South American music and culture magazine

Our good friend Fabian Altahona, who runs the Africolombia blog, recently sent us a selection of champetas from the last 10 years. Champeta is the sound of Afro-Colombia and these represent the songs that you would typically find in Colombian cities such as Cartagena and Barranquilla. Continue Reading

Back from Isla Grande, we spent a few days in Cartagena, a beautiful city, also one of the most important historical ports in the American continent. The city is Colombia’s prime tourist destination, a vibrant place, full of contrasts. Cartagena is one of the places where the indigenous, European and African cultures most intensely mixed. Continue Reading

When we were compiling our favourite albums of 2010 (see parts one and two) we had a huge problem putting all our favourite albums into just twenty slots. We decided right then that maybe we should take out the three compilations that were some of our favourite albums of the year and include them in their own little chart. We still had a few albums which we simply didn’t have room for, but hey, that’s life! Continue Reading

As any student of Columbian music will tell you, in the 1970 and 80s, the hot sound systems of Barranquilla and Cartegena were not into disco but were looking to their African roots and mixing it up with Caribbean Creole as well as Colombian hits for the sounds of the day; this was what became known as Champeta. Picking up on the lead of the sound systems, local musicians caught the vibe and immersed these influences into their music so you get a bit of everything from traditional African folk songs to Highlife and Afrobeat on these 21 tracks. Continue Reading

A new craft is winging its way through the sonic solar system, built from creaky amps and sleek laptops, powered by dayglo Caribbean sun and the brilliant pulse of street parties, and steered by hip-hop Afronauts from one of the globe’s new music hotspots.

Welcome aboard Colombia’s Systema Solar, the funkiest Technocolor hip-hop and DJ crew/Latin sound system ever to be pulled by donkey or graced with slammin’ beats. Uniting Afro-Colombian roots with rap, scratching with Afro-Latin percussion, and unstoppable dance grooves with a live video mix, Systema Solar has landed on the world stage with Systema Solar (ONErpm.com; October 14, 2010), the perfect intro to Latin America’s coolest musical-visual collective.
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System Solar are one of the heaviest groups coming out of Colombia at the moment. They call themselves a ‘collective’ and this couldn’t fit them better. Each member is involved in all kind of enterprises but bring their expertise to the table for Systema Solar. What results is an modern audio-visual treat with it’s feet firmly stuck in the tradition of Colombia’s sound systems. These systems, which began to appear on Colombia’s Caribbean coast in the 50s, are known as picó’s, a word derived from pick-up though no-one really knows exactly why it was chosen. Some say it was because of the pick-up truck that people would arrive to parties in, others said it was due to the action of picking-up the needle before playing the next song, and others still say it was a name of a particular portable record player.
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Perceptions are changing in Colombia. Labels such as Palenque Records and Soundway Records, as well as plenty of good blogs have heightened awareness of some of the great folk music hailing from the country, while producers such as Quantic and Sidestepper have shown how this music can be presented in modern surrounds. Choc Quib Town are well-placed to continue this momentum.
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