332: Tambolero, by Totó La Momposina

Totó La Momposina (Colombia)
Tambolero (1993/2015)
12 tracks, 52 minutes (2015 version)
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Totó La Momposina is an icon of Colombian music, at home as well as abroad, and La Candela Viva – originally released in 1993 and re-mixed and remastered in 2015 as Tambolero – shows off exactly why she is so revered.

Before I heard this album, I hadn’t paid Latin music too much mind. I had some favourites, yes – I’ve talked about a few of them on this blog – but I usually thought of it as a pleasant diversion, a fun type of music in the moment, but rarely something I would hunt out to listen to specifically. Tambolero changed that for me. The depth of its roots was intoxicating, it feels like you can fall into Totó La Momposina’s music.

Totó’s is a traditional style that takes equal amounts from Spanish, African and Indigenous heritage, and that triumvirate of influences can be heard on every track to varying degrees. The pieces that knocked the breath out of me (and still do!) are the most stripped-back tracks, those featuring just Totó’s powerful voice leading an ensemble of drums and backing singers. ‘El Pescador’ is the perfect example. The rhythms of the drums and shakers could go back millennia in Africa or South America depending on which you pick up; the melody is mellow, sad and with a slight piquancy that could only come from Latin music; and then the group’s harmonies come in and they are utterly heartwrenching, building upon that sad melody in a way that reaches straight into the soul, using the same broad chords as heard throughout Amazonian and Andean music. ‘Gallinacito’ and ‘La Candela Viva’ are also wonderful songs in this same way. And then there are songs which are based around the kuisi or gaita paired flutes of the Indigenous Kogui people, and others that are based around cumbia and son but all have the same balance of influences to them.

Totó La Momposina’s music is saturated with the histories of three continents. When I listen to Tambolero, I hear thousands of years of culture from all over the world, all the different elements coalescing and doing their own thing before they are united in this very music. This album taught me to listen deeper and wider to Latin music, especially that of South America. Through Totó’s rootsy style, these pathways become clear and are illuminated – and with her beautiful voice echoing all the way.

284: Pixvae, by Pixvae

Pixvae (France/Colombia)
Pixvae (2016)
8 tracks, 45 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

There so many fusions, combinations and admixtures all across the world of music. We’ve considered a fair few on this blog, and there will be many more to come. Some fusions are incredibly effective and frequently successful due to many inherent and obvious similarities in their constructions – think jazz hip-hop or West African blues. Some take such wildly disparate styles, smush them together and fall flat on their face to the surprise of hardly anyone. And then you have fusions between musical genres that should never work, from very different times, places, and culture, but that end up creating mad, previously unthought-of mid-point that sounds so natural and potent you feel a fool for ever having doubted it.

To that end, stick Pixvae in your ears. Their music is Afro-Colombian math rock with a death metal jazz edge. The band is actually a six-piece collision of two groups, with guitar, drums and baritone sax/synths from the group Kouma and three voice and percussion from Bambazú. Why does it work? I don’t know, but it does.

The Colombian element is currulao, a style from the Pacific coast of the country. It is based on percussion polyrhythms and interconnected vocal lines that duck and dive over each other as well as making sweet harmonies. Having developed among the Afro-Colombian population, the music still retains a strong African vibe. In the original style, it is all held together with the marimba xylophone, but instead, in Pixvae, that place is filled by noise.

Great noise, mind. The ‘math’ element of the rock means that even more complex polyrhythms are added to those of the currulao, meaning at some points there can be three or four different beats going on at the same time, all shifting in and out of phase with each other. The guitar, saxophone and synths are very loud and all have their own rawness to them – the reedy honking of the sax, the overdriven distortion of the guitar, the sawtooth waves of the synth – but they still manage to add to the sound in a subtle way, mostly focusing on short and interesting riffs that loop around and around. Again, these riffs are usually of differing lengths but played simultaneously so that the effect is ever-shifting and evolving.

When both of these come together, they fit together in a really pleasing way. They don’t always fit together easily – there are lots of crunchy dissonances created in all of the different overlapping vocal and instrumental patterns – but the shifting nature of the melodic and rhythmic cycles mean that each piece contains waves of tension and release. Even the sweetness of the vocals against the noise of the instruments provide a juxtaposition that doesn’t need a resolution, they’re just two very different flavours that nevertheless combine perfectly, like chocolate and salt.

Afro-Colombian folk music and heavy math rock jazz seem too far removed to birth a successful fusion, but Pixvae found the elements that link them and exploit them to the grooviest ends. Maybe no musical fusion is too ambitious to work, perhaps it just needs the right musicians to find those connections. Pixvae do it in the most exciting way possible.


N.B. In my research for this album I came across the review in Songlines Magazine…and they gave it a one-star review! Bollocks to that. What do music journalists know anyway?!

028: Un Fuego de Sangre Pura, by Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto

Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto (Colombia)
Un Fuego de Sangre Pura (2006)
14 tracks, 53 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Cumbia is the most recognisable sounds of Colombia and one of the biggest party sounds in world music: catchy horns, ripe for fusions with psychedelia, club and pan-Latin styles, and all of it with that unique shuffling rhythm. But that wasn’t always what cumbia was: those horns and rhythms have their roots in the traditions of the indigenous people of Colombia’s Caribbean coast mixed with those of African slaves.

The original sound of cumbia continues today – and is having somewhat of a resurgence – as a folkloric style, and Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto are one of its leading exponents. The group have been going in some form or another since the 1940s (some say 1930s), and their music captures the original spirit of the cumbia and other related forms. As their name suggests, their sound is based on the gaita wooden flutes, which are played in pairs, one providing the higher-pitched melody, the other giving harmonies and counter-melodies. They are accompanied by sets of traditional drums, shakers and other percussion and usually sung poetry.

With so many interlocking rhythms and melodies, the overall result is quite complex but just as danceable as this style’s modern relatives. Listening to this type of cumbia is important in recognising the indigenous roots of a lot of modern Latin music, and it’s interesting to hear the folk sound that became today’s pop – much like blues is to rock. Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto are the masters of this traditional cumbia and this album, released on the always fantastic Smithsonian Folkways label and a Latin Grammy winner in 2007, is a great place for you to start.

(Side mention: Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto also did a few collabs with dubmaster general Adrian Sherwood, called Dub de Gaita. They’re a fun set of sonic experiments with some groovy, if unexpected outcomes. Available on Bandcamp in Vol. I and Vols. II & III flavours.)