Nunca Tarde – a round-up of recent new albums (Sofía Rei, Seu Jorge, Carolina Cury, Lila Downs, Gustavo Cortiñas, Pablo Jaurena and many more)

It hardly seems like yesterday since I posted the last round-up, but judging by the sheer wealth of worthy new albums to feature this month, I think I’m clearly mistaken. So, without further ado then…

Sofía Rei: Antónima (GroundUp Music)

It’s an absolute disgrace! How did I manage to miss an album this good that came out in early April by an Argentine Grammy-nominated singer, song-writer and producer based in New York? I don’t know, but I can say this: Antónima took around five years in the making and involved ports of call from Buenos Aires to New York and collaborations with a whole plethora of female artists under the guidance of the singer’s longtime collaborator and co-producer from Guadeloupe, JC Maillard. The album’s 10 numbers blend alternative pop with folk styles, jazz tropes and electronic textures. The artist in her time has collaborated with the likes of John Zorn, Lionel Loueke, Maria Schneider and Pedrito Martínez, so it’s no wonder that this is quite such a classy release.

Seu Jorge: The Other Side (Amor in Sound)

Perhaps one of the reasons I missed Antónima is that I’ve spent far too long listening to this gorgeous new album by Seu Jorge. He, too, took his time, showing as he suggests “a great deal of patience not to give in to the urge to release it too soon, but to wait until it was truly ready”. He, too, enlists a raft of collaborators – those with Zap Mama on “Far From The Sea” and with Beck on Nick Drake’s “River Man”, for example, are almost overpoweringly sumptuous – and the result is what Jorge describes as the best work he’s ever done. I wouldn’t disagree.

Anthony Almonte: Conversando Con la Luna (Wicked Cool Records)

Despite the fact that this Nuyorican singer and percussionist has been twice nominated for a Latin Grammy, he’s a new name for me. He has collaborated with everyone from Sir Macca to Kid Creole, Eddie Palmieri and the Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra, and he has enlisted the support of quite a range of guests on this debut full-length album: the ubiquitous pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, bassist Carlos Henriquez and “little Stevie” Van Zandt, for example. The last-named steps out of The Sopranos to contribute a fiery guitar solo on “Caminando”. Almonte’s Puerto Rican heritage is clear on this polished blend of salsa, pop and rock. If he’s happy to converse with the moon, I’m happy to listen.

Tony Succar: Asuccar (self-released?)

Someone who ploughs a similar furrow is this Grammy-winning producer, percussionist and bandleader with Peruvian and Japanese roots. Famous, possibly, for an album that paid homage to Michael Jackson, the Miami-based musician has recruited even more special guests than you can shake a baton at for these 13 tracks that are deeply rooted in his beloved salsa. Here he hooks up with trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and assorted other Succars for an ebullient homage to Celia Cruz.

Mexican Institute of Sound and Meridian Brothers: Ruido Tovar (Ansonia Records)

Let’s leave that particular furrow for now in favour of something that is very much sui generis (as they say). There aren’t many artists in the big wide world quite as individual as these two: Camilo Lara and Eblis Álvarez. It’s a partnership made in the funny farm that has been waiting to happen for some time now, and the results are suitably bonkers. Their deconstruction of Mexican and Colombian cumbia to create something akin to the slowed-down version of the genre pioneered by Mexican sonideros in the 1970s is glorious. Beck wanders in again like a waif and stray for two of the 10 cuts and the whole album, named after and seemingly inspired by Rigo Tovar, the Mexican musician who revolutionised cumbia by mixing in Moog, puts a big smile on your face that lingers long after the final note.

Carolina Cury: Glissbliss (Bait Records)

Here’s something else seriously quirky and not a little indefinable. Carolina Cury is a London-based Italo-Brazilian pianist, composer and vocalist who works on the intersection of classical music and… what exactly? Experimental pop perhaps? She graduated from the Venice Conservatory and received the Gold Medal from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, so there are no flies on this artiste. She has collaborated regularly with the German-born British composer Max Richter and her piano-led music on this album, with its airy vocals, suspended harmonies, strings and electronics, is both affecting and haunting. Glissbliss‘s blend of chamber music with pop experimentation sounds like little else.

Muca and Roberto Menescal: Beleza (The Secret Warehouse of Sound)

Meanwhile, in the secret warehouse of sound, another London-based expat with Brazilian family roots, Murillo Squillaro, known to fans the world over as Muca, was quietly hooking up with the bossa nova legend and 88-year-old guitarist, Roberto Menescal, for a melodic sun-kissed album featuring the artists’ two guitars and a guest female vocalist on each of the dozen tracks. One such guest, SAHRA, reveals “I spent some time in Brazil in the winter of 2024 and fell in love with bossa nova all over again.” Well, who wouldn’t frankly? The album’s title translates literally as “beauty” and serves as slang for “everything’s cool” – which just about describes an album that could make anyone fall in love with bossa once more.

