Totó La Momposina y sus Tambores – Tambolero (Real World Records, 2015)
Afro-Colombian music, in its variant forms, has come a long way toward recognition on the global scene. It wasn’t so in 1993 when Totó La Momposina’s La Candela Viva was released on Real World, but that landmark album introduced many, me included, to the indomitable spirit and exhilarating joy of the most deeply rooted Afro-Colombian sounds.
Colombia’s Caribbean coast was once a haven for runaway slaves, who established their own communities and celebrated to the polyrhythms of drums, percussion and call-and-response vocals that had origins a world away in Africa.
Spanish colonial influences made way for the African roots to morph into popular styles like cumbia and Colombia’s own brand of salsa, but it was the original chant-laden African foundation that Totó championed long before La Candela Viva marked a career revival for her at home and to a small but loyal international following who had seen Totó on tour in Europe or the Americas.
Now, Real World has given the album something of a sonic makeover, digitally preserving tracks from the 1993 recording, adding two new gems unreleased after the original sessions, sweetening the vocals with new harmonizing from Totó’s granddaughters and dressing it all up in book-style packaging in which Totó’s story is eloquently told and illustrated. Thus the exhilaration I spoke of earlier can be yours to revisit or discover. Note the title change from the original to Tambolero and believe it, for this is drum-heavy stuff.
The dense, deft, woody percussion that fuels the songs is enhanced to the point of sounding like it’s in your living room, and above it Totó sings like a golden-throated shaman guesting at a village block party.
Acoustic guitars and cane flutes sometimes temper the raw rumble of percussion and voices, but even without those relatively modern accoutrements, the music brims with a bliss that feels like the total overcoming of the adversity that played a role in its creation.
We can’t ever know exactly what African culture in Colombia sounded like when it still lived under the threat of enslavement, but these incredibly fine old/new recordings of songs based on hemisphere-crossing traditions that go back centuries are more than enough compensation.
Totó La Momposina is presently 75 years old and still going strong, and this new presentation of one of her major works is a musical event not to be missed.
Buy Tambolero in North America
Buy Tambolero in Europe
Author: Tom Orr
Tom Orr is a California-based writer whose talent and mental stability are of an equally questionable nature. His hobbies include ignoring trends, striking dramatic poses in front of his ever-tolerant wife and watching helplessly as his kids surpass him in all desirable traits.
