{Oh, and now I’ve just done the Mujeres, I see that this post that I wrote about a week ago, never got published. It belongs before the Mujeres post, but I’m not sure how to arrange this. Can we just imagine?}
Been relatively busy recently and truth be told not listening to a lot of music. Another trip around Spain beckons and consequently a lot of ear time has gone on trying to scrub up my language. With predictably mixed results…
I have, however, done some Spanish music listening this week and instead of filling the iPod with Spanish versions of what I generally listen to (garage, indie, psych – although all this is coming, trust me…), I thought I’d dip my toes into something a bit more exotic, a bit more authentically Latino. Tried a bit of cumbia and some spanking up-to-date nu cumbia records from the ZZK and Nacional labels, but eventually settled on some Latin hip-hop.
Ana Tijoux
This first track is from Chilean hip-hop artist, Ana Tijoux, whose album Vengo I went through with no little gusto all of yesterday whilst out and about during the day. The record, apparently, won her a Grammy award last year, so I’m not what you’d call ahead of the curve here, but still… In truth, there’s a little too much slushy jazz-funk in some of the record for my liking but the first four tracks, including the title track and this one, here, are absolute belters…
As yet, I know nothing about the second rapper, Shadia Mansour, whose feisty counterpoint to Tijoux’s own animated style is something of an eye-popper.
Tijoux is actually from France, her parents having been exiled during Pinochet’s reign in Chile, but has now settled in Santiago. One of the features of Vengo is apparently its gallant attempt to rescue native Andean instruments from the realm of the ubiquitous World Music collection and the street busker.
Then I also came across this…
Hijo de la Cumbia & Alika
I’ve also bought the debut record by Argentinean DJ and producer Hijo de la Cumbia, which is apparently set to be a Nu Cumbia stone-cold classic and it’s quite intriguing. But to be honest, this is the stand-out track on it…
It’s bought to life by the oomph of gutsy Uruguayan vocalist Alika. As with the previous offerings, I can catch precious little of the words. I could look them up or get Google to sort them for me but, to be honest, I prefer the not knowing, it’s all about the hormones, I feel…
I’m pretty certain this is not, as it claims, the “official video” but, again, never mind the quality, feel the width…
Partly Porpoise 