.jpg) |
| © SKepecs 2013 |
Cuban
son y rumba’s my groove – soy salsera de corazón. But right now Golpe Tierra, the Afro-Peruvian jazz outfit led by by Mad City bass boss Nick Moran and guitarist
Richard Hildner Armacanqui, is the hottest band in town. The Afro-Peruvian sound bears some
resemblance to Cuban son y rumba, or for that matter Puerto Rican bomba y plena
– but the rhythmic differences stand out.
Afro-Peruvian musica criolla evolved under an entirely different set of
historical circumstances than Afro-Caribbean music, in part because the number
of slaves imported to New World regions where indigenous population density
was high – that would be Peru, and Mexico – was so low by comparison.
Golpe Tierra’s
Afro-Peruvian jazz bailable is a beacon of bright, fresh sound. The band usually operates as a trio, all players
at the top of their game – Moran on bass, Hildner on guitar and Juan Tomás
“Juancho” Martínez Paris (formerly of Canteca de Macao, the Madrid-based
altermodern worldbeat band that played the Madison World Music Festival and the
Cardinal last fall) on cajón and lead vocals.
Moran and Hildner have Peruvian ritmos in their blood – “we were fans of
the music since childhood,” Moran says. But they didn’t dive into the
complexities of the sound until they had the opportunity to back up cajón
master Juan “Cotito” Medrano – renowned for his work with Latin
Grammy-nominated Afro-Peruvian worldbeat band Novalima – when he came to town
to play at the Marquette Waterfront Festival in 2009. Cotito turned out to be one helluva guru, and
a year later his two Madison disciples launched Golpe Tierra – somewhat incongruously,
at a world music fest in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.
The band’s maintained a moderate Madison profile ever since, playing the
Cardinal’s Friday Happy Hour more or less monthly and catching an occasional
festival – but if it’s not on the verge of fame yet, it deserves to be.
.jpg) |
| © SKepecs 2013 |
Last Friday Golpe
Tierra, with special guest of honor Cotito, played a pair of stratospheric sets
at the Cardinal’s regular 5:30-7:30 PM Happy Hour. Holy cow. Cotito’s a force of nature, plying his
powerful voice on Afro-Peruvian standards while creating mind-bogglingly
complex rhythms with his hands on that resonant wooden box, the cajón. I
haven’t figured out the dance steps to these beats yet, though I’ve been trying
for a while – there’s a zapateo, common to Spanish-influenced Latin American
folk dances everywhere, and an African move that’s close to a rumba, and more
steps that fall in between – but Friday afternoon a small company of
Afro-Peruvian dancers beautifully trained by Cotito’s niece, Guisella Medrano,
who lives in Madison, served up new insights.
The Cardinal was packed, and by the end of the second set almost
everybody was dancing.
Golpe Tierra and Cotito
wrapped up at the Cardinal just before 8 PM. Like magic, they reappeared (with about half of the Cardinal crowd, unwilling to give them up, in tow) on the Memorial Union Terrace half an hour later for MEChA’s annual
Reventonazo, where they blew the roof off the big stage on the lake.
.jpg) |
| © SKepecs 2013 |
No comments:
Post a Comment