41 f Cumbia Cumbia!
What started in Colombia and was seeded beyond by ’80s compilations has long since gone global. Jamie Renton checks out three fine current examples of alt. cumbia.
I
t may have started out on Colom- bia’s Caribbean coast, but cumbia went global a long time ago. Like any folk style worth its salt, the jerky rhythm (not a million miles
from Jamaican ska) has spread and mutat- ed like a virulent musical disease. It can be traditional or electronic, poppy or big band. Musicians and producers from here, there and everywhere are taking the sim- ple cumbia beat and mixing it with what- ever feels right. There’s alternative cumbia. Look hard enough and you can probably find alternatives to the alternative…
Like many a gringo, I suspect, I first became aware of cumbia back in the 1980s when albums from Colombia’s Dis- cos Fuentes label were imported in limit- ed quantities and World Circuit released their ground-breaking Cumbia Cumbia compilations. From here, a long-term addiction was born.
Turns out, I was not alone in this. UK club nights such as Movimientos and the much-missed Ariba La Cumbia have kept the music’s party spirit burning bright, offering a live platform for local cumbia- inspired bands, perhaps the most intriguing of which is Malphino, who take their name from the cultural backgrounds of two of their members, Malaysian and Filipino (the name also almost means ‘bad good!’) and play a strange, dreamy variation of the form, drawing on spacey film soundtracks and folkloric influences from Latin America and the Pacific. A sound that’s hard to pin down, but which makes sense when you hear it. The idea is to provide soundscapes for the imaginary tropical island of Malphi- no, although knowledge of this is not really a prerequisite for appreciation.
I catch up with Sato, Bruce and Alex from the band backstage at a Latin Ameri- can festival in Brixton. They explain Mal- phino’s origins at a monthly night in an East London bar back in 2009. Sato would DJ, with live music provided by an ever- expanding band of musicians from various backgrounds (jazz, electronic music, skiffle …) who’d play along to Sato’s tracks (Sato himself started adding percussion to his DJ sets) and through this, developed a love for Latin American music, cumbia especial-
ly. “The concept of the night was to get people to travel from here to Latin Ameri- ca,” Sato explains.
“It was us trying to make a Latin American sound,” Bruce tells me. “But with all our different backgrounds, we were making a slightly different sound.”
“It’s probably because we’re not from those places,” adds Alex. “We’re really just obsessed with that music and by attempt- ing to play it, we’ve created something original.”
They sound like the music of the future as imagined by people from 50 years ago. The folkloric elements are mar- ried to the kind of experimental and elec- tronic influences you might find on a 1960s or ’70s recording. “We love that era,” Alex tells me. “That’s the sweet spot when a lot of Latin American music was fusing with other sounds. In the ’70s, peo- ple were mixing other ideas in with cumbia. Before that it was all grassroots (which is great too, of course). It was all really raw. Just scrapers and accordeons. Whereas someone once told us that our sound is like ‘sci-fi cumbia!’”
Malphino
phino, their debut album released in May by Camden’s very hip (and decidedly non- world music) Lex label, is named after a landmark or characteristic of the island. In the past, they’ve gone as far as to create Malphino’s very own currency: Mals, little bits of artwork given out in exchange for pounds at their gigs. There’s something ‘arty’, in a good way, about the project, with strong visuals (logos, artwork) to back up the music. Not surprising, given that a couple of members come from a visual arts background.
T
The positive reception the album has received has made for improved live opportunities. A few days before our inter- view, for example, they’d appeared at the Barbican, supporting the mighty Orchestra Baobab. Another recent support slot was at the Jazz Café, where Argentina’s queen of electro-cumbia La Yegros was headlin- ing. Mariana Yegros (as it says on her birth certificate) hails from Buenos Aires,
hey’ve gone to town with the imaginary island concept, dreaming up in detail the geography and politics of the place. Each track on Visit Mal-
Photo: Kate Hutchinson
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