Sounds and Colours’ Christmas ’24 Chart-Toppers

Happy Christmas or bonnes fêtes, as they say inclusively in France. This year, my regular “marginal” colleague Andy Cumming and I decided to get our list of the year’s finest in before rather than after Christmas. Well, everyone else is doing it and your Prézident ain’t too proud or imperious to forego his customary New Year’s Honours List. I’m delighted to see that Andy has come up with a couple of my choices, which gives me a little more wriggle-room. Selecting a mere ten from an entire year’s worth of musical delights is an onerous task, certainly for a fence-sitting Libran. So here we go, and not in any particular order – but please bear in mind that Andy’s selections are based on his “On The Margins” column and therefore exclusively Brazilian. Any accusations of apparent bias may therefore be addressed to him. Anyway… good cheer and a happy new year to you all from us both.

Mateus Fazeno Rock: Jesus Ñ Voltará (Deck) (AC)

What can you expect from grunge-inflected rock made in the favelas of the north-east? Well, the answer is a fantastic mixture of Brazilian soul, hip-hop, modern urban genres and emotional rock. Working with the unlikely influences of Djavan and Nirvana in equal measure, Matheus “Doing” Rock proves that rock music can still have something to say if it’s put into the hands of creative people coming from unlikely backgrounds.

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly: MESTIZX (International Anthem/Nonesuch) (MS)

It’s rather nice to include a pair of artists from Chicago’s super-trendy International Anthem label (one has one’s image to consider, you know). The Bolivian-born singer and her Puerto Rican partner, drummer Frank Rosaly, are based in the Netherlands. That certainly didn’t stop them producing a rather extraordinary sonic collision of “de-colonial Latinx” musical influences and the rhythms of punk, electronic music and free jazz. It’s a bravura gumbo of sounds that defies any kind of easy categorisation.

Negro Leo: Rela (QTV Selo) (AC)

A late contender, recording finished in September and it was released at the end of November. The album is a remarkably original mix of sexually-charged “Boi bass”, which translates as a mixture of folklore, Autotune and drum n’ bass influenced breaks. The starting point was the Bumba-meu-boi drum rhythm from Leo’s native Maranhão, a folkloric galloping rhythm used in traditional storytelling, and in-house producers, such as Renato Godoy and Lucas Pires, combined this with modern maximalist electronics to soundtrack Leo’s lyrics on modern sexual mores. 

Various Artists: We’ve Got a Groovy Thing Going, The Latin Soul of Bobby Marín (Vampisoul) (MS)

Since Andy and I didn’t specifically veto either reissues or compilations, here is quite possibly my favourite release of the year – certainly in terms of sheer enjoyment, and frankly what better criterion? Not only is the music enough to put a smile on a statue – mainly boogaloo, shingaling and Latin soul from a whole raft of dodgy-sounding temporary outfits like 107^th Street Stickball Team, along with “proper” groups like Ocho – but this splendid compilation, supported by Pablo Yglesias’s detailed and revelatory sleeve notes, restores the presiding genius responsible for it all (singer, songwriter and producer Bobby Marín) to his rightful place in the Latin pantheon.

Thiago França: Canhoto de Pé (YB Music) (AC)

After experimenting in so many formats and styles, França works within the restrictions of a jazz trio and produces some of his most outstanding work. Expanding on themes that he’s been workshopping with his live shows, he presents a unique Brazilian take on jazz: just listen to the percussion on “Ajuntó de Xangô”. His electric and spasmodic style of playing on both saxophone and flute against the pulsating bass of Marcelo Cabral and skittering drumming of Wellington Moreira has never sounded better.

Superfónicos: Renaceré (Spaceflight Records) (MS)

The debut album this summer from the Texan-Columbian combo lived up to all the promise of the preceding singles. It took a while in coming – it was started four years ago during the Time of Covid – but it wasn’t ‘alf worth the wait. Helmed by Beto Martinez, the Grammy-winning guitarist, engineer and producer, it’s a richly varied album full of heft and substance, helped by the band’s employment of the bombardino (euphonium) on several tracks. There’s Latin soul, Afro-funk, psychedelic cumbia and plenty more to get your teeth into.

MOMO.: Gira (Batov Records)

A swinging mix of new wave London jazz and Brazilian melodic songwriting, which shouldn’t be such a surprise as it was recorded at the Total Refreshment Centre, near to where Marcelo Frota lives in London. The tracks are mostly long, and seemingly edited down from jams, but this allows the sly grooves to breathe and simmer like a tasty stew and there’s always a forward momentum. This is his seventh album, so he‘s had plenty of time to perfect his technique, not to forget the lyrical contributions from Wado.

