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were involved, so the covers they did were very original. They didn’t just copy, when you listen to the original tune it’s really a different style. At this time, there was a lot of influence from salsa, rock (it was the hippie era), Puerto Rican percussion, Colombian brass sections, even some calypso. So when I listen to Wganda Kenya records, I get the feeling of these elements com- ing together.” These open-minded session players were listening to Fela, Miriam Makeba, Hendrix, Santana and anything else they could get their ears on. “I’ve been talking to some of the musicians involved and they told me that they lived together for the whole day, making music and playing football. So that cre- ates a very good spirit for their music. We hear some really fan- tastic jams that could only have been made by people who just stick together and think about music.”
H
Like Wganda Kenya, Abelardo Carbono also gets three tracks on the album. “He’s a fantastic guitar player and one of the first in Colombia to start playing Afrobeat. He was also a policeman. He was doing great, experimental music in the ‘80s.” That air of experimentation can be heard throughout the album. “There were some strange tunes, very bizarre things. These people were like conceptual artists! They were really ambitious avant-gardists. A lot of these musicians have been forgotten, nobody gives a shit about them and so their music is hard to find. But hopefully with this album, that’s changing and I’d like to do a second volume, because there was a lot of music that we couldn’t put on this record.”
ow does he seek out these obscure and wonderful discs? “Well it’s really like being a detective. I go to the towns and villages, look for the musicians, ask them about the recordings and who might have the records. I go to the labels, the studios (if they still exist) and to record collectors in the Caribbean; I talk to the DJs from the old sound systems, many of them are still alive and playing parties for the older generation.”
Aside from the odd Wganda Kenya track already mentioned, my only real exposure to Afro-Colombian music has been via the internationally renowned roots singer Toto La Momposina (see fR319/320). “She’s different,” Lucas explains, “more into tradition- al music. There are a lot of musicians in Colombia that are a bit like her and they’re great, but what we hear in this album is more innovative: they’re not just playing pure tradition, they’re creating on it, adding things that were not really typical at the time. They were opening a new style for a new era. Some of them go more funky, some more African, some more traditionally Caribbean, but they were all going against the mainstream at the time.”
The influence of these innovators can’t really be heard in
today’s Colombian music. “One of the sad things about Colombia is that people don’t really know their own music, so this music has become completely hidden. Nobody really knew about it any more, except for a few collectors. Now I’m happy because everybody can listen to it and everybody is surprised.” Lucas is on a mission to awaken his countrypersons to the broad range of Colombian music and so he ensured that Palenque Palenque was distributed at home as well as in Europe. He’s even stirred up some interest in champeta amongst modern musicians.
“I never see the real face of Colombian music anywhere in Europe,” he says in closing. “Whenever a Colombian album is released over there, it’s really awful… the same tunes, the same bands and everyone thought Colombia was all about salsa, about whatever, apart from the real thing. So now with this album, peo- ple can find the real face of Colombia, which is African, Indian, mixed with Caribbean. At last people can feel the real country!”
www.myspace.com/palenquerecords www.soundwayrecords.com
Sound system! El Rojo La Cobra De Barranquilla F
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