Latin
Joe Muggs
Impressively, this collaboration of three of pop's hardest grafters feels like a real group endeavour. Certainly, the multi-quintillion-selling Australian songwriter Sia's piercing tones and melodic style are the most recognisable thing here, but they weave around Hackney-raised Simon Cowell protege Labrinth's more understated voice and globally ubiquitous DJ/producer Diplo's military-grade Latin / dancehall / hip hop derived beats to create impressive coherence. It's not the trip-out the group name might suggest, but it's certainly got its share of odd twists, dizzying quick shifts and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
All things considered, there aren’t many criteria by which this album, however cosmopolitan its influences, sensitive and precise its vocals and supple its rhythms, is really the best of the year. I’ve had a few sleepless nights recently over the growing suspicion that, for example, Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN, and several contemporary jazz recordings – to mention only what I’ve been following closely – do more that’s landmark-constructingly novel. It’s unlikely, come 2042, that Cubafonia will feature in one of those vox-pop retrospectives that populate the BBC Two schedules with such Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It's a monstrous cliché – all too often laden with problematically patronising overtones – to describe African, Caribbean, or Afro-Latin music in terms of “sunshine”, with all the carefree holiday brochure imagery that brings. But damn, the music of the Garifuna people of the Caribbean coasts of Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua makes it hard not to.In particular the Honduran Aurelio Martinez, the most prominent exponent of Garifuna music since the 2009 death of the Belizean star Andy Palacio, has a guitar style which combines the lilting arpeggios of West Africa with the tremolo- Read more ...
David Nice
Gone, it seems, is the era of epic three-part Proms. Sunday afternoon's programme, partly billed as a children's hour, might have pleased pianist and pundit Stephen Hough, whose recent broadsheet plea for shorter concerts somewhat overdid the need (lunchtime events already cater to concertgoers in a hurry very well, and the Proms has its late-nighters too). But it left many of us wanting more, not just of Ravel in the second half but also of the distinctive Simón Bolívar earthiness, which was given free rein only in one spirited encore. Subtlety, for the most part, was the real name of Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The career of the Gran Canaria-born musician Pablo Díaz-Reixa seems to work in an accelerated time-frame, speeding through decades and eras as he develops his sound. Though he has always worked with digital technology, his early work sounded archaic, its massed carnival percussion and traditional melodies roaming around the Afro-Latin diaspora.Then, on 2008's Pop Negro, he embraced modernism, albeit still with a retro twist, rigorously examining and adopting the high-gloss production and songwriting techniques of the biggest mainstream American and Latino pop acts of the mid-1970s to mid-'90s Read more ...
Mark Kidel
Sidestepper have been ploughing the rich ground of "electro-cumbia" for some years now. Their appealing contribution to the world dance scene is the fruit of a collaboration between Richard Blair, with his taste for drum‘n’bass and dub, and a number of Colombian talents who’ve grown up with a heady mix of Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms and traditional tribal melodies.Made in the laid-back barrios of Bogota, the new album juxtaposes tracks rooted in the irresistible and intricate local beats, driven by delicately played hand drums and other percussion, with slightly more mainstream pop and rock Read more ...
Matthew Wright
As a whole, J-Sonics are fairly new to the London jazz scene, but the members of this slinky sextet, assisted by vocalist Grace Rodson, have many years’ experience between them in other projects, which means they can sound both fresh and highly polished. Their debut album is a tasty cosmopolitan medley of originals and Brazilian classics characterised by the twining of smoky brass lines from twin horns of saxophonist Matt Telfer and trumpeter Andy Davies, fretboard acrobatics from guitarist Clement Regert and the propulsive bass of Mike Flynn, all tied down by the drums of Gabor Dornyei, Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Rents are going up, local businesses priced out, and the rich folk and hipsters are invading. That’s in Washington Heights, New York’s largely Dominican-American quarter, but it could as easily describe King’s Cross, one of multiple London areas undergoing gentrification. This Tony Award-winning musical from pioneering composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (currently ruling Broadway with Hamilton), which features an irresistible hip-hop, rap, pop and Latin fusion score, is propulsive entertainment with a resonant social conscience.Our guide to the Heights is Usnavi (Sam Mackay), whose bodega – Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Slavik Kryklyvyy was Jennifer Lopez's tush-shaking partner in Shall We Dance?, getting one over on Richard Gere. But that was 2004, and what happened then? Ballroom Dancer is a documentary feature about his year on the edge, 2010, when the former world number one Latin dancer tried to come back from a series of injuries and broken partnerships to mount his throne once more. This is Strictly Ballroom meets Black Swan, a film about a driven, spectacularly talented man for whom Latin dancing is a scarily obsessive vocation, a man who would give up almost anything, including his humanity, to be Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was already apparent from Melody Gardot's last album, My One and Only Thrill, that she harboured a more than passing infatuation with the music of Brazil and Latin America. "I love Brazilian music, it's one of my favourite genres," she said at the time. "I love the Stan Getz bossa nova years, I love Getz/Giberto, Jobim, Caetano Veloso... "Three years on, Gardot reaffirms her presence with The Absence, a disc on which her latin leanings have erupted into a full-scale rain forest of shimmering strings, lissome acoustic guitars, supple beats and feline melodies. At a recent showcase Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Ah, Koko, the old Camden Palace, another of London’s lovely venues, over 100 years old, all done up in red with gold gilt, and two layers of balcony boxes intact. It’s easy, as a regular gig-goer, to become oblivious to these heritage British venues but they are truly wonderful, full of personality that dozens of airport-like civic halls and sports arenas across the Americas can never muster. It’s not surprising that foreign bands adore playing such old variety theatres and, judging from their wide grins, Quantic’s Combo Barbaro, from Colombia, appear to be revelling in their environs.It Read more ...