http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VusHfkXyqYg

How did this album, and specifically it’s Afro-Brazilian flavours, come about?

It came about very organically. I’ve been living in Rio since 1999, so very much involved with local musicians for all these years. I’ve played capoeira for a long time, I’m an Angoleiro, so capoeira‘s been a big influence and that’s obviously pure Afro-Brazilian rhythm. And I play caixa and repique at the school of samba so I’ve been involved with various different Afro-Brazilian rhythms for a very long time and most of these rhythms have a lot of similarities with ragga and dub so you can fuse them with a lot of different things. I wanted to work on that level.

João Hermeto, who is the percussionist on virtually all the tracks is a guy I’ve worked with a really long time so I just started building tracks and getting him to play stuff on it. Then started building up all the tracks from there.

What’s the meaning behind the album’s title?

The name came from the first video I put out, “No Balanço da Canoa”. I had the idea for a really long time and I was explaining it to people and I kept coming to the part where our hero (the musician, data trafficker guy) arrives at the Quilombo do Futuro and it kept coming out like that, and while I was in the middle of looking for a name for the record, I thought “that’s it”.

Obviously a quilombo is an isolated place with limited access, easily defended, where people can live. It’s a little bit of a romantic vision of a quilombo because there were quilombos that had slavery, that had people who went out and robbed, so it’s a romantic image of that.

[Also] a big influence was the book Neuromancer by William Gibson. There’s a colony of rastafarians that live in a spaceship and every chapter that opened up with the rastas started off with “… and the strains of heavy dub bass wafted through the spaceship” or something like that, which was interesting because in a lot of ways dub is a music of cultural resistance and the rhythms I’m working with come directly from the quilombos and are also very much elements of cultura resistance. There are a lot of quilombos that are still around and functioning but in a way the cultural resistance movement has become something that has spread all over the world, you can find it on the Internet, people are connected by email and cellphones. So these are all elements of Quilombo do Futuro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dbb4y7AIG4

One of the really interesting things for me about the album is the use of Afro-Brazilian percussion, which gives this cyclical, energetic quality to the music, which is quite unusual to hear with deep bass and some of the dub effects you use…

I grew up listening to Jamaican music; dub, reggae and dancehall have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember and I’ve been to Jamaica a couple of times and it’s been a huge, huge influence on me. There’s a number of crews doing ragga and dub and dancehall in Brazil, a lot of them are friends of mine, and I’ve been accompanying that whole scene for a long time. One of the things that really seemed strange in some ways is that there is not a lot of Brazilian influence in the music, it tends to be more internationalised, it’s not so much about putting value on Afro-Brazilian rhythms. So it’s like an international sound but it’s sung in Portuguese. There are exceptions, the first Digital Dubs record totally blew my mind. They’ve got these slowed down, baile funk, dub kinds of things and others with samba elements and that totally blew my mind. Some of the most interesting stuff I’d heard in a really long time. But there’s not many people doing that kind of thing. So I really wanted to put the reggae and Afro-Brazilian rhythms together and see what I could do with it.

Considering you’ve lived in Rio since ’99 how come this is the first time that you’ve really expressed this Brazilian side to your tastes on an album?

I’m one of those people that gets a call or email to go and play in South Africa or India or wherever and I’m like “wow, I can do that” and then extend my time there. They’re going to pay for my airfare so I can go to Mozambique and I can meet new people there and do stuff and try to take advantage of that. I found myself travelling all the time and almost never at home. At home I was basically just getting ready to go on the next trip so I finally had to bite the buller and start saying no to things and just concentrating on my own stuff.

How did you come across Rosângela Macedo, who sings beautifully on a couple of the tracks?

I was at a friend’s house [that friend being Wolfram Lange of the excellent SoundGoods blog] and he put this one song on called “tambor” something, it’s the first track on a Kiko Dinucci record [we think he's referring to "Tambú E Candongueiro" off Kiko Dinucci E Bando AfroMacarrônico], and I just thought “what is this?” and asked him to play it six times in a row and then I asked him to email it me and I listened to it all day long the next day. So I ended up tracking Kiko down and got in touch with Rosângela [who sang on that song] and went to Sao Paulo just to meet her and record with her. She’s very much from the Afro-Brazilian world and up to that point had been very suspicious of hip-hop, so through this whole project it really opened up her eyes to how hip-hop basically works off traditions, and works in the same oral traditions as all these Afro-Brazilian rhythms.

