Reviews
Canta Cartola
Cartola was perhaps the most exhilarating of all samba songwriters. Not the kind of samba like the frantic dance...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
Bird's Nest
Their 2012 debut Waterbound and self-titled second album from two years later were both judged ‘Instrumental Album of the Year’...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
¡Vamos a Guarachar!
David Byrne injected irony into cumbia. Argentina's shanty-town bands injected sleaze and spunk. Now, Tucson's Orkesta Mendoza have taken Latin...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
Madera
Andean music is the ultimate ex-pat music, not only because it works well in shopping arcades, but because so many...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
Shadow of Plenty
Two characteristics set the music of Furnace Mountain apart: singer and bassist Aimee Curl's tremolo-laden voice and the band's reverence...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
Fio da Memória
Maita's 2010 debut, while pleasant enough, gave little indication of the innovative experimentation of this, its follow-up. Early last year...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
Carretero
Cándido Fabré has proved himself time and again to be one of Cuba's best living soneros. He first attracted...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
El Changüí Majadero
Changüí music hails from the recently hurricane-ravaged area of Baracoa in Cuba's easterly Guantanamo province: it is a graceful, Caribbean-soaked...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
Dedication to Sylvia Rexach
Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Sylvia Rexach was the face of her island's first all-female combo, Las Damiselas, back in the 1950s....
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
Songs of Struggle & Hope
The veteran Mexican singer-guitarist Lira graduated from fieldwork to songwriting in 1965, championing Chicano equality via theatre and music, while...
Reviewed in issue Jan/Feb/2017
