Category: Spain

Laia Llach: Sol d’hivern

March 20, 2023

Darwin believed love songs began as a primeval mating ritual and Byron heard melody in the roar of the deep sea. Romance and nature are the oldest tropes in music and also the newest; every song on these themes we hear today connects us with humanity’s long arc. There are, of course, artists of greater and lesser import: One who certainly deserves to be heard widely is the Catalan singer-songwriter Laia Llach, whose dulcet voice flows the eight … More Laia Llach: Sol d’hivern

Blaumut: Olímpica i Primavera

August 17, 2022

Einstein, Dalí and Descartes walk into a bar… No, this isn’t the full story of Blaumut’s fifth album but it suggests the ambition, gravity and splendor of 10 songs that peruse the relative positions of heavenly and earthly bodies in real, surreal and fictional terms, from an eternal we-sing-therefore-we-are viewpoint. Seriously playful, the Barcelona-based band has always seen entertainment as … More Blaumut: Olímpica i Primavera

Dúa de Pel: Madera de Pájaro

April 14, 2022

From their formation as Dúa de Pel in 2014, Eva Guillamón and Sonia Megías lived the rarefied life of itinerant artists, flying to Buenos Aires and Beijing, to New York and Tokyo, to London and back to Madrid, performing, lecturing and giving masterclasses, observing assorted cultures as folklorists and musicians. Then came 2020: Along with all humanity, they became marooned nomads traveling only via … More Dúa de Pel: Madera de Pájaro

Nakany Kanté: De Conakry a Barcelone

May 4, 2021

Nakany Kanté’s third album evokes a place where disparate cultures and experiences harmonize, each home displays artifacts reflecting the owner’s origins and precious pieces acquired on journeys of discovery, and each soul is forged by days of challenge and success, cheer and sadness. The smooth mix of De Conakry a Barcelone is organic, echoing not only a dialogue of African and Western … More Nakany Kanté: De Conakry a Barcelone

Ayom

March 10, 2021

Continents separated by geological forces are knit together again by human movement. But the case of Brazilian singer-songwriter Jabu Morales is exceptional: When she landed in cosmopolitan Barcelona she entered an atmosphere in which her strengths—radiant voice, magnetic persona, Afro-Brazilian rhythms—seemingly became superpowers, especially as they marinated in musical styles from the Mediterranean to Angola, from the Caribbean … More Ayom

El Pony Pisador: Matricular una Galera

November 9, 2020

They are zany, surreal and buoyant, bathtub mariners and virtuosos who sweep through a composition like a storm, leaving behind a perfect mosaic of disparate elements. Five guys from Barcelona who have never gone to sea, El Pony Pisador surfs the soundwaves, inspired by Lord of the Rings (they imagined their earliest gigs as playing “hobbit party music”) and the comic strip figures Asterix and … More El Pony Pisador: Matricular una Galera

Aziza Brahim: Sahari

April 28, 2020

On the poignant album cover a girl in ballet shoes and a tutu poses against the backdrop of a refugee camp. Aziza Brahim’s enchanting desert blues are yet to come but the singer-songwriter has already riveted our attention to the story of her people. Brahim herself was born in a camp a year after her mother fled Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, Spain’s last colonial foothold in Africa. The 1975 invasion displaced tens of thousands, many of … More Aziza Brahim: Sahari

Xabier Díaz & Adufeiras de Salitre: Noró

September 4, 2019

In an introductory prose-poem, Xabier Díaz identifies Noró as the north wind—with previous incarnations as stone and as woman—who fell in love with an Irishman peering at the cliffs of Galway. As wind, Noró dominates humankind because she controls the fine melodic threads we call air and entices us with music. The legend gives a binary … More Xabier Díaz & Adufeiras de Salitre: Noró

Manuel Malou: Unomundo

December 18, 2018

Think global, act local. The mantra applies to government planning, the environment and business, but it’s also a defining feature of music—and few artists active today have embodied the concept longer than the French-Spanish singer-songwriter Manuel Malou. When he was eight he won a flamenco competition in Paris; as a teenager, he was in the vanguard of Spain’s post-Franco cultural awakening and, as part of Los Golfos, created an enduring … More Manuel Malou: Unomundo

Che Sudaka: Almas Rebeldes

September 5, 2018

They began in struggle, illegal immigrants from Colombia and Argentina playing their music on the streets of Barcelona. Fifteen years later, Che Sudaka has played more than 1,500 shows in 45 countries, etching a profile as exuberant, socially conscious, dance provoking, independent thinking exponents of cumbia-ska-punk. Following a tradition of controlled chaos, never doing just … More Che Sudaka: Almas Rebeldes