Argentina: El Buho & Barrio Lindo feat Lucila Dominguez – Marri Yanada
ZZK Records has long been a centre for Buenos Aires’ most innovative musicians, where traditional cumbia and folklórica has evolved with a new sense of digitalism. History of Colour, the new collaboration between Argentinian Barrio Lindo and Amsterdam-based Briton El Buho, is one of ZZK’s first “2.0” examples of the sound, and shows how far the concept has come. Marri Yanada is a subtle, quiet cumbia featuring clicks and whistles, made more ambient by Lucila Dominguez’s dreamscape vocals.
Dominican Republic: César Pineda – Alma Libre EP
For another examples of ambience, Santo Domingo-based producer/singer César Pineda hinges his meandering, guitar-and-beats compositions on his wistful voice; songs about love, place, and his “free soul”. You wouldn’t think that Pineda is actually moonlighting here: his day job, so to speak, is performing as the rapper Dominicanye West, in Whitest Taino Alive, one of DR’s most promising hip-hop crews. There are no hot 16s on Alma Libre, but he might give 808s and Heartbreaks a run for its money, so to speak.
Brazil: Tune-Yards – Water Fountain (DJ Marfox & Pearls Negras Remix)
It’s no secret that Water Fountain by the American musician Merrill Garbus, “borrows” heavily from African-Caribbean drum patterns. But these sounds make more sonic sense when recontextualised with a skittering, bleeping funk carioca rhythm, as found here in a track by Portuguese DJ Marfox. Made more joyous by the Rio-based teen trio Pearls Negras, whose cutting verses and spliced-in ad-libs spiral the original from joy into a state of emergency, it’s a fitting transformation for a song meant to support Garbus’s new charity, dedicated to supporting water-related causes.
Mexico: Ceci Bastida feat Outernational – Canta el Río
Bastida grew up in the Mexico/US border town of Tijuana, and spent her formative musical years in the political punk band Tijuana NO! Canta el Río is a continuation on her formative sound: a homage to the immigrant – a hot-button topic in the States, particularly when it concerns those emigrating from Mexico. Outernational are a New York-based band whose last album also broached this topic (it was called Todos Somos Illegales) and helped contribute to the track, which comes with a video rife with symbolic imagery.
Venezuela: Arca – Hips Don’t Lie
Before he was known as the producer who made Kanye West’s Yeezus a little more credible in the realm of alternative music, Alejandro Ghersi was making electronic indie-pop as a teenager growing up in Caracas. With his choppy, warped take on Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie – a global chart hit in 2005, around the time he was coming in to his own on the Venezuelan scene – he bridges his past and his future, screwing her voice into a sensual roar while approximating a Brazilian baile funk rhythm behind it. It’s controlled chaos, but it works.
