Anachronistic and bold: the Latin singer-songwriters who are renewing root music

Let's turn the verse around.

The galactic Jaume Sisa, transmuted into Ricardo Solfa, sang for Sabina in bolero time: “There are women who go to love like they go to work”.

But there are women who go to work as they go to love, call that attitude passion, vehemence or enthusiasm.

And with talent, as the count and diplomat Hermann Karl von Keyserling, who would have commissioned the very famous Goldberg Variations from Bach, already warned: “Love requires talent”.

With intelligence and panache, Latin artists reformulate the musical tradition of their respective countries.

As is the case with their African contemporaries, they are the tip of what, without abandoning the old taxonomy, we could call 21st century world music.

The Mexican Natalia Lafourcade, without going any further.

To her, who recreated Agustín Lara's repertoire like few others, what the polygraph Carlos Monsiváis wrote about the composer of 'Solamente una vez' can be shamelessly applied, putting it in the feminine: “Happily ancient and anachronistically audacious”.

Lafourcade has just released

(Sony), her first album with her own songs since she published

(2015).

In it he displays an emotional map drawn with pain, absences, fears and farewells, but also balm and celebration.

Adán Jodorowsky, also known as Adanowsky, signs a brilliant production full of details.

Of all the flowers it tastes of old clubs with smoke and nostalgia.

The pianos mark an attractive decadence, and the guitars rush the sound to border areas and even Hawaii (Marc Ribot plays them in 'Canta la arena').

Then there are the choirs and the large orchestra arrangements.

The set shows an exquisite construction of the songs, captivating in the joyful voice of Lafourcade.

Cover of the album 'De todas las Flores', by Natalia Lafourcade

A Pan-American conception with jazz accents surrounds the album, vigorous and contradictorily modern.

In 'Muerte' the treatment of the instruments designs a cabaret in which the vintage, so well armed (those broken trumpets) blows new winds.

And there they are, in addition, those clear Adanowsky stitching, like the beginning of 'Llevame viento', which is inevitably reminiscent of Debussy's 'Claro de luna'.

In the expansive Latin universe of popular music, Natalia Lafourcade shines like a supernova.

For her part, the Puerto Rican iLe, hardened in Calle 13, which was the group of her brothers, published in 2016 her first solo album (iLevitable) full of audacious boleros and sensual boogalús.

She was fortunate to have the great salsa singer Cheo Feliciano, who passed away shortly after the recording.

Later, in Almadura (2019), she once again bathed in Caribbean waters, this time with the presence of another of the Fania team's giants: the pianist Eddie Palmieri.

Now, iLe is back with Nacarilé (Sony), a title that she plays with her name, but also with the colloquial expression from her country "nacarilé del Oriente", which must be interpreted as "none of that".

None of that to patriarchy, none of that to colonialism (“They ripped open our fabric and bled our village / they slaughtered the word to kill our idea”).

Yes to the feminist claim,

to reaffirm as a woman.

Ismael Cancel produces this sound artifact that turns bolero on its head (there's the defiant 'Un traguito', together with Mon Laferte and with airs of fado) and reggaeton (with Ivy Queen, star of the style, interprets 'Algo bonito' '), and which explores contacts between urban experimentation and roots.

Together with the Argentine freestyler Trueno he approaches hip hop ('Ningún lugar'), with the Spanish Rodrigo Cuevas he opens the way in contemporary folklore ('Cuando te miro'), and he allies himself with Natalia Lafourcade herself in 'En Cantos', and with Flor de Toloache, in 'A la deriva'.

interprets 'Algo bonito'), and which explores contacts between urban experimentation and roots.

Together with the Argentine freestyler Trueno he approaches hip hop ('Ningún lugar'), with the Spanish Rodrigo Cuevas he opens the way in contemporary folklore ('Cuando te miro'), and he allies himself with Natalia Lafourcade herself in 'En Cantos', and with Flor de Toloache, in 'A la deriva'.

interprets 'Algo bonito'), and which explores contacts between urban experimentation and roots.

Together with the Argentine freestyler Trueno he approaches hip hop ('Ningún lugar'), with the Spanish Rodrigo Cuevas he opens a path in contemporary folklore ('Cuando te miro'), and he allies himself with Natalia Lafourcade herself in 'En Cantos', and with Flor de Toloache, in 'A la deriva'.

Cover of the album 'Nacarile', by Ile

Psychedelic flashes and luxury pop intervene in a unique mix of references, present even within the same song.

The atmospheres and soundscapes stand out in this commitment, textually and musically.

And the lyrics are closer, with a more subtle language, to the texts of Residente.

There is more.

If in the movie

(1976) the extraterrestrial Newton arrives on our planet in search of water for his own and runs into irresistible temptations, in ¡Ay!

(Rung), the tenth album by the Colombian, living in Berlin, Lucrecia Dalt, the alien creature Black settles in Mallorca and reflects on love, over time, identity, the material... Dalt, artist and civil engineer, manages the electronics with a cosmic look, likes science fiction and recovers in ¡Ay!

snippets of what was her childhood soundtrack.

She but she does it with emotional distance and through a process of artistic deconstruction.

Thus, a bolero enters the orbit of the galactic with splinters from the planet Tom Waits.

The mambo could be something else, as Dalt slows down the tempos in a sinuous space journey.

Congas, clarinets, flutes,

Cover of the album 'Ay', by Lucrecia Dalt

And one last example.

When Brazilian Tulipa Ruiz and her brother Gustavo went to the US embassy to apply for a work visa, they were asked if they had any extraordinary abilities.

This is how the title of Tulipa's new album, Habilidades extraordinárias (Brocal), produced by Gustavo and recorded analogically, was born.

Tropicalism, bossa and avant-garde entangled with the synthetic give body to the work.

Unprejudiced and evocative, Tulipa searches phonetics for the right ally for her songs: “Clítoris, glans, plasma / wide plagiarism / black feathers / candomblé / clandestine double dubbing”.

Nego Leo collaborates on the song from which these verses come, Jonas Sá does so on 'Não Pira' and João Donato, a jazz and bossa legend, leaves his mark on 'O recado da flor',

piece that contains a nod to one of the flagship albums of post-tropicalism: Gal canta Caymmi (1976), by Gal Costa.

In her review of the Brazilian sound imaginary, Tulipa does not discard the teachings of rock or other musical revulsives.

"Lily and rose in the backyard / lingerie on my clothesline / come dance on the duvet / I love you too / eye drops, light sleep and sound / I love you well."

Cover of the album 'Habilidades extraordinarias', by Tulipa Ruiz.

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