Afritanga – The Sound of AfroColombia

For many people, Colombia is the land of Shakira and high octane salsa. Bogotá bursts with salsa clubs and Cali hosts the largest salsa festival in the world. But despite its ubiquity, it's cumbia not salsa that is the national musical style. Cumbia grew from the miscegenation of enslaved Africans and local indigenous people and traditionally consists of no more than percussion, flauto de millo and gaita flutes and vocals. Over the centuries cumbia has become band music, gone electric and spawned a host of musical styles, which include Colombian salsa and, on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, more self– consciously African musical sounds loosely banded together as fritanga (literally meaning a mixed grill) and which look to the Congo, Jamaica and West Africa for inspiration. This excellent compilation by DJ Tio Chango presents a potpourri of fritanga and cumbia sounds. There's the well-established Afonso Cordoba, whose ‘El Piloto’ showcases the languorous, melancholy melodies of the Pacific coast. There's the cutting edge, typified by Tumbacatre's energetic, rocky, staccato fusion ‘Chorizo’. Makina Del Karibe's ‘Radio Gozambike’ is an infectious fusion of DJ samples and Caribbean-coast champeta, which harks back to Africa, with a web of interlaced rumba guitars and jumpy bass. And there's a whole host more – the deliciously retro ‘Cumbia Sobre El Mar’ by Flowering Inferno, which gently sways like the movement of the Caribbean sea, the cumbia-reggae ‘Rastaman’ by Roots Radical and the poppy hip-hop of Choc Quib Town's ‘Macru’. All slip together beautifully, offering a very listenable and comprehensive introduction to a South American musical spectrum, which deserves to be far better known.