South American music and culture magazine

There is something that comes through whenever “folkclor progresivo” artist Pernett releases a track and it’s all too appropriate as we near the start of Barranquilla’s Carnival on February 18th. That something is Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Continue Reading

Tulipa Ruiz returned to London in December 2011 for the second time, this time bringing a band featuring her father Luiz Chagas on guitar and brother Gustavo Ruiz on bass. Sounds and Colours had the opportunity to meet up with Tulipa at the gig, where she played to an enamoured audience at Cargo. Watch Tulipa in action and hear her thoughts below: Continue Reading

I arrived at Discos Fuentes studio in Medellin late on Friday afternoon. It was supposed to be a day for Ondatrópica – the new project from Will “Quantic” Holland and Mario Galeano Toro – to pack up their equipment, yet they were still busy finishing vocals on the final track, an original composition from Fruko, one of Colombia’s true musical heroes and no stranger to Discos Fuentes studio. Continue Reading

Jorge Continentino describes himself as a saxophonist and flutist, but he regularly draws on his piano and guitar-playing skills when he’s writing original music. Jorge got an early start, leaving his hometown of Rio de Janeiro at just eighteen years of age to tour and record with some of the biggest names in Brazilian popular music, like Marisa Monte and Milton Nascimento. His nearly fifteen-years as a musician in Brazil laid the groundwork for a successful career now based in New York City, where Jorge blends traditional forró music from Northeastern Brazil with jazz, rock and folk in one-of-a-kind compositions. One of his groups, Forró in the Dark, has toured North America and Europe but is most at home presiding over the late night Brazilian parties every Wednesday at Nublu in New York’s East Village. The group also appears on the Red Hot + Rio 2 album. In addition to Forró in the Dark, Jorge is involved with numerous cutting-edge projects and collaborations that he described in our interview below. Continue Reading

It seems to be happening more and more every time I turn on the radio: the latest pop single begins to play, a passionate voice sings a catchy melody over electronic noises and beats, and my voice unashamedly joins in on what my ears are hearing. Yet as I hum along, I can’t help but realise that this “latest” hit is nothing fresh nor new at all — instead, it’s a melody from another popular song that had preceded it. Continue Reading

Miguel Atwood-Ferguson is a musician and arranger who has worked with a wide variety of musicians including Will.I.Am, Aloe Blacc, Flying Lotus, Mia Doi Todd and Ray Charles. It is very likely that he has worked on some of the albums in your own record collection. Generally providing violin or viola to records, as well as creating lush string arrangements, in the last couple of years he has worked with two of Brazil’s biggest stars – Marisa Monte and Seu Jorge – as well as worked on the Timeless concert series in LA, which involved a live performance from legendary Brazilian producer Arthur Verocai. Continue Reading

The time has come again to choose our favourite albums of the year. It’s a task that’s never easy, especially after the bumper year we’ve had, with great music coming from all over South America, reflected in the fact that artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela all feature in our list. Continue Reading

During the early 60′s, the Nueva Canción movement (‘New Song’) was born on Chilean soil. With singer-songwriters paving the way with their socio-politically-fuelled folk tunes, it was a revolutionary spirit that was deeply embedded in the Latin American New Left, the Unidad Popular coalition and its leader Salvador Allende. Continue Reading

Over the past sixty years, the Colombian music genre Cumbia has rocked dance floors in it’s native land as well as the global music stage. However, cumbia has not always been so popular with the music-loving masses. Its early beginnings, found at the mouth of the Magdalena River and the Atlantic Ocean were largely viewed with disdain, especially for its association with societal lower classes. It was seen as a highly inappropriate dance, dating back to Colombia’s colonial past and consisted of a somewhat ‘sexualised’ dance between the sexes. It was a courtship ritual that celebrated the musical, as well as social interaction between people of African ancestry and the indigenous people of Colombia known as zambos. Continue Reading

One of the most interesting groups coming out of Colombia’s nueva cumbia scene is undoubtedly Frente Cumbiero. So far they have released a 7″ on Brooklyn’s Names You Can Trust record label and a collaborative album with Mad Professor, titled Frente Cumberio Meets Mad Professor, which was released on CD and vinyl earlier this year. On both releases they take the cumbia legacy in a more electronic direction, while still staying close to its roots, setting them apart from acts like Bomba Estéreo that have used Colombian music as a starting point to explore new musical hybrids. Continue Reading

Because we live in such a digital age, most things are divided between that which is technological and new, or that which is organic and conventional. And music is no exception – in it’s most basic forms, it is either completely electronic or completely traditional. Yet over the past twenty years or so, artists have begun to mix these two genres, and a hybridized style has emerged, notably through acts like Portishead and Thievery Corporation. Since then, musicians have experimented with this combination of sounds to the extreme, simultaneously exploring older classic sounds along with new, avant-garde ones. And in today’s music scene, the Argentine-based ZZK Records is perhaps the most exemplary representation of this hybridity through their experimentation with the sounds of digital cumbia. Continue Reading

José Cónde lives his lyrics. He gets grooves from the names of trees. He leaves melody lines on his own answering machine. He can turn a playful refrain to his dog into a dance anthem. His songs are odes to hot dresses, Brazilian muses, discombobulated elephants, and life-giving springs. Continue Reading