Have you got any plans to take the album on tour with a live band?

I’m trying to work out how to play it live right now. I’ll be on tour in Europe in July, just doing a short tour, two weeks or so, and then I’ll be touring the States in August, and then back in Europe in November, where I’ll probably be with Jahdan Blakkamoore who’s on a couple of tracks on the record. Ya know putting on a live show and taking it on tour is quite an underaking so it depends on a lot of things but my ideal set-up would be two percussionists and two vocalists. Hopefully these current dates will lead up to doing it [the live band] at some festivals in Europe next summer.

Quilombo do Futuro is released by Post-World Industries. You can read our review of the album here and can buy the album from iTunes, Amazon and other music retailers.

Listen to the album below:

Ondatrópica “Punkero Sonidero”

Maga Bo feat. Rosângela Macedo “Eu Vim de Longe”

Audible Soul vs. Spanglish Fly

Mariachi El Bronx “Revolution Girls” (Algodón Egipcio Remix)

Senor Griff “Cerro Rico”

Pernett “Cumbia Computer” (Zeb’s Reggae Instrumental)

Originais do Sample “Elza”

Quantic & Nickodemus “Mi Swing es Tropical” (Dj OGT Live Remix)

Orquesta el Macabeo “El Sueño”

International Soundclash will feature both rare and new and exclusive material, with a specially designed cut-out globe on a pull-out poster accompanying the CD and double LP. Artists to feature on the compilation include one of our personal favourites from Colombia, Grupo Canalón, as well as some classic Colombian salsa from La Pesada. There will also be tracks from all other the Caribbean and Africa, with styles varying from soca to merengue and soukous to Guatemalan carnival music.

Sofrito: International Soundclash will be released on Strut on July 23rd. Full tracklisting is below:

1. Lord Shorty & Vibrations International – Vibrations Groove
2. La Pesada – Cumbia y Tambo (En La Lluvia)
3. Midnight Groovers – O Ti Yo
4. Les Difficiles de Pétion-Ville – Fe’m Confiance (Tropical Treats Edit)
5. Owiny Sigoma Band – Nabed Nade Ei Piny Ka F
6. Mas Ka Klé – Lésé yo Palé
7. Kiland et L’Orchestre Mabatalaï – Pour Chercher le Magot
8. Bell’a Njoh – Ebolo
9. Concept Neuf – The Path (Sofrito Edit)
10. Grupo Canalon – La Zorra y El Perol
11. Les Vikings – Ambiance (Guhe Huiamo)
12. Sartana et Son Groupe Mistral – Information Par Le Mistral
13. Luis Kalaff y Sus Alegres Dominicanos – Agarralo Que Eso Es Tuyo
14. Afro Festival led by Fantastic Tchico Tchicaya – El Manicero
15. Melodica Teens Band – Mwekuru Muthao

More info:
strut-records.com
sofrito.co.uk

Regular readers to this blog will no doubt be familiar with Galeano for his work with both Frente Cumbiero and Ondatropica, and can be sure this one fine mix with some real hidden gems from Colombia (Mario is also one heck of a DJ after all, not to mention an obsessive music collector and lover of vinyl).

Esperando el Tsunami was a project created by Lulacruza and Vincent Moon last year, which culminated in a film (which has been screened worldwide this year) and a forthcoming album (that we can’t wait to hear!) You can find out more about that project by reading Lulacruza’s blog here on Sounds and Colours or this interview with Vincent Moon.

Frente Cumbiero will be playing in London on Thursday 31st May 2012. More details here.

For anyone interested in delving deeper into Colombian music and culture check out our current campaign to publish Sounds and Colours Presents Colombia, an in-depth look at Colombia and everything we love about the country.

