Desde Espana… La Columna de Fuego

Why it’s taken so long for this gem of an album to be reissued is one of those mysteries that perhaps I will never work out. For while there have been seismic record-buying trends for Brazilian tropicália, Peru’s guitar-led cumbia and even Uruguay’s beat music, there has been little excavation of Colombia’s youth music of the 60s and 70s, when Western pop, rock, soul and jazz took a flight to South America and made hay with the local rhythms. This sole album by La Columna de Fuego, originally released in 1974, is perhaps Colombia’s finest example of the era. ‘Cumbia’ begins with drums and the sort of Afro-Colombian chanted vocals you’d expect from a song with that name, but then the funkiest of bass lines takes over and the horn section viscerally whips you into shape; ‘Simplemente Hombre’ gets even more soulful with a Jimmy Castor Bunch groove; and god knows why ‘Tenmandumba’ has not been on more compilations, it’s pure Latin psych joy. There’s even room for breezy The Zombies-esque pop on ‘Nostalgia’, though the best track is ‘Carnaval en Barranquilla’, adding wah-wah guitar and blaring horns to a merengue groove. La Columna de Fuego’s members had form, having played in the more pop-oriented Los Speakers and the heavy proto-rock of Siglo Cero, but La Columna de Fuego was where they came alive with a glorious fusion of Western and Latin influences.