By Julián Felipe Gutiérrez @jackmulligan
Editor's note: While preparing our article on the best of the year in Latin American music, we have invited Julian Gutierrez, contributor to media outlets such as Cartel Urbano, Cortesía de la Casa, Music Machine Magazine, and scholar of the work of Eduard Khil, ...to give us their particular perspective on what has happened in the Colombian music scene. This is the result of that request:
When taking stock of a year that is ending, I have always made an effort not to think in terms of good year/bad year, but in terms of: How much does the year that is ending leave behind? I feel that, by approaching balance in this way, I avoid reducing everything to a black and white issue and recognize a broader spectrum of grays.
I did something similar when writing this list; I've always gotten the impression that those who prepare these kinds of compilations start by defining whether the year ending was good or bad, rather than approaching a list like this to take stock of what remains at the end of the year. In this particular case, the five albums and the EP that I present below They are confirmation of a process that, it seems to me, has been taking place in Colombian music in recent years: On the part of the musicians, the consolidation of a series of unique languages whose possibilities are being explored decisively, contrasted with an audience that receives these proposals for their intrinsic value and not only for the emblem on the passport they carry.
Tei Shi – Crawl Space (Downtown/Interscope)
Tei Shi is the stage name of Valerie Teicher, an artist born to Colombian parents and raised in Canada. After a debut EP in 2013 (Saudade) presents this album (which I came to through a subtle invitation from Spotify to step out of my comfort zone) which manages to work on two levels.
Musically speaking, It's an album that's very seductive. The combination of Teicher's voice and the song arrangements evokes a closeness between bodies and things said in the ear that cause electric shocks that run down the body; Teicher knows how to oscillate between whispers and soaring notes to create what she herself has defined as 'Siren Music'. The second level on which the album works is in the content of its lyrics. While similar offerings in the bedroom pop They tend to offer rose-tinted views of the world; the songs on this album evoke feelings of sadness and longing, as suggested As if, track number 11 on the album.
As if you were my parents
Let me go
Release me to the world and let go
Let me melt
That love that infuriates you
That hardens me
Let it be, time will do its work
As if that were the case
Vic Deal – From Ego Tripas (La Música.FM)
From Ego Guts This is the third work by Vic Deal (Víctor Hugo Ortíz), And it's probably the most solid album he's ever created, a solidity determined by several reasons; firstly, Vic Deal has reached that point of maturity that all established rappers reach. in which their lyrics stop being about what they want to be and start addressing what they are at this moment, and how they process the world around them and the life they live. One minute is enough, For example, it's a song that, in 61 seconds, raises the questions about race that many people ask in a country that claims not to be racist but couldn't be more so.
On the other hand, the 11 tracks on the album They show the influence that the Wu-Tang sound has on Vic Deal's work, Without letting it sound like a copy, using them to create something unique. The collaborations include Crudo Means Raw, Lianna, and beats created by Vic Deal himself under the name Hakim al-Khaliq. resulting in a robust, intelligent, and mature album.
Magellan – Fatima (Assumption)
Magellan It is the new project started by Andrés Gualdrón (White Animals), and Juan Pablo Bermúdez, who had already worked together almost 10 years ago under the name Ego; This new project is quite different from what they did back then, and even from the sound that Gualdrón has been creating with the White Animals.
It would be easy to see the 8 songs of Fatima as an exercise in nostalgia for the eighties, And, while some of that can be seen in the album as a whole, Andrés and Juan Pablo go even further. Fatima It's not a recycling exercise, It is an exercise in interpreting the sound of an era to create something different; In fact, the nostalgic character of the album doesn't come from its sound itself, but from the themes it evokes: The religious anxieties with which many of us grew up (It's no coincidence that the album is called Fatima) and Soviet evocations appear in each song to complete the reinterpretation exercise carried out by Gualdrón and Bermúdez.
Sagan – Each Cédula Remixes (Lätt)
I hesitated before including this album due to its nature as a compilation of mixes, but I opted to include it at the end for two reasons: The first has to do with the merit of this type of album, insofar as they are spaces for dialogue between creators, a dialogue, based on a musician's reinterpretations of a colleague's work; secondly, I believe that Sagan is one of the most interesting bands to have emerged in recent years. And I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to put them on a list like this.
While songs like Two-dimensional (remixed by the aforementioned Magallanes) maintain a sense of continuity with their original version, others, like the remix of Caligula They take the original as the building blocks of a completely different song, with a new identity and a new meaning. The value of this album, I believe, lies in being a sampler of the possibilities of a band's clearly defined sound, at the same time it shows us everything that the artists in charge of the mixes are capable of.
Meridian Brothers – Where are you, Maria? (Soundway)
The work of Meridian Brothers over the last nine years is probably the clearest example of the point I mentioned at the beginning of this list regarding the evolution of the sound of Colombian bands in recent years. As the years have passed, Eblis Álvarez's band (and I'm tempted to think, Eblis himself) has traveled a path which has led them from a sound that saw itself as very kitsch, to a sound that takes itself more and more seriously.
The sound of Where are you, Maria? It is a sound that clearly falls within the tradition of Colombian tropical music; however, instead of replicating the typical tropical sound, creates something new from the building blocks that make it up, The clearest example of this process being songs like I will be happy, I will not be sad, Canto lifted me up and the song that gives the album its name, Where are you, Maria?
Brina Quoya – Brina Quoya (Own pitch)
Brina Quoya It is the name that Ana González, a bassist from Bogota, has given to her project. During the last six or seven years, I have had the opportunity to hear Ana's work in different projects (RadioSuite, Schutmaat Trio, El MadTree) in which she has always shown her wide repertoire of resources, leaving me wondering when he would begin to pursue his own musical ideas, a question that I think I wasn't the only person who asked.
This EP is, I think, the first moment of that pursuit. In five songs totaling 17 minutes, Ana approaches several genres.with a self-assurance and familiarity that comes from years of experience on stage. Brina Quoya's sound is part soul, part trip hop, and part jazz; and in Brina Quoya's case, the greatest merit lies in the very homogeneous result of the mixture which is accompanied by Ana's talent when composing lyrics.