Nunca Tarde – a round-up of recent new albums (Alfredo De La Fe, Miramar, Meno Del Picchia, Ilessi, Setenta and more)
26 February, 2025The Ides of March are almost upon us, so it’s time to button up your overcoat (in the words of the old song), slip on your headphones and sample some of the best Latin and Latinesque albums to have agitated the airwaves during the last month or so.
Alfredo De La Fe: Alfredo (Mr. Bongo)
Cuban-born violinist Alfredo De La Fe has played with artists as diverse as Willie Colón and Sylvester and has featured on compilations by the likes of Little Louie Vega, but the first time I really took note of his playing was on Eddie Palmieri’s magnificent Sabiduría album of 2017. So let us now praise Mr. Bongo for re-releasing the violinist’s debut solo album from 1979, an album really of two halves: on the A side, in conjunction with some retro-sounding vocals and prominent flute and/or piccolo, he and his combo come across as a contemporary charanga outfit; while the B side sees him stirring things up on tracks like the perennial dance-floor favourite, “Hot To Trot”, and the final, extended “Canto del Corazon” on which De La Fe really goes for broke.
Miramar: Entre Tus Flores (Ansonia Records)
Talking of violins and retro musical matters, Miramar’s latest release is a little gem. I’ve had a few qualms in the past about the bolero genre – it sometimes comes across, as the publicist has it, as “hopelessly romantic” in the same kind of way that fado sometimes seems unrelentingly melancholic – but I love this Richmond-based (that’s Virginia, not Surrey) combo’s more modern, pragmatic take on the music. In the course of 10 memorable and diverse numbers, their “bolero-beat” aesthetic takes in elements of rock, bossa nova, funk and salsa with even a modicum of ska (on “Lo Que Me Das”) in a way that’s reminiscent of Gotan Project’s offspring, Plaza Francia Orchestra. The vocals incidentally, by Laura Ann Singh and her Puerto Rican cohort “Rei” Alvarez, are outstanding throughout.
Meno Del Picchia: Maré Cheia (Pequeno Imprevisto)
I’ve got a whole raft of releases from Brazil – I’ll leave the more marginal stuff to my esteemed colleague, Andy Cumming – so I’d better make a start with an album that I missed when it came out last year. Meno Del Picchia’s sixth album is produced by Batata Boy, another artist from Maceió who (like Bruno Berle) creates the kind of dreamy atmospheric music that this musician and anthropologist associates “with growing up by the sea.” The album’s title translates as “High Tide” and at times it does indeed suggest, as Del Picchia hopes, “the feeling of standing in front of the sea and gazing at the horizon.” Make sure you don’t miss it like I managed to do.
Mafalda Minnozzi: Riofonic (MPI)
I’ve had a rather soft spot for this Italian jazz singer since hearing the first of several albums she’s dedicated to the music of Brazil. Here she turns her attention specifically to the music of Rio de Janeiro in the company of such illustrious names as Kassin, Jaques Morelenbaum and Roberto Menescal, whose “Rio” kicks things off in the way that she fashions right through to the closing Jobim number, “Água de Beber”. The album is produced and arranged by her regular collaborator, guitarist Paul Ricci, and while it won’t win any golden globes for originality (arguably, what the world needs now is probably not another version of “Garota de Ipanema”), it is as always a classy and most agreeable affair.
Brooklyn Sounds: Libre-Free (Vampisoul)
OK, enough already of this schmaltz. Let’s get down and dirty with what’s probably the best of the latest crop of reissues from the Munster stable. It’s a chunk of raucous salsa dura from Brooklyn driven by the kind of rasping trombone-sound in which Willie Colón specialised. Brooklyn Sounds never got taken up by Fania or Allegro, but this second (and final) album from 1972 demonstrates that labels such as these might have missed a trick. One of the best numbers, “Guaguancó Tropical”, I’m reliably informed, became a long-term favourite in Colombia.
