Somos

Behind mestizo musics often lie unique stories. In the case of the three Villalobos brothers, it's a tale for our torrid times. Born and raised in Xalapa, capital of the troubled Mexican state of Veracruz (682 murders and 122 kidnappings between January and March 2019), classically trained in US and European conservatoires, energised by a chance benefit gig at Carnegie Hall along with a call to write their own material, they found their final home and voice through personal and musical trials. The result is a kind of sophisticated jazz-inflected Tex-Mex sound. This sounds like a put down, but theirs is an unashamedly mainstream music meant to have a broad (ie culture-crossing) appeal. That's why they've been contracted as the house band at the Latin Grammy shows and done turns with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

Underpinning the music is rootsy son huasteco and more genteel Mexican trova, a fair portion of pop, a bit of funk. The brothers share vocals, delivering either high-note romanticism (‘Destino’), Latino power balladeering (‘Chiquitita’) or soft-rock protest (‘Lo Relativo’). Tere's also a political edge; ‘Hombres de Arcilla’ (Men of Clay), which has the literalness and gravity of a Mercedes Sosa anthem, is dedicated to the families of Ayotzinapa, the town where 43 male students disappeared from a rural teachers' college in 2014. The title-track is a self-afrmative (‘Somos’ translates as ‘We Are’) in the face of Trumpian discrimination and the Villalobos' own naturalisation trials.

Somos is a stylish album with enough jazz and folk to give it depth, though only a shade of the darkness of US-Mexican affairs.