Between Two Worlds

Based in Melbourne, Australia, with members hailing from Colombia and Chile, Amaru Tribe play cumbia, but not as we know it. On Between Two Worlds that swaggering Latin American dance rhythm, with its blend of African, Amerindian and European styles, its gaita flutes and tambora hand drums is unmistakably, skirt-swirlingly here.

But living in the Southern Hemisphere – in the musical margins – has made the group a sponge for other musics, other collaborators; here, too, are the centre-of-the earth yelps of the yidaki (didgeridoo) as wielded by the late First Nations player Stuart Fergie, along with instruments including the plucked phin (guitar-lute) of Thailand and synths straight out of a house music club. Such electronic waves are crucial to their own brand of cumbia oceanica, a dance floor-friendly genre bolstered by the triple vocal attack of singer/instrumentalists Katherine Gailer, Oscar Jiménez and Cristian Saavedra, and providing a platform from which they both celebrate life (‘Bonita Manaña’), release frustration (‘Candela Viva’ with its cathartic call-and-response) and urge awareness of environment destruction (‘Canto a Bachué’, which calls on Indigenous goddesses to help). A festival favourite, Amaru Tribe always represent: ‘Don’t stop the party,’ they urge on ‘Se Prendio’. With this one on rotation there is very little danger of that.