García Márquez was a member of the group known as the “Boom” generation, says Cynthia Vich, associate professor of Spanish and comparative literature at Fordham University in New York City.

“The ‘boom’ period was a particular moment in the 60s when Latin American literature became highly visible in the rest of the western world,” she explains. “It was a best-selling publishing phenomenon which resulted in García Márquez and other boom writers being translated into many languages. As a result, many of the mainstream ideas of what Latin America was to foreign eyes were formed through the reading of the ‘boom’ generation’s works.”

García Márquez became the most popular writer of ‘magical realism,’ a genre Vich says was coined in the 1960s. In addition to having a strong influence on several authors from later generations, such as Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende, García Márquez’s mastery of the aesthetic style garnered him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

For a suggested reading list of García Márquez’s books, I consulted with Maria Palacio, a bilingual senior librarian for the Lee County Library System in Fort Myers, Florida. Palacio, a Colombian American who travels to the country often, counts herself among García Márquez’s biggest fans.

“While walking through narrow cobble stoned streets in Cartagena’s historic centro or gawking at the front door of La Cueva in Barranquilla, or just passing through the dusty towns and villages near Aracataca where Gabo spent his early years and reading his works, one can appreciate the places that shaped the Nobel Prize winner’s life and put him, his magic realism and Colombia on the literary map,” she says.

Palacio recommends those new to Gabo’s works read the following novels:
 

Of Love and Other Demons/Del Amor y Otros Demonios (1994)

Though not published until the mid-1990s, the inspiration for this story began for García Márquez in 1949, about one year after quitting law school in the Andes and heading to his parents’ home city of Cartagena, where he would start his journalism career, Palacio explained. On a slow news day, Gabo’s editor sent him to the former Santa Clara convent (now a 5-star hotel) to cover the exhumation of the tombs of nobles and nuns buried under the ruins of the chapel. After looking over the piles of bones of different dignitaries of Cartagena’s colonial period, he witnessed workers uncover the tomb of a young girl whose coppery hair emerged meter by meter from the ruins.

The scene sparked the memory of a legend Gabo’s grandmother told him about a marquesita with incredibly long hair that died at 12 and was said to have performed miracles.

Available at Amazon

Chronicle of a Death Foretold/Cronica de una Muerte Anunciada (1981)

In this very short book, the reader is taken step by measured step and hour by detailed hour through the events that culminate in the publicly announced murder of Santiago Nasar. (“This is a very original twist on crime fiction,” Vich says of this book. “It’s a wonderful picture of rural life and the paralyzing effects of following customs without questioning.”)

Available at Amazon

Memories of My Melancholy Whores/Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes (2004)

In García Márquez’s most recent novel, a 90-year-old bachelor recounts how he woke up one day and decided to call his old madam Rosa Carbarcas to enlist her help in finding a young virgin as a gift to himself. “It’s themes are a departure from his classic works,” Palacio says. And because it was so highly anticipated, legend has it that a shipment of the first editions was stolen, forcing the author to change some major details, including the ending.

Available at Amazon

Love in the Time of Cholera/El Amor en los Tiempos del Colera (1985)

“Gabriel García Márquez’s Cartagena is everywhere in this gorgeous love story which is actually surprisingly close to the story of the author’s own parents and their forbidden love,” Palacio said of the story revolving around the privileged Fermina Daza, who falls for the town telegrapher, Florentino Ariza. In this book, Gabo takes us from Cartagena to the wild town of Riohacha and other now familiar places in between as Fermina’s angry father tries to keep the two apart.

Available at Amazon
 

“Now that you’ve worked your way through some short yet very substantial works by Gabriel García Márquez, you are ready to read his masterpiece,” Palacio says.

One Hundred Years of Solitude/Cien Años de Soledad (1967)

This is a multi-generational saga of the Buendia family set in the mythical town of Macondo. “Many parts of this novel are actually very embellished scenes from the author’s own life growing up in the big spooky house of his maternal grandparents in Aracataca and where the ghost of one of his great aunts was a childhood playmate,” Palacio explains.

Adds Vich: “The novel is the best example of magical realism as well as the place of development of some of the most fascinating characters in Latin American literature.”