Lila Downs: Cambias Mi Mundo (Sony México)

The day before Beleza, the grande dame of modern-trad Mexican music brought out her latest album, something of a landmark for the singer because it’s the first time that she has written all (10) tracks herself. While honouring her roots as usual, the songs explore themes of personal transformation, love, grief and empowerment – inspired apparently by the experience of finding love again after the death of her husband, which makes this a heart-warming release. She worked with Alex Cuba on the single, “Jardin de Placer”, and the album as a whole betrays her signature blend of cumbia, bolero and ranchero. I still haven’t forgiven myself for missing her back in the ’90s when she appeared, an unknown then in this household, at the Centre Culturel in Brive. My wife has never forgotten the experience, which is fine: someone had to stay behind to look after Our Kid.

Mon Laferte: Femme Fatale Vol. 2 (Sony Music)

Here’s another Latin American diva, but of a very different stripe. She’s won or been nominated for more Latin Grammys than you and I have had hot dinners and will head out on an extensive tour of the U.S. and Canada this summer. Her music isn’t my cup of herbal tea, but you can’t ignore it. Volume 1 of Femme Fatale came out in 2025 and no doubt garnered trillions of streams. “My intention with ‘Femme Fatale’,” the Chilean/Mexican powerhouse reveals, “was to create a sophisticated trend-averse album—cinematic theatrical poetic and raw dark elegant and introspective. That intention guided the selection of those songs. The tracks on Vol. 2 felt like they belonged to a different sonic universe.” Unable as I am to understand the lyrics, I must quote the publicity in asserting that the second volume “presents a continued uncomfortable honesty that runs through each record focusing on themes of emotional dependency, trauma, father relationships, politics and motherhood”. Here’s a sample…

Marcos Valle: O Compositor e O Cantor (Vampisoul)

On to the past now for a portrait of a world-renowned composer and singer as a young artist. The fresh-faced youth on the front cover looks barely old enough to have left school. Yet this, his second album, recorded in 1965, remains one of the cornerstones of bossa nova. At the time, he was co-composing songs with his brother, Paulo. The dozen numbers on this sophomore release include the indelible “Samba de Verão” and the arrangements throughout were conceived with one of Valle’s most celebrated collaborators, Eumir Deodata. Musically and historically, this is just about essential.

Willie Rodríguez and His Orchestra: Soogie (Vampisoul)

Four years later, a Puerto Rican bandleader brought out this collection of nine guaguancós, boleros, and stretched-out descargas for Mary Lou Records, one of those small independent labels later consigned to history by the advent of Fania. The titular Soogie is the opening “My Dog Soogie”, which is rather sweet. Given that the album’s musical director was none other than Bobby Marín, it’s unusual that none of the tracks is a voguish boogaloo. Talking about the music on the album, Mr. Bobby-Boogaloo himself suggests that “we didn’t call it salsa at the time; it had no name. It was mambo or música movida, they used to call it on the radio.” Whatever they called it, the album’s extended closer is labelled “Salsa con Willie Rodríguez”, so I think it’s fair to suggest at least that this is a rare gem of proto-salsa. Here, Soogie! Here boy. Sit and listen to this…

Gustavo Cortiñas: The Drum Also Sings (Desafío Candente Records)

While on a percussive note, here’s something very rare: an album on which the drum kit takes centre stage. The principal man behind the drums is the Chicago-based Mexican drummer and composer, Gustavo Cortiñas, in partnership with drummers Dave King and Isaiah Spencer and a quartet of individual female voices. It’s an extraordinary affair, which pays homage in particular to one of the most celebrated (and “melodic”) jazz drummers of the past, Max Roach. “While writing for this project,” Cortiñas reveals, “I sought out the elements that I believe give us strength in difficult times: community, spirituality, and ancestry.” The added female vocalists, he goes on, “each brought their own perspectives on healing through song, spoken word, improvisation, and prayer.” Here’s a taste of what to expect: this one a collective improvisation that stems from a phrase of Count Basie’s legendary drummer, Jo Jones.

Pablo Jaurena: Fueyerías (Pablo Jurena and iNB Música)

From one extraordinary highly-specific project to another. Pablo Jaurena is a renowned Argentine bandoneonist and composer who has already been nominated for three Latin Grammys for his previous albums. His new one is a monumental work dedicated entirely to the bandoneon. It features 31 bandoneonists from five countries across three continents, with recordings made in Buenos Aires, Paris, Tokyo, Madrid, Medellín, and Córdoba, involving musicians of various ages, ranging from 22 to legendary figures in their 80s and 90s. The 13 tracks embrace intimate duets, large ensemble works and much in between. A kind of historical documentary, the entire production process was recorded for a film that will premiere later this year. Here’s the opening track to set the scene.

Terror/Cactus: Colapso (Share It Music)

Something else Argentine this way comes… courtesy of the Buenos Aires-born, Miami-raised producer and multi-instrumentalist, Martín Selasco, who has featured before in Prezident Markon’s round-up of new singles (ha! you thought that he and I might be one and the same…). Now based in the Pacific North-west, his work draws from a wide range of Latin American musical traditions— from Argentine folk to Peruvian chicha and more—“woven into [an] hypnotic electronic production shaped by psychedelic guitar, field recordings and dub-influenced textures”. That’s what the publicity says. I’ll say simply that I really like his music and love the album title. Here’s a live sample.

