Oye Manita

When a 39-year-old Totó La Momposina arrived in Paris in June 1979 as a refugee from Colombia, she had already been singing professionally for more than a decade. Adopted by a touring theatre company, she launched a career that would see her become more famous in Europe than in Latin America, peaking with a performance at WOMAD and making her Real World debut, La Candela Viva, in 1993. This retrospective release unites recordings made in Paris, Bogotá, Bristol, Bath and Cold Ashton between 1981 and 2001 with previously unreleased material. The arrangements of traditional songs, mainly by Sonia Bazante, foreground both La Momposina's rich, powerful and enigmatic vocals and the complex percussion that underpins her work. Woodwind and brass instruments add flourishes, choruses add memorable melodies. More ritual than dance music, it takes time to arrive and make itself understood.

Sometimes we're in the Andes, at others on the beach or in a rainforest. The title-track rolls along on a guitar riff, and her whooping vocals sound almost Mexican. That is not surprising when you consider this material is Afro-Latino-Indigenous, with its roots in a Caribbean coastal culture open to the world. In classy packaging, Oye Manita does us all a favour in rescuing music laid down on long-extinct vinyl; turn it up loud.