• Music

    Various Artists – Ecuatoriana – El Universo Paralelo de Polibio Mayorga 1969​-​1981 (Analog Africa No​.​37)

    August 19, 2023 - By 

    Analog Africa, one of my favorite reissue labels, is going well above its mission of reissuing African treasures and is now delving deep into the music mines of South America – in this case, Ecuador.  Polibio Mayorga was a hit-writing machine during the early days of Ecuadorian rock, but he also had an interest in sci-fi, weirdly lounge-influenced music and his native cumbia.  From the release’s Bandcamp site: “In the decades after the second world war, outer space was on everyone’s mind and the ‘space race’ of the 1950s and 60s not only produced groundbreaking efforts to launch artificial satellites,…

  • Music

    Mita y su Monte Adentro – Arecibo

    November 21, 2022 - By 

    Legends in Peru, the band Mita y su Adentro were led by Oswaldo “Mita” Delgado, also had a prestigious reputation in the Latin American music world, as he would be invited to perform in the bands of Célia Cruz and Joe Cuba.  Sadly, he never recorded another album after this one.

  • Music

    Lucho Bermudez y su Orquesta – The Coastal Invasion

    October 2, 2022 - By 

    The ever-stunning Radio Martiko out of Belgium release an amazing collection of cumbia from Colombia’s greatest export, Lucho Bermudez.  From the label’s Bandcamp release site: Bermudez was a key figure who modernised the tropical music of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. At the beginning of the 20th century, this music was largely looked down on. Bermudez changed all that by injecting a modern, jazzy big band sound to the Afro-Colombian sounds from his native region. The infectious Afro-Amerindian dance rhythms of Lucho Bermudez y su Orquesta took over the elite nightclubs of Bogota and Medellin and from there, his music spread all…

  • Music

    Air Volta – Volta Jazz

    June 8, 2022 - By 

    The 1200 Line is an expert reissue label bringing some amazing African music to the masses with meticulously recreated cover art and remastering.  This release is from Upper Volta, and it features cumbia rhythms, rhumba, Cuban son and yé-yé blended into a joyful mix. From the Bandcamp site: From the landlocked tropical savanna of Upper Volta, an ever-evolving cast of musicians brought the world’s rhythms to the streets of their native Bobo-Dioulasso. Combining Congolese rhumba, American R&B, French yé-yé, Cuban son, and regional Senufo and Mandingo traditions, Orchestre Volta Jazz was at the epicenter of the West African musical explosion…

  • Music

    Various Artists – Color De Tropico Vol 2 Compiled by El Drágon Criollo & El Palmas

    March 2, 2021 - By 

    Spanish imprint El Palmas Music has released this compilation of music from Venezuela that covers reggae, salsa, soul, cumbia and joropo music.  There are two tracks available to listen to until the release date of May 14, 2021, but judging by these, this compilation will be pretty damn good. From their Bandcamp page: El Palmas and El Dragón Criollo once again leave their skin immersing themselves in the musical archives of the” Venezuelan Saudi ”, today almost buried in oblivion, for the defense of prodigious works whose brilliance did not have time to be fully assimilated in the middle from…