Mari Romano: Além da Pele (self-released?)

The Rio-born singer-songwriter, arranger and producer has been backstage so to speak for the last few years. Since 2018, she has established herself, apparently, as one of the leading names in podcast production in Brazil. Now she’s back with her second album, whose title translates as Beyond The Skin: 11 diverse numbers described aptly as “a mosaic of rhythms that defies strict classification”. Backed by some celebrated musicians including the ubiquitous Kassin on bass, the artist’s classy brass arrangements pull the album’s different threads together and feature the Copacabana Horns, who have supported the likes of Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethânia. “It’s amazing how much we gain from life when we begin to fully inhabit our own skin.” For Mari Romano, “that’s what this album is about”.

Moyses Dos Santos: Maria (Far Out Recordings)

We’ll linger in Brazil for a moment, because here’s one I’ve been listening to off and on for the last few weeks. It’s finally out for public consumption, but I should actually say “London” rather than “Brazil”, as that’s where the bassist, composer and bandleader has spent over two decades as a go-to musician for pedigree artists such as Nile Rodgers, Gregory Porter, Janelle Monáe and Emeli Sandé. With this album, named in honour of his mother, he steps more into the spotlight, re-connecting with his Brazilian Nordeste roots and channeling the sound of London’s contemporary jazz scene. It’s appropriate that the bassist toured with Azymuth in 2022 alongside the late, great Ivan “Mamão” Conti, and here he is with singer Lynda Dawn, trumpeter Theo Croker and another legend, maestro of the strings, Arthur Verocai.

Jonathan Suazo: Ricano Vol. 2: Fruto de Mi Corazón (Miel Music)

Maria ushers us smoothly along the path to Latin jazz. The Puerto Rican saxophonist and composer brought out in early May the second volume of Ricano, a debut that was lauded by the New York Times. This second volume was recorded apparently weeks before the birth of his daughter, Cecilia, and while the first volume, the publicity suggests, “was an act of cultural excavation, this second volume is a document of lived experience, faith tested and renewed, love formalized, and fatherhood arrived”. Perhaps so. Certainly, musically speaking, it’s a very classy affair, recorded with his regular quartet and some special guests, and with evident echoes of Puerto Rican plena and bomba rhythmic traditions as well as shades of Afro-Dominican genres like pambiche and salve. Given the featured alto-saxophone, I discern, too, the spirit of predecessors like Kenny Garrett, Paquito D’Rivera and even “Cannonball” Adderley.

Marina Lima: Ópera Grunkie (Fullgás)

It was the recent single or “focus track” with Ana Franga Elétrico that got me checking out the album tooty-sweety – and, forsooth, I was not disappointed. Marina Lima coined the term grunkie to describe a tribe of free, creative and fearless outsiders. She is clearly one, and this is clearly the resulting work: it’s elegant, intelligent and bold. It’s also a lot of fun. It seems that it’s her first major release following the death of her brother and longtime creative partner, Antonio Cicero, but rather than retreat into nostalgia, as the Brasil Calling newsletter suggests, it “transforms grief into reinvention, moving through electronic textures, spoken-word fragments and intimate reflections on aging, memory and artistic identity”. I’m still in the cursory stage of listening, but I think this is an album that could run and run.

Spok: Raízes (YB Music)

Here’s another one that came via the Brasil Calling newsletter, one that Andy Cumming will almost certainly know about. Spok is no relation to the po-faced man with the pointy ears on the Starship Enterprise, rather a saxophonist, arranger and luminary of the frevo genre associated with Recife and Brazil’s Nordeste. He sings on the album, too, which merges frevo’s orchestral intensity with distorted guitars, heavy percussion, spoken-word passages and layered vocal arrangements. There’s a strong rock vibe to it, partly due to the presence of the artist’s son, Nilo Dias, on wailing guitar. The album’s catalyst was Spok’s discovery via a DNA ancestry test of his connection to the Tikar people of Cameroon. The album’s sonic and conceptual theme is ancestry not as nostalgia, but as living force. Here’s the representative and excellent title track.

Chalino Sánchez: El Pávido Návido (Craft Latino)

Just time and space for one more. An oldie, methinks, and an appropriate one as the first-ever vinyl reissue arrives today. The life of “El Rey del Corrido”, as Sánchez was dubbed, is a case perhaps of he who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword. He often sang about crime and murder and he himself was murdered in 1992, no doubt in some connection with Mexico’s never-ending and brutal drugs trade. However, he also wrote and sang about rather more sentimental matters, and the dozen corridos on this album paint a much more humanist portrait of people’s everyday lives and struggles. It’s raw, heartfelt music with no thrills, although the thunderous beat and the oompah brass of the Banda Sinaolense don’t leave much room for contemplation or variety.

(Photo of Pablo Jaurena and bandoneons courtesy of Dante Ascaino.)

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