Guasá, Cununo y Marimba: Afro-Colombian Music from the Pacific Coast

Afro-Colombian music has long been overlooked – largely down to an institutional and classist bias that, it has to be said, is not exclusively a Colombian problem – but every now and again it found its way of being heard. This compilation brings together artists from Colombia's Pacific Coast from the early 70s right through to the modern day who found a way of duking it out with the popular styles of the rest of the country.

In the large part, they chose currulao as their weapon, a rhythm not too distant from salsa but with a very different soul. This is made clear in the powerhouse performances from Gertrudis Bonilla, most notably on opening track ‘Manuela la Bullanguera’, where Bonilla's voice rises above a driving, heavily-percussive groove led by marimba with sparks of raw guitar. The spiritual nature of this music is made clear on Chencho Trompeta's group's 13-minute tribute to a deceased music promoter, filled with emotive vocals and peerless marimba playing. Elsewhere, brass bands take on currulao, the chirimía rhythm from further up the coast offers a more jovial sound, and ‘the voice of the Pacific,’ Markitos Micolta, adorns a number of tracks with effortless clarity.