Colombia
Nick Hasted
Chuck Prophet speaks the old language of rock’n’roll as if it’s bright and new. His long gone band Green On Red were R.E.M.’s Eighties peers, and as rock’s cultural tide has receded, his loyalty to its spirit of liberty, askance at authority and place with those clinging to or embracing the bottom rung has become a natural act of faith.Wake the Dead is Prophet’s first album since his recovery from cancer, and splices his Mission Express band with ¿Qiensave?, Californian practitioners of cumbia, the Columbian sound which proved his musical light in dark times. He’s sought fresh inflections and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
When Colombian drug potentate Pablo Escobar made his comment that “the only man I was ever afraid of was a woman named Griselda Blanco,” he ensured that Ms Blanco would achieve immortality in the annals of crime. Netflix’s new series about Blanco, starring and produced by Sofía Vergara, claims to depict Blanco’s life “as faithfully as possible”, though that famous line “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend” feels a bit nearer the mark.Blanco’s tangled biography has been considerably simplified for this Netflix version, but what emerges is a lurid, high-octane ride packed with sex, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis hasn’t made large waves this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps this is because her appeal has partly been rooted in Latin communities across the US and, indeed, Central and South America. Last year her third album, Red Moon in Venus, reached the Top 5 of the US album charts. At the time she said she already had her next album ready, a Spanish language affair. This is it and it’s a slightly feistier creature than its woozily narcotic predecessor.Uchis’s current default setting remains sexy-stoned. Her voice is a seductive instrument. She silkily rolls language Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Colombian-American singer Kali Uchis knocked it out of the park with the vibrant, eclectic global pop of debut Isolation, one of the best albums of 2018.Since then, she's gained career traction via guest appearances with Gorillaz, Little Dragon, Mac Miller, and others, and consolidated things with a new, determinedly downtempo direction on the Spanish-language album Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios), and its breakout tune, “Telepatía” (nigh-on-800 million streams on Spotify). Her third album continues the trajectory, but mostly in English, a stoned bedroom affair of warm, squidgy, modern Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s Memories of My Father adapts the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince’s 2006 family memoir, which was published in English as Oblivion: the Spanish-language title of both book and film, El Olvido Que Seremos (“Forgotten We’ll Be”), more literally catches the mood of the writer’s tribute to his father, Héctor Abad Gómez, a doctor and prominent social reformer who was murdered by paramilitaries in his native town of Medellin in 1987.The writer realised that, two decades after his father’s death, his achievements were starting to be forgotten, even in close Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Kali Uchis is a superstar in the making. But she’s seemed that way for a few years and, despite making waves in the US, has not crossed over on the scale her talent deserves. Emanating a presence that’s part Gaga, part Winehouse, part Megan Thee Stallion, and part Shakira, the 26 year old American-Columbian delivered one of 2018’s finest albums, Isolation, demonstrating that sexy, chart-friendly pop could also be wildly eclectic and inventive. Her second album is more singular in focus, a Spanish language affair deep-dipped in Uchis’ uniquely woozy brand of easy listening.Uchis has worked Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
La Locura de Machuca translates as “the madness of Machuca.” A Colombian label which issued its first record in 1975, Machuca was active until 1995. Around 26 singles and 36 albums were released. The new compilation brings together 17 tracks from its first five years.While choosing the word “madness” as the title's operative word is questionable, there’s no doubt that what’s heard is arresting and unusual. The opening track is “Eberebijara” by Samba Negra. It sounds like a DIY collision of “Life During Wartime” Talking Heads and West African drumming with a repeated chant as a vocal overlay. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Stories of the destruction of the natural environment are depressingly common, but Frank Gardner brought a fresh slant to this punchy account of a botanical expedition to Colombia (BBC Two). Best known as the BBC’s security correspondent, Gardner was partially paralysed in a terrorist attack in Riyadh in 2004, but was determined that this wouldn’t stop him. “I traded in my wheelchair for a pack horse,” he declared.It almost didn’t work, because a panicky Gardner, unable to cling on with his legs, was almost flung from his horse while descending a steep mountain track. The local Colombian Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Colombian director Franco Lolli’s debut feature Gente de Bien (2014) was a hit at several international film festivals, and Litigante should burnish his reputation further. It’s a carefully-observed family drama centred on the relationship between veteran lawyer Leticia (Leticia Gomez) and her daughter Silvia (Carolina Sani), a lawyer for Bogota’s Public Works department. Leticia is dying painfully from lung cancer while Silvia finds herself embroiled in a corruption scandal at work, all serving to pile the pressure on to their already fractious relationship.Lolli doesn’t preach or Read more ...
Markie Robson-Scott
In the opening scene of Alejandro Landes’s strange, beautiful but finally unsatisfying Monos, eight teenage guerrillas are playing football blindfold on a high mountain plateau. Why the blindfolds? Perhaps to warn us not to expect any light to be thrown on whys and wherefores in this unsettling, visually stunning film, with its echoes of Lord of the Flies and Apocalypse Now.These Colombian kids, some gender fluid and mostly first-time actors, are a convincingly feral, Mad Max-ish bunch, with names like Wolf, Bigfoot, Swede, Rambo and Lady. Their code name is Monos and they receive sporadic Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Monday night’s first episode of this three-part series was a bit ordinary, as it introduced its cast of British recreational cocaine users and explained why their habit may be ill-advised. We learned that the British take more drugs than any other nation in Europe, the cocaine you buy on the street has probably been cut with lactose and caffeine and, according to a professor of Addictive Behaviour Science, cocaine plunders the brain’s dopamine reserves and causes violent heart palpitations (cocaine and heart attacks often go together). Then the volunteers flew to Medellín in Colombia, home Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Ever since Latin American cinema re-emerged in the 1990s from years in the shadow of dictatorships, films have been distinguished by a number of trends, including dramas about the dictatorship years and the social and psychological consequences; social and family dramas; the experience of young people; the quirks and characters of everyday life. All of these themes were represented – still fresh, relevant and exciting – in San Sebastian, that preeminent annual shop window for the region’s films. Among the very best was the drama Pacified. Directed by Paxton Winters, this follows in Read more ...