Raíces: B.O.V. Dombe (SME Records)
I wrote about this album in introducing the new SME label a few days ago, so I shan’t repeat myself. Did I hear someone cry from the back, “That makes a change!”? See me later, please… No, suffice to say that this reissue of the difficult-to-classify Argentine/Uruguayan group’s 1978 album is well worth a visit. Have a listen to this funky little number and you’ll get a good idea. Shades of Jeff Beck’s splendid group circa Blow By Blow.
Ilessi: Atlântico Negro (Rocinante)
We’d better get back to Brazil in a hurry, particularly as this one came out at the back end of last year. Ilessi is a researcher of Black music and culture who also happens to be a powerful, emotive singer. Not surprisingly, her latest album is an exploration of Afro-Brazilian culture, spirituality and the African diaspora. Her music is a powerful blend of contemporary elements and a bedrock of candomblé rhythms and although the timbre of her voice is quite different, there’s a hint at times of the great Virginia Rodriguez. At others, however, when she scats she sounds more like a cohort of Hermeto Pascoal or Itibere Zwarg. Among her musicians, I note with interest, is Tiganá Santana’s trusty bass player, Ldson Galter. The album’s opener here is a tribute (if that’s the appropriate word) to the memory of the transatlantic slave trade. It and the other nine numbers add up to something rather special.
Roberta Campos: Coisas de Viver (Self-released)
By way of quite stark contrast, Ilessi’s compatriot Roberta Campos makes elegant and eloquent pop music in a way that reminds me of such British indie equivalents as Everything But The Girl and Saint Etienne. In other words, it won’t move any musical mountains, but it’ll make you feel just dandy while listening – in this case to nine deftly crafted compositions that can be extrovert and introspective, happy and sad and always intimate and personal. As she says, endearingly, “I give the music what it asks for!” It’s 17 years since she independently released her first album and this is another independent production, composed, performed and produced alongside guitarist and producer, Alexandre Fontanetti, and a small band of trusted musicians.
Setenta: Apollo Solar Drive (Latin Big Note)
The Paris-based septet describe their sixth album – marking their forthcoming 20th anniversary together – as an “Afro-Latin retro-futurist tribute to the sun.” I’ll take their word for it. What you probably need to know is that the album brims with the kind of Latin grooves that make you smile while stimulating your dancing shoes. Listening to numbers like the title track, their updated version of an old favourite, “Madame Shingaling” (here), and the splendid single “Sa Ki Taw” – to cite but three of the ten tracks – is to appreciate just why this outfit have racked up more than 12 million listens on music platforms worldwide. I just hope they’ve been paid accordingly.
Various Artists: The Latin Sound of New York (Craft Latino)
Not a million miles away from Setenta’s sound is Craft Latino’s latest gift to mark the 60th anniversary of Fania Records. There’s little I can add to the trailer save to say that both the digital version and the double LP are out now and that all the big hits and the big hitters are featured. So watch, listen and absorb…
Uli Costa e Sandália de Prata: Uli Costa e Sandália de Prata (Brasuca Discos)
Our last trip to Brazil now, but we’re still movin’ and groovin’… Sandália de Prata have been apparently a staple of the São Paulo dance music scene for 22 years, so they know what they’re doing. They’re led by singer and songwriter Uli Costa and the eight numbers on their fifth album are chock full of soul, funk, samba, rap, jazz, MPB, Afrobeat and all those other soft-centred delights you could hope to find in an assortment of this kind. I challenge you to watch this video without smiling or wriggling your hips. If you like it, you’ll love the album as much as I do.
Las Trompas de Falopium: Talismán (Altafonte)
The artist with the anatomical moniker is none other than the Mexican producer Yamil Rezc and this is his first original album since 2017’s Across The Sky. It’s a bit of a strange, surreal affair rooted in electronic psychedelia; strange, too, that among the special guests is the elegant cellist Jaques Morelenbaum, who has already been cited in the more comfortable, customary company of Mafalda Minnozzi. Talismán might be more my cup of tea if I were 30 years younger and had a tab or two of ecstasy in my pocket, but it’s clearly an album of note by a musical innovator who demands appreciation.
And it’s a suitable way, perhaps, to draw a line under this month’s proceedings. There endeth the lesson… I bid you au revoir until the next page of the calendar.
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