Navigation
Browse by Tag
africa, afro-pop, andelusia, bamako, barcelona, blues, brazil, catalan, colombia, flamenco, folk, french, fulfulde, funk, groove, highlife, hip hop, italian, latin pop, mali, mestizo, miami, mp3, nigeria, portuguese, puerto rico, reggae, rock, rock en español, rumba, songhay, spain, spanish, tamasheq, worldbeat
Recent Album Reviews
Bacilos - Sin Vergüenza
Los Delinqüentes - "Recuerdos Garrapateros de la Flama y el Carril"
Ali Farka Touré - "Savane"
Macaco - "Ingravitto"
Various artists - "Nigeria 70"
Amadou & Mariam - "Dimanche a Bamako"
Macaco - "Ingravitto"
Monday, 18 December 2006
The culture-clasher, Macaco does it up real nice with their fourth album “Ingravitto.” I always imagined Macaco like a giant walking the Earth—one foot in Spain, the other in Brazil. With each step leaving an imprint while taking a bit of everything with him as he travels. On Ingravitto, you’ll discover lyrics sung, spoken, rapped, and whispered in french, portuguese, english, italian, spanish, and catalan. If you wanted to tie them down to a genre in the record store, good luck—there’s reggae, hip hop, rock, funk, flamenco, folk, and who knows what else. One would think it impossible to mix so many elements into one thing and still be able to get a nice song out of it. Macaco does just that, always true to their own sound, defying the constraints of the average packaged cd.
There’s plenty of special guests on the album as well. Muchachito Bombo Infierno, Naz from Nação Zumbi, former Planet Hemp vocalist BNegão, Italian rapper Caparezza, Ms. Maiko, and La Mari from Chambao.
“Mama Tierra” has a bassline that’ll make it impossible not to bump your head back and forth—“Brasil 3000” has a similar effect but with the heavy drums from Brazil. “Crece La Voz” is frenetic, like speeding through traffic way too fast. “Somos Luz” is a dreamy breather.
“…La claridad me dice ya voy. La sombra me mató mi voz, sin ella estoy muda, se enfria, se enfria, se enfria el calor…”
“Hilo y Aguja” is similarly dreamy, but in a more melancholic tone—like a dying flower that comes back in spring.
Ingravitto isn’t an album to play in it’s entirety at a house party OR if you’re feeling like the walls of your tiny apartment are caving in on you. Instead, Macaco cuts through all the ups and downs of your day-to-day with a stroke of genius and lust for life.
Artist: Macaco
Album: Ingravitto
Label: Mundo Zurdo
Released: 2006
Buy this album from Amazon.com
Tagged as: barcelona,
brazil,
catalan,
flamenco,
folk,
french,
hip hop,
italian,
mestizo,
portuguese,
reggae,
rock,
rumba,
spain,
spanish
Bookmark this article
Share your comments
Amadou & Mariam - "Dimanche a Bamako"
Sunday, 12 March 2006
I serendipitously came across this album a few months ago and it’s been in red-hot rotation ever since. The first few things you’ll read about Amadou Bagayoko & Miriam Doumbia is that they are both blind, married to each other, and have been making music together since the early 1980s (Amadou previously played guitar for the Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako since the late-1960s). They met at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali. Years later, the husband and wife duo travelled to the Ivory Coast to make a few cassette tapes with Nigerian producer Aliyu Maikano Adamu. I imagine since then, their soulful music has spread from Western Africa all the way to my tiny New York apartment in the blink of an eye.
Manu Chao, the multilingual, globe-trotting singer extraordinaire wrote and sang on a few songs as well as producing the album. Initially, it seemed confusing to have Chao’s signature police siren soundbites peppered throughout the album, but the more I listened to it the less it bothered me. What blew me away early on was Amadou’s guitar, which is stirring, skillful, and smooth. Many of the songs have a multi-layered sound (especially the rhythmn section), but never getting too far away from the integrity of their troubador-like lyricism.
Dimanche a Bamako (Sunday in Bamako) starts of with a little boy greeting the couple, as if on the street: “Mariam and Amadou, hello. Are things going well? How are you?” (my amateur French translation). Mariam seems to sweetly answer his call. The next track, M’Bife Balafon, is a signature Manu Chao instrumental that serves as a nice interlude between the initial lazy and sweet beginning and Amadou’s blues-blazing guitar in Coulibaly. La réalité sounds like a tour song or an anthem to a road trip of a lifetime.
Artist: Amadou & Mariam
Album: Dimanche a Bamako
Label: Nonesuch
Released: 2005
Buy this album from Amazon.com
Tagged as: africa,
afro-pop,
bamako,
blues,
french,
mali,
worldbeat
Bookmark this article
Share your comments
©2007, BEEMO. Produtos Gráficos. All Rights Reserved. (Go To Top) ↑
CALABØCA uses Apple products and runs Textpattern on a Dreamhost server.