Various Artists - The Afrosound of Colombia Vol. 1 Review

In 1990, world music imprint Mango Records put out a compilation entitled Sueno Colombiano, gathering together a selection of artists who had recorded for Colombia’s legendary Discos Fuentes label. The album mixed together examples of cumbia, salsa, caribe, and general música tropical by some of the label’s signature artists, such as Fruko y Sus Tesos, Wganda Kenya, and the Latin Brothers. Sueno Colombiano celebrated what was already a long career for the record company founded in 1934 by Antonio Fuentes in his native Cartagena.


Two decades later, restless musical explorers Vampisoul offer up a longer, deeper look at the 1960s and 1970s output of Discos Fuentes, offering two and a half hours of catchy and curious tracks from the aforementioned artists and others involved in this golden period of Afro-influenced, funked-up tropical music. If Mango’s compilation was a retrospective review of still recent recordings, Vampisoul’s is more explicitly a work of vinyl archeology, unearthing the spatially and temporally remote in a manner not dissimilar to contemporary projects by Now Again, Soundway, and Analog Africa, all of whom have been looking to Colombia on recent releases. In fact, Soundway have already covered very similar territory, having released a collection of Discos Fuentes material from the same era in 2007.


Although there are a number of artists represented on this compilation, one man’s name turns up again and again. Julio Ernesto “Fruko” Estrada was as important to this era of the label’s output as Fuentes himself, acting as multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, arranger, and studio technician for a variety of projects emerging under his name and those of others. Reading the excellent and voluminous liner notes by compiler Pablo E Yglesias (a.k.a. DJ Bongohead), one gets the impression of a Zelig-like figure, someone present at all the important moments in the “Afrosound” era, and who appears amongst the line-up of numerous acts playing a wild variety of styles....full text Over two and a half hours of funky, hot Afro-influenced tracks from the 60s and 70s golden period of the seminal Discos Fuentes label in Colombia. 43 dancefloor hits provide an irresistible mix of genres: salsa, cumbia, boogaloo, tropical funk, chicha...


To understand what this compilation refers to as the Afrosound of Colombia, you have to acknowledge the profound role of African cultures in Colombian life and music. The story of the Afrosound is a tale of transformation. It tells of the enslaved African peoples who were taken to Colombia, who mixed with Europeans and indigenous inhabitants (by force or choice), and were eventually set free, as well as the escaped cimarrones (maroons) that lived in palenques (fortified settlements) and continued their own traditions. The Afrosound sings of a double Diaspora, first the trek in chains during the infamous Middle Passage from the Motherland of Africa to the so-called New World, then much later, the migration from the plantations to the cities.

This release deals with the unique sounds produced as a result of the inventive mixing of pop and roots that took place in the urban confines of the Discos Fuentes studios, far from Colombia's coastal regions. For our purposes, the invented term Afrosound can serve as the title of a thrilling and sometimes odd soundtrack that chronicles the diffusion and evolution of the musical culture from those coastal regions as it was brought inland, where it was translated, simplified, mass marketed, manufactured, modernized, "whitened", globalized, recycled, and then sent back to the world at large, disseminated from the cities of Medellín and Bogotá, where the major bulk of the music production industry resided in the 50s through to the 70s....full text THE AFROSOUND OF COLOMBIA out now! Over two and a half hours of funky, hot Afro-influenced tracks from the 60s and 70s golden period of the seminal Discos Fuentes label in Colombia. Includes in-depth liner notes with photos and original LP artwork. Many songs reissued for the first time. Double digipack CD and 1000 copies limited edition TRIPLE vinyl. Both formats include rare photos and original LP artwork. Extensive notes in English and Spanish written by expert Pablo Yglesias aka DJ Bongohead. In-depth overview of the history of Discos Fuentes and artists such as Fruko y Sus Tesos, Afrosound, Los Corraleros de Majagual, Sexteto Miramar, Wganda Kenya......full text