Kagabas

Just when you weren’t waiting for a steaming chiva bus up to the mountains of the Colombian coast, along come two of them. Hot on the exhaust fumes of the Underwater Panther coalition’s Music for the Mother (reviewed in the January/February 2021 issue), which collated the indigenous sounds of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range, comes Kagabas – a collection of seven ambient tracks spliced with field recordings from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Recorded by French DJ Harold Boué (aka Lion’s Drums or Abstraxion) following a ‘week-long expedition,’ the album purposes to offer its capitalism-scarred listeners an aural glimpse into a Kogi (Kagabas village). Like other extant tribes of South America, they have no writing tradition and see themselves as ‘Guardians of the Earth.’ The songs capture them chanting to the forest and wild things. Final production, ambient pulses and electronic bits were patched in at Boué’s Marseilles studio.

The album could be used in yoga classes (‘Water’), for meditation (‘Music from Memories’), getting stoned (‘Snake’) or for idents or jingles, documentary soundtracks or perhaps a PhD in ethnomusicology. The recording was approved by village mamas – spiritual and intellectual guides of the community. So was the Underwater Panther one. I wonder if they told Monsieur Boué they’d already released a record? All monies generated go to the Nativa organisation, which replants trees in the region to offset deforestation.