Available at Amazon

This Gabriel Garcia Marquez Reader will appear in Sounds and Colours Presents Colombia, our new book/CD celebrating the best of Colombian music and culture. To get your copy go to indiegogo.com/sc-colombia

Putumayo (the company) was founded as a clothing company in 1975 by Dan Storper, and was later sold, with Storper once again using the Putumayo name to later launch Putumayo World Music in 1993. This is the record label that has recently released albums like Latin Beat, African Party and many others representing the rootsier, often more playful, sound of music from all over the world. All of this releases have featured colourful, folkloric illustrations on their covers, which have become their trademark. If you have a look at their website you will no doubt have encountered these albums at some point, especially as the company’s releases are more likely to be found in gift or coffee shops than traditional music retailers.

I wanted to find out why Storper has named his company after this area of Colombia, a region whose name literally means “gushing river.” Here’s what Dan had to say.

What was so special about Putumayo that you decided to name your company after the region?

I was particularly struck by the beauty of the Sibundoy, a village in the Putumayo river valley in Colombia that was known for its handicrafts. One afternoon during Carnival celebrations, I was sitting by the side of a stream with the Andes in the background, beautiful birds swirling around and the indigenous people of the village getting dressed in their Carnival costumes. It was colourful and filled with pageantry, yet rootsy and charming. Later, when I found out that the Putumayo River flows along the borders of four countries, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil where I imported handicrafts from, it made sense to me to name my company after that river and valley.

What was your original reason for travelling around this region, and would you recommend others to travel there?

I had majored in Latin American studies and wanted to visit the countries I’d studied. Unfortunately, the Putumayo River valley has become a center of drugs and violence related to a longtime rebellion, so it’s hard to visit. Much of Colombia including its larger cities such as Bogotá and Cartagena, has become safe and fascinating to visit. I’m a fan of the region and think everyone should try to visit some of its highlights including the historic city of Cuzco and the ancient ruins of Macchu Picchu in Peru. I also love Guatemala and the historic and indigenous areas in Mexico.

Do you still visit Putumayo?

Since I began to focus on music and sold my clothing business, I stopped traveling to this area. I was invited four years ago by President Uribe of Colombia to visit the Putumayo with him and I’ll never forget the outdoors “town hall meeting” with leaders of the province. One indigenous lady recalled her dad talking about a visitor from America who named his company Putumayo and promoted the crafts and the region around the world. It apparently made the community very proud and, as you might imagine, moved me immensely.

Since you started your company Putumayo have you visited any places that you thought, well I could have named the company that instead?

Every time I think of my time in the Putumayo valley, I smile. There’s never been another name that’s come along that I would have preferred.

You can find out more about Putumayo World Music here.

If you would like to find out more about Colombia and it’s culture check out our current campaign to raise funds for a book about Colombian music and culture.

You can download the album from dolli.bandcamp.com/album/un-amigo-de-un-amigo-que-no-soy-yo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMWgUFbHnOE

There will also be features on Colombian cinema, Circo Para Todos, indigenous culture, alternative tourist destinations, the Barranquilla Carnival, and lots more. See our fundraising page indiegogo.com/sc-colombia for more details on the project, campaign and how you can help us.

The book is written by Sounds and Colours’ dedicated team of writers, Colombian artists providing artwork and illustrations, London promoters and record label Movimientos producing the accompanying CD (click here to get a taster of what that CD will entail), and photos provided by the likes of B+ and Mirjam Wirz.

In order to fund our first print edition, named Sounds and Colours Presents Colombia, we are planning on raising the funds via Indiegogo, a popular crowdsourcing website. Essentially, people interested in getting a copy will be able to pre-buy the book before it’s even published. The money they pledge will be used to pay for the printing costs, as well as pay for the specially-commissioned Colombian artists for their artwork.

