Karimba (ESL Music, 2012)
Latin music fans can send up a collective wahoo because the Peruvian band Novalima’s latest is set to hit the streets on January 31, 2012. With their cutting-edge sound producing such stunners as Novalima, Afro and Coba Coba, the group is back with 12 new deliciously hip tracks on Karimba on the ESL Music label. Bending, blending and remaking Afro-Peruvian music, Novalima founders Ramon Perez-Prieto, Grimaldo Del Solar, Rafael Morales and Carlos Li Carrillo continue the tradition on Karimba by conjuring up an intensely vibrant and fresh sound that’s pays tribute to Peru’s traditional musical traditions while bringing it into today’s DJ musical culture.
Fans get a healthy dose of meaty Afro-Peruvian percussion, chocked full of cajon, congas, bongos and timbales, as well as a plenty of the flash with sizzling guitar, bass, electronic programming and the bright brass of trumpet and trombone. Gems like “Mamaye,” “Diablo” and “Guayabo” thrum with an energetic pulse that’s full-bodied and gorgeous. Sofia Buitron lends her sultry vocals to “Revolucion” while Monica Carrillo lays down an exotic spoken section. Equally good is the heated “Malivio Son,” the electronic hipness found on “A Panar Algodon” and dense meaty flavor of title track “Karimba.”
Novalima’s Karimba rocks, grooves, tantalizes and tempts the listener with flagrant coolness.
Novalima East Coast Tour Dates:
01/10 – Le Poisson Rouge – New York, NY (ESL Showcase)
01/11-01/13 – 9:30 Club – Washington, DC (w/ Thievery Corporation)
01/14 – Pax – Miami, FL
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
