Explosión Negra
While in Medellin, Adam, Mike, and myself (Thor) spent most of our time hanging with Jeff Guerra and Robin Finley of The Arepa Magazine (thank you guys for being the best hosts). Robin is the director of The Arepa and Jeff is the editor and also one of the few DJ’s in Medellin that is really pushing nueva cumbia and global bass sounds. He showed me these videos of a local act and I was immediately blown away and knew exactly why we came to Medellin!
check this club smasher
Robin was telling me that he saw them they were playing at a library with 4 people in a auditorium!
Son De Mi Tierra:
Explosion Negra is 3 MC’s (Harry, Yommy, and Jaoson) from Choco that currently live in Medellin. Their music is a fusion of their Colombian roots- currulao, chirimia and cumbia mixed with dancehall, reggaeton and hiphop.
We arranged to meet them to see if they would be interested in collaborating on a track for the compilation. They took interest in a track that I had produced with some gaita and tamboras that we recorded during our month long stay in Bogota. I originally produced it as an instrumental but re-arranged it to work with Explosion Negra.
Click the link below to hear a raw teaser of what we did:
Thornato – Gaita ft Explosion Negra (teaser)
(the gaita and tambora is played by maestro Darwin Escorcia)
We will definitely be posting more on these guys as well as many more amazing sounds, videos and images so please stay tuned to the blog!
~ Thor
Cumba Mela Colombia Update
It’s been too long since we posted anything. Just to update the world, to those who are actually reading, part of the Cumba Mela collective has been doing a mini-tour through Colombia for the past two-months. There is a lot of great footage and music to come. For those who don’t know, we are producing a compilation with artists that we are collaborating with throughout Colombia. We are also performing and producing a documentary that illustrates our journey.
Please click the following link to learn more about our project: The Colombia NYC Project
So far we have worked with a handful of artists. Once we return to the states February 1st. we will have more solid posts, previewing the work we have done here so far.
For now, I would like to share with you our experience in Palenque ; an historic village in Colombia with a massive heritage of preserved African traditions. Benkos Bioho, an escaped slave who aided many other slaves to live freely in this community, founded Palenque in the 17th century. Today, the traditional language of Palenquero can still be heard among the streets. The language was formed due to the diverse African tribes that lived together. Therefore, the native language of this area is a mix of several forms of African dialects with Spanish.
We were in Palenque during a champeta festival, which was really crazy. Since we have been in Colombia, we performed in Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Cartagena, and Barranquilla. And of all the places, we found the craziest and loudest sound system I have ever heard (no joke), in this small remote village, with wild pigs, goats, and chickens running around.
Anyway, during our 3-day visit we had the honor to be in the home of Raffael Cassini, one of the members of Sexteto Tabala. His group is regarded to be one of Colombia’s most highly regarded and important Afro-Colombia artists. It was amazing to see how such a highly regarded musician is living such a humble life-style in the quaint village of Palenque.
On the following day we had a beautiful experience with Las Alegres Ambulancias. We set up our mobile studio in their home and recorded a track with them. A remix of this track should be out hopefully in the next year. The completion of this entire project will hopefully be finished in a year.
Be sure to check out the short documentary bellow on Las Alegres Ambulances.
On our last day we worked with this young hip-hop crew. It was the first recording this 16-year olds have ever done in their life. We will be posting this track with some remixes soon, as well as some footage of the production behind this track.
Once we returned to Cartagena we met up with two more artists from Palenque. Viviano Torres, one of the fathers of Champeta, and Son Palenque. We got the honor to record with both of these artists. So stay posted to hear our collaborations with them.
As of now, we are in Taganga. Since we have been in this chilled out beach town we met up with Juan Carlos and Walter Hernandez, from Systema Solar, in their beautiful home studio. So keep posted to check out whats to come!
Atropolis