If you would like to get yourself a copy of Sounds and Colours Presents Colombia, or simply support the project please visit indiegogo.com/sc-colombia

Fernanda is the lead singer and one of the founding members of the band, who formed in 1996. Over the years they have become one of Brazil’s finest alternative rock bands, often taking inventive approaches to their music (culminating in their most recent album Música de Brinquedo where they only used children’s toys and instruments for experimentation) while also showing a certain gift for a keen melody. On her choices Fernanda had this to say: “I think they represent pretty well the way our people feel about love, family, landscapes, loneliness, aging…”

Here are her choices:

Kátia B “Cais” (Milton Nascimento/Ronaldo Bastos)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTVg_TqRdzo

Clara Nunes “Coisa da Antiga” (Wilson Moreira/Ney Lopes)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2898K2cPQ0M

Skank “Dois Rios” (Samuel Rosa/Lô Borges/Nando Reis)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL53fH-x0rw

Beto Guedes “Veveco Panelas & Canelas” (Milton Nascimento/Fernando Brant)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3y3Ckt6Jhc

Sexo Explícito “Faca” (Rubinho Troll)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_wu05eB1M0

Lô Borges “Um Girassol Da Cor de Seu Cabelo” (Lô Borges/Márcio Borges)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q6Str9aDmw

Marina Machado “Nuvem Cigana” (Lô Borges/Ronaldo Bastos)

Érika Machado “As Coisas” (Érika Machado/Cecília Silveira)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-puuUv_NRA

Plus, you can watch Fernanda Takai performing “As Coisas” acoustically with Érika Machado here.

Rita Ribeiro “Contra o Tempo” (Vander Lee)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyhft6axsgI

Milton Nascimento “Travessia” (Milton Nascimento/Fernando Brant)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9OMDgeUyRI

Listen to “Travessia” with English lyrics here

And it’d be rude if we didn’t return the favour to Fernanda, so here a couple of our favourite Pato Fu songs:

Pato Fu “Antes Que Seja Tarde”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwU8gqh8T08

Pato Fu “Live And Let Die”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QigHmXJY-pM

You can find out more about Fernanda Takai at fernandatakai.com.br and Pato Fu at patofu.com.br

Quilombo do Futuro delves into the rich Afro-Brazilian musical heritage and transports it into the 21st century. The album revolves around a number of collaborations and original recordings made with Brazilian musicians, new and old, from capoeira master Mestre Camaleão and singer Rosângela Macedo to contemporary innovators like Lucas Santanna, Funkero and BaianaSystema’s guitarra bahiana maestro Robertinho Baretto. Maga Bo blends the traditional rhythms, instrumentation and vocal lines with his own incisive production skills. Genres like coco, maculelê, samba and jongo are woven with wobbling synths, booming sub basses and crisp 808 kicks. Quilombo do Futuro fills the space between organic and electronic, leaving you sometimes unable to tell the difference – this is in no small part thanks to the contributions of percussionist and long-time collaborator João Hermeto.

The album takes its name and inspiration from the quilombos, autonomous communities of fugitives and escaped slaves established under colonial rule in Brazil. In this light, this Quilombo do Futuro is a celebration of the autonomous global music community which interacts and influences across borders like never before. The album is awash with references to kuduro, hip-hop and soundsystem lineage, like on the dubstep inversion of “Dobrado” or the dancehall toasting contributions of Brooklynite Jahdan Blakkamore and Chicago’s finest Panamian MC Zulu on “Maga Traz a Lenha” and “Immigrant Visa”. “É Da Nossa Cor” equips the classic cantiga do capoeira for the dancefloor with its berimbau-sounding synth and driving kick drum, while “Piloto da Fuga” takes the opposite approach, tackling electro baile funk with organic percussion. However, it is the tracks that subtly infuse tradition with digital touches that work best such as “No Balanço da Canoa” and “Eu Vim de Longe”, which showcase perfectly Rosângela Macedo’s captivating voice.

Quilombo do Futuro’s marriage of tradition with modernity, organic with electronic and global with local, is fresh and exciting, but most importantly, it is done with skill and tact. Maga Bo has achieved something very difficult with this album: simultaneously paying homage to the music’s roots and bringing them right into the future.

Quilombo do Futuro was released on Tuesday 22nd May 2012 and is available from Amazon and iTunes

You can listen to the album below: