Beginner’s Guide to Latin America

‘Ay, caramba!’, how do you do a beginn¬er’s guide to the music of more than 30 countries, with more than 500 years of cultural history and hundreds of stellar talents? Well, you can’t. You do what compiler Cal Jader has done: you get your hands on 36 decent tracks and make do. There’s no Mercedes Sosa here, no Silvio Rodríguez, no Víctor Jara, no Gilberto Gil, no Molotov and no Juan Luis Guerra: just some meagre gifts from major labels, as has become the norm with these low-budget comps. At the same time, there’s little in the way of roots music: on the third ‘Classic’ CD, there’s only Las Kjarkas, performing buskers favourite ‘Llorando se Fue’, to take us into the pre-Colombian cradle of Latin American music that is the Andes. Otherwise, this is a hotchpotch of tropical stuff (Teodoro Reyes, Charanga Habanera and some unknowns), new fusion-style pop-folk experiments (Nortec Collective, Axel Krygier, Los Amigos Invisibles) and the inevitable Astor Piazzolla, Joe Arroyo and Tito Puente ‘classics.’ The sequence flows awkwardly and the liner notes are in a tiny font on a busy, blue background; when you bother to read them you find clichés and generalisations. Not so much a beginner’s guide to Latin America as a beginner’s guide to compiling.