New Regency Orchestra: New Regency Orchestra (Mr. Bongo) (MS)

Ha! I thought I’d park this next one here, since the NRO is the brainchild of its artistic director Lex Blondin, a founder of the… Total Refreshment Centre. The 18-piece behemoth based in London cooks up quite a Cuban stew on this their debut album, consolidating a steady stream of invigorating singles and serving notice to fans of Latin big-band music that the spirit of Cachao, Bebo Valdes, Machito & His Afro-Cubans et al lives on in the UK’s capital. It’s “meaty, beaty, big and bouncy” to borrow a description once applied to the output of a certain beat-group from the same metropolis.

Tais Lobo & Cadu Tenório: Mãe_Solo (Tratore****) (AC)

Earlier this year Tenório used his production skills with Rio cult rocker Rogerio Skylab, managing to drag his sound into the post-internet age, creating a mischievous partnership in the process and hopefully presenting Tenório’s sound to a new audience. On this release, he works with the activist and cineaste Tais Lobo, whose folkloric songs he produces, mixes, plays and arranges, as she sings about being a single mother in Brazil. It’s an original take on Brazilian music, where there’s elements of indigenous folk, Meredith Monk and Björk back-grounded by Tenório’s distinctive dark ambient soundtracks.

Fania All Stars: Latin Soul Rock (Craft Latino Recordings) (MS)

Among a raft of Craft’s loving reissues to celebrate 60 years of the almighty Fania label, this one arguably wins the Ballon d’Or. Long out of print, the album celebrates a Latin jamboree at New York’s Yankee Stadium that all turned a little pear-shaped when the crowd went bananas-to-the-beat and spilled onto the pitch. The concert, featuring the label’s assembled multitude of stars, along with guests like Manu Dibango and Carlos’s kid bro’, Jorge Santana, had to be stopped. The re-mastering highlights the fact that several tracks had to be re-recorded. So “Chanchullo”, say, certainly sounds more polished than the closing “Congo Bongo”, but the crowd’s hysteria when Ray Barretto and Mongo Santamaria’s conga duel takes things into a higher dimension says all you really need to know about this landmark recording.

Bruno Berle: No Reino dos Afetos 2 (Far Out Recordings/Psychic Hotline) (AC)

A swooning romantic album full of beautiful melodies, Berle shows that the first volume of No Reino dos Afeitas was not a flash in the pan, but the beginnings of an original talent. This is ultra-modern MPB utilizing electronics, loops, drum machine and violão to express love and all its complications. The inclusion of an Arthur Russell cover perhaps goes some way to suggest where Berle is coming from: that mixture of experimentation and sentimentality.

Tiganá Santana: Caꞔada Noturna (Ajabú! Records) (MS)

And while we’re considering original talents, the fourth album on the Swedish label by the Afro-Brazilian minstrel with the deep brown voice from Brazil’s north-east cemented the return to top form evidenced by last year’s collaboration with Omar Sosa, Iróko. Very much a string-driven thing, with the trademark delicate percussion less evident than before, the seven songs – played mainly by Santana with his regular bass player, Ldson Galter, and guitarist Leonardo Mendes – cohere within an overall dreamily atmospheric entity conjured up as ever by that unique voice.

Rubel: As Palavras Vols. 1 and 2 (Mr. Bongo)(AC)

I was all set to see Rubel perform this album (in Rio, by the sea, no less) but was struck down by the dreaded dengue fever; let me tell you I was gutted. The sonic whole of Rio de Janeiro can be found in this ambitious multi-genre effort, split into two volumes and employing a host of contributors. Of course there’s joyful samba with Xande de Pilares, but there’s also new-wave MPB with Bala Desejo, old school baile funk with BK, DJ Gabriel de Borel and MC Carol, and old-fashioned romance with a crooning Milton Nascimento.

Various Artists: Cumbia Cumbia Cumbia!!! Vol.2  (Vampisoul) (MS)

Until Bobby Marín’s Groovy Thing came along, I might have cited this terrific compilation, again from those vampi-souls in Madrid, as the most purely enjoyable release of the year. The follow-up to the first volume of Columbian delights just shades its predecessor in my book for the reason that it focuses on the lesser-known Codiscos label and its subsidiaries – as opposed to the better-known produce from Discos Fuentes. Not that familiarity breeds contempt in any way, but it made for lots of spicy variety: rural cumbia, horn-driven cumbia, big-band cumbia and urban contemporary cumbia, recorded between 1962 and 1983, all clamour for our attention and refresh the parts that other such generic compilations can’t quite reach. I liked it so much I bought it as a wedding present for a couple around here. I hope to Bogotá they like to dance!

Amaro Freitas: Y’Y(Psychic Hotline) (AC)

This superb album of jazz piano has propelled Freitas into the international spotlight, being at once both simple and complex, thematically and musically. It’s inspired by the Amazonian spirits and the first half certainly brings to mind rushing waters over smooth pebbles amid lush vegetation. The second half uses the talents of Hamid Drake on drums, while Jeff Parker appears on guitar and Shabaka Hutchings plays his flute. Freitas’ playing varies between abstract twinkling of the higher notes to pounding expressionistic chords to the clatter of Brazilian percussion dropping onto the piano strings. 

