Music for the Mother

The Sierra Nevada is a special mountain range. On the Caribbean coast, it’s the highest peak on any ocean and, despite a tropical setting, it always has some snow at the summit (its name means ‘Snowy Mountain’). Known to backpackers as a quasi-legendary setting for pungent spliffs and rumours of FARC hideaways, it’s home to several indigenous groups, including the Kogi, Arhuaco, Wiwa and Kankuamo. Released on October 12 – Columbus day for nasty colonists, Indigenous People’s Day for the right-on good folk, including this committed record label – this collection of 15 tracks explores the to-be-expected themes of ancient peoples; flowers and seeds, water and life-cycles, work and faith.

The album is variously titled on the sleevenotes and press releases; the most complete subtitle is Ancestral Teyuna Music from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia – and the release claims to be the first recording ever of a Teyuna woman, without really saying why this is a huge deal. The meditations and chants, prayers and accompaniments to ritual offerings are akin to tidied-up field recordings, and work through repetition, whispers, murmurings and deep beats on very earthy percussion instruments. ‘Agua (Song for Water)’ is a stirring, affecting incantation. ‘Dugunavi and Zongla (The Seeker and the Darkness)’ begins as a story or anecdote (I think, I don’t speak any of these languages, and neither do you) to morph into something similar. ‘The Black and Brown Messenger Bird’ features a kind of flute, but as with authentic Andean musics, there are none of the scales or harmonic structures familiar to Western ears. Rather, a looping sequence of five notes bursts out as plea or protest. These ancestral peoples are guided by spiritual leaders, and it is they who have overseen the arrangements to ensure they conform to tradition. Of great interest to anthropologists, the songs are probably a bit extreme and ethereal as a soundtrack to the lowland lives of we non-natives – though a plate of arepas and some of that mythic mountain-slope blow might help ease the flow.