By José Gandue @Gandour
Photo by @aaronfreeder
I always tell my radical friends that the best rock band in Colombia is Bomba Estéreo. I tell you this to provoke you, to stir things up, to get you out of your comfort zone and try to broaden the definition of the word "rock," and to accept that on this continent, this genre can be seen in a broader, more authentic, more personal way. But, equally, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that Bomba Estéreo is a band that can be heard (and in fact does) anywhere in the world, that brings joy to anyone who sees them, and that few bother trying to give their music an exact name.They implement it, adopt it, dance it, and celebrate it.
But we're not talking about artists who release the hit of the moment and, after playing it billions of times, fail to repeat even a fraction of what they achieved with their next release. This is not Slowly or any other nonsense like that. Bomba Estéreo not only expands its global reach, this is a band that has grown musically, that has understood that it couldn't remain solely focused on its tasty interpretation of contemporary cumbia: They have managed to adopt, in their own way, and with sufficient intelligence and heart, the global color of dance.
Bomba Estéreo launches Hurts, a slow Caribbean invocation that has the aroma of the African Mediterranean. It sounds like a bachata song composed in a cafe in Cairo. A song of heartbreak that is impossible not to dance to, where Li Saumet's voice knows how to draw us into the story in the form of a plaintive lullaby that, equally, sounds like a sensual breath.
The video accompanying this release has enough colorful revolutionary imagery and twisted symbolism to warrant a special designation: Because of its tone and its exquisiteness, we could label this audiovisual product a psychedelic soap opera. Even so, apart from the exaggerated labels that we commentators can fall into, we can simplify things by saying that this is an extraordinary work.
Is Bomba Estéreo the best Latin American musical group of the moment? Well, they give us enough reasons to consider it.. Likewise, these kinds of heavy labels probably don't matter to them at all. They, above and beyond the thousands of words they generate, They're still taking over the planet, though.,