Zaccai Curtis: Cubop Lives! (Truth Revolution Recording Collective) (MS)

Since we’re thinking about jazz pianists, here’s the New York educator and master of the eighty-eights, who came up with a wonderful tribute to the golden days of “Cubop” in the company of brother Luques on bass, percussionist Camilo Molina and drummer-percussionists, Willie Martinez and Reinaldo De Jesus. As you might surmise, it’s a percussive affair driven as much by the leader’s invigorating piano throughout a programme of original compositions and assured re-workings of standards like “52^nd Street Theme”. Curtis himself suggests that he “wanted to make a period piece album that brought a new perspective to an older style.” He nailed it!

Numa Gama: A Spectral Turn (bié records) (AC)

Even though it was released at the beginning of the year, I kept coming back to this collection of dubby electronics that seems to be inspired by the ’90s IDM compilations that are à la mode at the moment. This transmedia producer continues to make her unique, elastic, borderless electronic music. The vocals, sometimes appearing as a disembodied vocoder-ed voice, are used sparingly and enclosed by intimate two-note chord structures that show an obsessive sound design.

Orquesta Akokán: Caracoles (Daptone Recording Co.) (MS)

Right from the first few notes of the opening “Con Licencia”, susceptible listeners are transported back to 1950s Havana or New York. Six years after their Grammy-nominated debut on Daptone, the retro Cuban/Nuyorican orchestra hit another ball out of the park with their latest release. Redolent of earlier times the sound may be, but the tracks are no mere copies: lyricist Kiko Ruiz’s electrifying lead vocals are hitched to a thrilling and contemporary amalgam of brass, reeds and percussion that leaves you quite breathless. Founding member Jacob Plasse has talked of the overriding sense of joy when the outfit performs, and whether it’s mambos, cha-cha-chas or boleros, the music is performed with such intensity and brio that it’s enough to send the feet moving and the spirits soaring.

Pandit Pam Pam/LOHAS: Esquemas  (Boston Medical Group) (AC)

Eduardo Ramos, as well as being a new father, has found the time to release a ton of new music this year, so this album/EP is just one example from the dozen singles as well as the albums Camburi and Ar he released this year, any of which I could have chosen. I chose this one as it was the most under the radar, basically two long ambient drone pieces: “Esquema B” sounds as though it’s on the edge of shredding your speaker as its hypnotic repetition draws you further inwards; while “Esquema C” could soundtrack a late night drive through the desert.

Nomade Orquestra: Terceiro Mundo (Nublu Records) (MS)

Oh dear. We end up back in Brazil. I didn’t mean to… but how can I overlook what could be the 10-piece Paulista outfit’s masterpiece? Forming a kind of instrumental trilogy with their first two releases, Terceiro Mundo (or Third World) sounds very much like the apotheosis of their signature blend of funk and big-band spiritual jazz. Like MOMO.’s Gira, this is – as the band suggest – an album “about ‘the groove'”. They go on to talk about “strong influences from funk and soul music, powerful brass sections, [and] sound spices from different places and cultures.” That says all you need to know about this particular third world release.

Mentioned in despatches

Several others might have found their way into the Top 20 on a different day: Ayom’s Sa.Li.Va, for example, Meridian Brothers’ Mi Latinoamérica Sufre, BALTHVS’ HARVEST, Jan Lundgren & Yamandu Costa’s Inner Spirits, Dora Morelenbaum’s debut, Pique, Susana Baca’s live outing, Sesc Jazz Ao Vivo, Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco’s Celia & Johnny, Ansonia Records’ splendid compilation, Salsa Con Estilo… I could go on. And gosh darn it, I realise I’ve forgotten about Radio Martika’s essential compilation of Edmundo Arias’ Colombian “tropical music” from the ’50s and ’60s, Guepa Je! Not to mention Analog Africa’s recent Super Disco Pirata. But it’s so hard; please don’t make me choose.

Andy Cumming’s Reissue of the Year

Djalma Corrêa: Espontaneamente se Tenta (Lugar Alto)

The label heads of Lugar Alto, João Visconde and Sávio de Queiroz spent a huge amount of time with Djalma Corrêa going through his tape archive, just before his untimely death, to put together this compilation of unreleased material. While Corrêa is mostly known for his Afro-Brazilian percussion work, specifically with the Bahian Tropicalistas, this collection demonstrates his work with electro-acoustic composition, drone and synthesizers. The first example of electronic music in Brazil can be found on side D of this double LP set with the live recording “Bossa 2000 dC”, where you can hear proto blips and bleeps similar to the work of Morton Subotnick.

Cover photo of Superfónicos courtesy (as far as I can gather) of Magnetic Focus.

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