Bailar En La Cueva (Warner Music Latina, 2014)
Bailar En La Cueva (Dancing in the Cave) is the new album by Uruguay’s Jorge Drexler, one of the most significant Latin American singer-songwriters of our time. Drexler stands out over the rest of songwriters because of his beautiful poetic lyrics, his exquisite warm vocals and his formidable use of various forms of Latin American beats and melodies.
There is a strong Colombian influence in some of the first cuts on the album, introducing genres such as the mesmeric slow cadence cumbia (the real rootsy stuff) and accordion-led vallenato. There are also echoes of George Harrison and nueva trova.
Bailar En La Cueva was recorded in Bogota (Colombia) and Madrid, Spain’s cosmopolitan metropolis, where Drexler resides. “Bailar En La Cueva is a celebration of dance and music as defining elements in our identity as humans,” says Drexler. “To gather around a fire and keep a rhythm collectively is something we probably did even before we had a structured language… On a more personal note, it’s my attempt to recover in my songs the relationship between music and dancing. I came of age in my country [Uruguay] under a dictatorship, where we didn’t dance because it was frowned upon — as much by the military regime as by the circle of leftist intellectuals in which I grew up. I even wrote in a song ‘we musicians don’t dance.’ Well, that idea has passed its use-by date.”
The idea was to do a record for the body .. broaden the world of emotion and intellect in which I’m more comfortable and put the songs in a more physical place: write them from the feet up.”
“We worked the rhythms, especially, with Colombian percussionists. A great many of the songs emerged from that rhythmic foundation,” explains Drexler. “This is a recording in which, almost always, the lyrics are more compact, more concrete and shorter than in previous albums. In almost all the songs I left out half of the lyrics and half of the chords [I had written].”
In addition to an extensive list of top Colombian and Spanish session musicians, the album features guest appearances by top Latin American vocalists such Caetano Veloso (Brazil), Calle 13’s Visitante (Puerto Rico), Ana Tijoux (Chile) and Bomba Estéreo’s Li Saumet of (Colombia).
Even though some of the songs have a festive tone such as the title track Bailar en la Cueva (The idea is eternally new / As the night falls we keep gathering / to dance in the cave), the album also celebrates love, his family’s history and social issues.
In “Bolivia,” Drexler thanks the Andean nation for the support provided to his family in the past. He sings about his grandparents and his father (at the time just four years old), finding refuge in Bolivia after escaping Nazi Germany in 1939. The Drexler family resided lived in Oruro (southwestern Boliovia) for eight years before moving to Montevideo, Uruguay.
“La Plegaria del Paparazzo” (The Paparazzo Prayer) is a sarcastic song where the paparazzo (freelance photographer who stalks celebrities) asks God to help him find “the nose, the shamelessness and the patience” needed to pursue his prey, mocking those who make a living getting “gotcha” pictures for trashy glossy magazines.
In “Data Data” Drexler focuses on avarice: “the greed of glamour and the glamour of greed.”
Meanwhile “La Luna de Rasquí” (The Moon of Rasqui) is a tribute to the late Venezuelan singer and songwriter Simón Díaz, an iconic figure in Latin American music, who died in February 2014.
Jorge Drexler’s Bailar En La Cueva is magical album with charming self-penned poetry, delightful timeless music and the vibrant pulse of infectious Latin America rhythms.
Author: Angel Romero
Angel Romero y Ruiz has dedicated his life to musical exploration. His efforts included the creation of two online portals, worldmusiccentral.org and musicasdelmundo.com. In addition, Angel is the co-founder of the Transglobal World Music Chart, a panel of world music DJs and writers that celebrates global sounds. Furthermore, he delved into the record business, producing world music studio albums and compilations. His works have appeared on Alula Records, Ellipsis Arts, Indígena Records and Music of the World.
