South American music and culture magazine

Venezuela’s Cuarto Poder are most definitely on the rise. They have shared the stage with acts such as Calle 13, Tego Calderon, Molotov and Gustavo Cerati over the past few years and surely more are soon to follow. Hailing from Caracas, the group perform a style of “criollo rap” mixing the lengua of the streets with traditional rhythms and samples. Today we have a new mix from the collective, a follow-up of sorts to their last album In Tha House. Continue Reading

We’ve got two mixtapes today from AltoPeru, which confusingly is the name of a cumbia/dub/reggae collective from Buenos Aires, Argentina. AltoPeru take their moniker from an early name for the land that is now Bolivia, which isn’t Argentina either. Okay, so we don’t really know why they are called AltoPeru, but we do know that this is some pretty decent cumbia here mixed with a laidback dub sound for when you need to get a nice, chilled groove on. You know the kind of groove? You’ve had a few beers, a bit of food, you feel you need to get mobile, but nothing too crazy. This is the ticket. Continue Reading

A special New Year’s treat here in the shape of two new mixes from La Tabaquera – aka the latest project from Rodrigo Caçapa and Alessandra Leão – both celebrating classic Colombian music. We originally featured La Tabaquera’s Peru mixtape a few months ago, and these Colombian mixtapes offer much of the same, i.e. great music from Colombia’s past featuring plenty of cumbia, porro, descarga, salsa, champeta and much more. Continue Reading

A revolutionary mix for you all this Friday featuring a mix of guajira, guaguanco, guaracha, son, cumbia, rumba, bomba, condombe, merengue, salsa, Latin jazz, Latin soul, Latin funk and any other word with Latin stuck in front of it. El Pueblo Unido is the sound of the Latin people rising up, and has been mixed from original vinyls by Medline. Continue Reading

A great mix here exploring the relationship between electronic music and South American folk music featuring artists such as El Remólon, Matanza and Cholita Sound. The mix is by our good friend El Buho – responsible for the excellent Rhythm n Roots blog – and was published by the excellent new record label Antartek Records. Continue Reading

Tasty selection of nueva cumbia tracks from Pedrolito that should take the edge of the wintry conditions for all those Northern Hemisphere types out there! Features tracks from Kumbia Queers, Cumbia Bestial and Makina as well as remixes of Peruvian cumbia songs from Los Destellos and Ranil, all coming together to give you some of the many sounds that make up the nueva cumbia scene at the moment. Continue Reading

Sounds and Colours has always prided itself on being one of the finest purveyors of alternative South American music and culture, ignoring the noises coming from the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. Well, sometimes we make a concession when there is something which just seems like y’all should now about. So, this is a mix of 3Ball from Monterrey’s Tribal Guarachero scene, and is an absolute banger from Chico Sonido. Continue Reading

Here’s a bit of a special set from El Suizo aka Christoph H. Müller aka half of The Gotan Project in which he reconstructs a mix he originally played live at Ya Basta Festibal in Paris on October 13th this year. The mix contains a number of special edits and mashups that El Suizo created especially for the occasion. Here’s the tracklist followed by the Pachamama Mixtape. Continue Reading

This is the second mixtape from La Tabaquera – a project led by Alessandra Leão and Caçapa – which this time presents the music of Peru with over 40 minutes of boogaloo, salsa, chicha, landó, alcatraz and a wide variety of everything else Peruvian. Continue Reading

We’ve got to admit that this is a little bit special. Here’s a new mix of Brazilian music by 2manyDJs aka Soulwax. It’s part of their Radio Soulwax project, which will eventually include 24 1 hour mixes of music. Batuta Discos is all about quality Brazilian vinyls with a mixture of classics, rareties and new tunes thrown in too. Continue Reading

Venezuelan music has always been hard to characterise. Salsa is their national music – despite being more associated with the Caribbean or New York, and their successful exports have included groups as diverse as the Símon Bolivar Youth Orchestra and Los Amigos Invisibles. Continue Reading

It’s been far too long since we featured a cumbia mixtape here on Sounds and Colours. So, today we are happy to bring you Cumbia Venenosa del Roots a la Digital Vol 1 from French/Chilean DJ Inti. Continue Reading