping up from time to time, and then fading back into the steady groove.
It’s true. Jorge Drexler has produced a new album, and I (unfortunately) wasn’t the first to hear about it. I found out about the new release last Saturday, listening to NPR, where Betto Arcos – who runs KPFK’s amazing 
Ozomatli is an LA-based party band that takes musical genres, smashes them to pieces, and makes one sweet, danceable concoction. In anticipation of their upcoming “Fire Away” album, I figured it was about time to write about these guys. Their last album, “Don’t Mess with the Dragon”, was brilliant. Honestly, when I first heard it, I had several “Doh! Why didn’t I write that song?” moments.