Mambo Loco

In the delightful, if fanciful, film The Motorcycle Diaries, one of the most memorable scenes is one in which Che's pal, Alberto, dances a lively mambo with a nun at a leper colony in Peru. For anyone watching the movie, it's a reminder that mambo used to be as popular as, say, cumbia is now. Guevara, incidentally, is almost too shy to bop and when he does eventually get up, he's as stiff as a Communist commandant, having been raised on tango and the gloomy folk of provincial Argentina.

Aníbal Velasquez was born in Barranquilla, Colombia's second city (now best known as the birthplace of Shakira) and the coastal conduit for Caribbean music travelling south. In 1952, aged just 16, Velasquez started performing, and went on to record an estimated 300 albums, many as a session musician. The ten tracks collected on this short album capture a moment in history when Cuban music was mixing itself into Barranquilla's carnival culture, and before the vallenato came to dominate Colombia. Some tracks are frantic, hip-swinging, booty-shaking blasts; others are hammock-swinging siesta soundtracks. As ever with Colombian coastal music, there are dozens of genres being fused here, held together by Velasquez's joyous accordion, as well as multi-faceted, sometimes manic percussion and some twangy guitar. While the links to Cuba are tangible, there's a zaniness and irreverence in Colombian mambo that is infectious and intoxicatingly danceable. This is virtuoso Afro-Latin music, but it is above all music for stepping out to. Even Che could have managed a few deft moves if he'd listened to Mambo Loco.