By the Zonagirante.com team @spinning zone
Cover art by Zonagirante Studio
Intro
2025 is closing out as a strange, very strange year. And what's to come will continue to bring opacity, uncertainty, a persistent sense of ridicule—both external and, at times, our own. Even so, thankfully, there's still plenty of music left, and some of it is brilliant.
The inescapable feeling is that of inhabiting a planet eager to self-destruct at an absurd rate. And that, at the same time, for such a scenario, we are creating the best possible soundtrack to underscore this clumsy tragedy.
Living in Latin America these days means suspecting that, without having asked for it or sought it, we run the risk of some insufferable stubborn person from the north of the continent waking up one morning and ruining our lives.
Just because.
Yes, just like it sounds: because yes.
What is this site doing talking about politics, and in such an incorrect way?
There have always been tyrants, power brokers, collectors of other people's bones, scoundrels with the presidential sash as a shield, and poor imitators of misguided heroes. But now—and we don't say this to elicit contemporary pity—we are governed by the utterly ridiculous.
Those who feel no shame for their unfounded hatreds, their archaic conspiracy theories, amplified, his lamentable fears, his abuses, nor the poison of his words.
It has long been clear that artistic expressions, without judging their quality, tend to move in three directions:
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those complacent with the status quo;
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those who believe that nothing matters and that it is best to ignore what surrounds us;
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and finally, those that are sustained by permanent insubordination.
No position guarantees that what is done is right or that it will receive grateful applause.
At Zonagirante.com, without worrying about being naively on the side of good or evil, we believe in the constant breaking of paradigms, even knowing that in many aspects of our lives we are conservative and naive.
As the old Spaniards would say: we like disobedience.
Saying this, of course, makes us politicians.
We listen to music all day, but that doesn't mean we're apathetic about what's happening around us. What happens impacts us, challenges us, and sometimes hurts.
We are antifascists. We believe in social justice. We reject genocide. We detest antisemitism, racism, xenophobia, and the blindness of contempt.
We are migrants, in one way or another, at every stage of our lives, and we believe that being Latin American, wherever we are, means celebrating the blending of cultures in all its breadth.
However, we are not stuck in tradition. Tradition can be challenged and upheld when it provides comfort, but never used to enslave.
That, even though we are simply music commentators, is our political thinking, and we reflect it in every design, text, and recording we publish.
Did 2025 bring good music? Some uncomfortable answers
Based on all of the above, we must step back a bit from the hemisphere and affirm, as we have already done before, which for us was the best album of the year Lux, by Rosalía.
And yes, they rarely made it so easy for us.
An album that no one expected in that way. Capricious, perhaps conceived to demonstrate that he can do exactly what he wants and that, wonderfully, almost all of us should listen attentively.
Because the girl is a genius. A genius of the sentimental laboratory. Someone who chose the right blenders and started mixing previously unthinkable ingredients.
It was about time that operatic singing had a serious place in pop; that singing in thirteen languages was no longer a pretentious gesture; that talking about love demanded responsibility and poetry.
What bothers some people is that she is a young woman, breathtakingly beautiful, who could have remained stuck repeating the same formula. Motomami, at a time when reggaeton is starting to show its flaws, and that he has decided to take a gamble on classical strings, electronic spice and bel canto.
The rest? Fortunately, it happened on this side of the world.
On this side of the pond
Latin America, even amidst the repetition of the repeating, left room for great surprises, exciting tunes and precise noises capable of awakening the necessary chaos.
Throughout this special we will demonstrate that our continent is home to people, moments and movements that should not be afraid to expand to the rest of the world.
There are fascinating albums in hip hop and pop. Rock, although mostly stagnant and predictable, has had its magical moments. The new branches of electronic music function as valid experiments that enrich the ecosystem.
During the next nine days, and perhaps extending a little beyond Christmas, we will reaffirm the growing female presence in music: more as revolutionaries than as figurines, more as flag bearers than as repeaters of other people's verses.
We will also highlight the fruitful intersections between folk sounds and global genres, and champion new names that we believe will pave the way forward.
Get used to these names, among many others: Industrial Plant, Hard Crew, Hiru, Suspiria, Vondre, Terraplana, Sonoras Mil, Marilina Bertoldi, Juan Campodónico.
It doesn't matter if they are in New York, Bogotá, Montevideo or on a lost beach in Brazil.
Our goal, as always, is to tell what we sound like beyond algorithms, advertising campaigns, desk idiots and corrupt people at popular radio stations.
This is Zonagirante.com: an analog-digital crew that insists on sowing resistance and unexpected sounds in dangerous and ungrateful times.
As we say in our design division: this is made by happy devils.
In the end…
We've reached the end of 2025.
A year of crisis, new noises, encouraging chaos, and necessary disobedience.
This is what we heard while everything was burning a little.
Thank you for exploring it with us.
