A Flor de Piel, the brand new album from Colombian artist Montañera, cultivates readability from communion. You’ll be able to hear blunted traces of the nation’s folks music throughout the document, however “Como Una Rama” is likely one of the album’s clearest summonings. At first, solely her elastic vocals grasp within the air, stretching and sprawling into the thickness of the environment. Her voice begins reverberating into echoes, as if a refrain of ancestral spirits have joined her. Right here, Montañera sings within the custom of bullerengue, a folks model of music and dance developed by maroon communities (enslaved Africans who escaped bondage and fashioned their very own settlements) on the Caribbean coast of her homeland. Earlier than lengthy, her voice short-circuits, glitching into ripples of fuzz, like a spotty radio transmission. All that’s left within the haze is the steadfastness of her voice.
A Flor de Piel transmits centuries of cultural reminiscence, however the hissing electronics and serene synth preparations remodel the music into greater than mere homage. The album chronicles tales of rebirth, transformation, and self-discovery, usually through the purifying and regenerative motifs of water and flora. However although María Mónica Gutiérrez’s journey is private, her muted interpolations of folks kinds recommend there may be considerable data in community-based traditions. A Flor de Piel is not only a elegant instance of folkloric reinterpretation; it’s additionally a treatise on the liberatory gestures which might be doable whenever you reimagine musical family tree. In Montañera’s fluid chronal continuum, folks music isn’t an historic artifact, however a dwelling, respiration entity that was at all times meant to free us.
Take “Santa Mar,” which options Cankita (from the group Bejuco) and Las Cantadoras de Yerba Buena, a bunch of conventional musicians from Colombia’s Pacific coast, led by ladies from Tumaco. The observe is an providing to an aquatic deity whose holy water possesses cleaning and life-giving properties. On it, speckled marimbas de chonta and orotund vocals, sung within the model of currulao, are shepherds for cycles of life and loss of life. A repeated chant renders the follow of singing as a conduit for renewal: “Hearken to my track, which comes and goes from the water/Wetting the earth in order that new life might develop.” Whereas pursuing her grasp’s diploma, Gutiérrez studied vocal traditions from the Colombian Pacific coast, investigating how singing is usually a instrument for peace-building within the aftermath of violent battle. Although different songs on A Flor de Piel solely gesture at this type of therapeutic, in its lyrics, “Santa Mar” is a literal declaration of folks music’s healing capacities.
