The 4 Corners and Centre of Meridian Brothers’ Universe

Naffer Durán y Su Conjunto Canta Diomedes Diaz

Herencia Vallenata

(Codiscos, 1976)

[Diomedes Diaz is] one of my favourite singers of all time. My father used to listen to a lot of coastal Colombian music. [Diaz] has a big discography, a lot of history in Colombia, and also scandals – lots of scandals. He was a Colombian rock star. I [chose] this album because it was the first one I personally liked. At first, I rejected [vallenato music] because it was very popular and wasn’t really in fashion for a 90s teenager. In Colombia, you’d listen to a lot of Western rock music… local music was disregarded… [When you listened to Diaz], you would think “oh, this guy is cheesy.” But I liked the sound – it defines the groove of vallenato – and influenced me afterwards.

Secos & Molhados

Secos & Molhados

(Continental, 1973)

I bought this album really cheap in a record store in São Paulo, almost ten years ago now. There were tons of copies because it had been a total hit back in 1973. Around that time, I [was listening] to some of the great Brazilian artists from the tropicália movement and I was trying to collect more Brazilian music. For me, it sounded like the 90s progressive rock that I used to listen to but in the Brazilian fashion. It changed a lot for me – we grew up as punks, rockers, metalheads; tropical music was treated as cheesy, low class and seen as poorly made. But when [I heard this record], I realised there were groups [across Latin America] that were actually blending the genres together.

Tom Zé

Estudando o Samba

(Continental, 1976)

I learned about Tom Zé maybe 20 years ago, from a friend when I was living in Denmark. When I saw the documentaries and everything about this album, I guess I had the same sensation that David Byrne had when he discovered [it]. Like, “wow, this is something new. This is something very different.” It made me want to know more about Brazilian music. I was studying at the [Royal Danish Conservatory of Music] at this point when I [heard Tom Zé’s music] and he also studied at the Conservatory and [was] combining popular music from Brazil with classical music ensembles and modern music, dispositions and formats. All his music has been very inspiring to me.

2000 Voltios

La Cumbiamba

(Machuca, Unknown Year)

[This is] from a well-known experimental record label, Machuca, which was born between 1975 and 1980 in Barranquilla. [The label owner] was a lawyer that didn’t want to be some kind of protagonist in the advancement of art but [just] wanted to blend traditional [Latin American] music with stuff that was coming from the States like disco and funk. There’s not much known about this album. The nerd researchers told me that it was recorded in one day in Bogotá with the guitarist Brando Ortiz, a brilliant musician that nobody really knows about. It’s a good combination of funk, traditional tambors [drums] and the bass is [a mix] of disco and vallenato. It’s so transgressional.

THE CENTRE

Soda Stereo

Signos

(CBS Argentina, 1986)

This is an Argentinian new wave album. I discovered it when I was nine and it was a total hit. There was a wave in Latin America, rock en Español, that everyone was listening to. I was a pretty innocent child, I listened to the radio and got fixated with Soda Stereo, who are the most famous rock group in Latin America. [Signos] was the album that made me become a musician and later made me come back to sing songs and [explore] folk/pop music. Back in the 90s I went to study jazz and classical music and got all these dogmas that radio music, commercial music was bad. I got these prejudices that, without this album, I would still [have]. It helped me think “well, free jazz is cool, but maybe I want to do something else.” It changed my destiny. I was destined in those days to be a music teacher in a university. But instead, I’m releasing records and [making] my own music.

INTERVIEW BY IZZY FELTON