Innovative guitar duo Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero began working together in Mexico City in the 1990s, first in the heavy metal band Tierra Ácida, then as a beach bar-playing duo in Ixtapa, then as a busking duo in Dublin, Ireland, Western Europe, Australia, and Japan. They are citizens of the world. OurHome was recorded and produced by the duo in Japan at Tokyo’s NK Studio with mixing assistance from Dave Sardy. The country, its culture, and its people are beloved by the duo. The album marks RyG’s return to a primarily acoustic sound, though electric guitars appear. The 11-track set also includes their first-ever vocal song and guest instrumentalists including jazz pianist Hiromi, guitarists Yukihiro Atsumi and Marty Friedman (ex-Megadeth), and cellist Hiyori Okuda.
Category: latin
Talent alone is not enough to get ahead in the music business. You need some breaks too.
That’s the story of Austin Texas’ The Animeros (the word refers to older men who pray for souls in purgatory) path to this, their debut album. Not long after the mostly instrumental Latino trio formed in 2024, was nominated as Best New Act and Best Latin Act in a poll by The Austin Chronicle, in addition to nabbing a slot on the prestigious Austin City Limits Festival, Black Keys frontman/producer/studio and label owner Dan Auerbach got involved. He happened to hear them when their cumbia music wafted down from a rooftop as he passed below during the SXSW festival. It was their second live performance.
After signing them to his Easy Eye imprint,…
Tokyo-based large ensemble Minyo Crusaders take elements from Japanese working-class folk songs known as min’yō, and hypercharge them with rhythm, energy, and celebratory excitement. The group has grown progressively into this hybrid of the traditional and the new over the course of several albums, combining Japanese melodies handed down over generations with Latin flare, cumbia sounds, and other global cross-pollinations. From Japan with Love finds Minyo Crusaders in a mode that’s both fiery and playful, with powerful percussion, electrified horn arrangements, and group playing that emphasizes fun. The album starts off with a bang, kicking into high gear with the salsa-flavored “Hokkai Bonuta.” There’s a clash of uncanny…
Latin America is a true musical universe – a fusion of countless influences, genres and references layered in endless ways. One undeniable representative of this universe is the Argentine trio Tremor (Leonardo Martinelli, Gerardo Farez and Camilo Carabajal), who first emerged nearly two decades ago on Buenos Aires’ alternative music scene. Now, with a refreshed line-up featuring new member Alex Musatov on violin and synthesizers, they return with Takuy. The word ‘Takuy’ comes from Quechua and carries two meanings: the first is “to mix or combine”, while the second is “to be, to exist, remain”. Both meanings perfectly reflect the spirit of the band. Drawing from electronic music, they blend Creole psychedelia with Argentine folk explorations, enriched by a wide…
Amigos has been beloved for decades by both long-time and recent Santana admirers, with multiple generations of fans drawn in by the record’s contagious blend of R&B, Latin, rock, and funk elements. As well as its immense accessibility. Coming off a series of albums that heavily leaned into jazz fusion, the band returns to the more dynamic and concise approaches of its earlier works without losing the sense of adventurousness, craftsmanship, and virtuosity that turned it into a juggernaut embraced by both the mainstream and experimentally minded communities.
The enhanced aural perspectives extend not only to Carlos Santana’s intoxicating fills and solos, but to the rich tapestry of the rhythmic, melodic, and vocal elements that help Amigos…
Roberto Carlos Lange and Fabi Reyna feel like kindred spirits. Long before they met two summers ago, they were making music — as Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical, respectively — building their names with heart-on-your-sleeve electronic and indie-folk songs that touch on diaspora, longing, and love.
On their collaborative record, Helado Tropical, these two worlds naturally collapse into each other, as the seasoned emotional excavators lean into their shared strengths. The result goes down as easy as mango-champagne sorbet.
These nine songs—or perhaps seven, since “Luna” and “Sol” (another iconic pair) flow seamlessly into and out of the floaty, syncopated standout track “Fluye”—were born from a three-day…
Swampy surf rock, psychedelic Peruvian chicha and ambient blues – within Brian J. Gitkin’s global genre-hopping, guitar-twanging discography, these are the elements that keep coming back around. And they’re here again on his fifth album, together with touches of New Orleans music and gospel. Although he plays most of the instruments here himself, Gitkin’s real speciality is in his composition, where he pulls on the threads of these different styles and reweaves them together so confidently that the blend feels entirely natural. What really binds it all is the atmosphere. There is a nostalgic but slightly unreal quality across the album’s six instrumentals and four songs, the guitar ripples and organ reverbs evoking romantic and somewhat dreamlike images…
America is Orquesta Akokán’s fourth album. In a relatively short time, the multi-generational, international big band has won over audiences from Miami to Tokyo and many stops between with their reinvigorated take on the golden era of Cuban mambo, rhumba, salsa, bugalu, Latin soul, tumbao, and cha-cha-cha all wedded to 21st century Latin jazz.
Issued just a week after the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, the set, recorded live to tape by Daptone’s Gabriel Roth at Penrose Recorders, still relies heavily on always swinging mambo, at once intimate and poignant. They debut new vocalists in singer/musicologist/recording artist Mariam Elhajli (who has worked with Mali Obomsawin, Adam O’Farrill, Jason Lindner…
The term tropicanibalismo has been circulating within experimental music scenes in Colombia since at least the early ’00s, broadly encompassing new and innovative approaches to coastal popular and folkloric music forms. Cumbión Planetario is Bogotá-based duo Rizomagic’s newest contribution to this tropicanibalismo landscape. Rooted in cumbia (with a particular nod to languid, Monterrey-born cumbia rebajada), perhaps the most emblematic Colombian music and dance genre, the slow-motion music of Cumbión Planetario is distinctly contemporary.
Hints of dub, a deeper camaraderie with music that might be termed IDM, and particular investments in the idea of cosmic tuning serve as important contours. Group members…
The Analog Africa label continues its obsession with the music of Peru with this retrospective of famed psychedelic cumbia pioneers Los Orientales De Paramonga. Named for their coastal town three hours north of Lima, the band emerged from the city’s vibrant music scene that was informed not only by cumbia, but also surf, rockabilly, and tropical grooves. The original group’s founders were guitarists Victor Ramírez and Maximiliano Chávez. They loved psychedelia and injected it into almost everything they played. Their sound shaped the musical identity of the region. Following early hit singles, internal tensions led to a split between the two principals resulting in two rival groups using the same name. Los Orientales De Paramonga 1972-1976 focuses exclusively…
Anenoa is Chilean-German artist Matias Aguayo‘s first album since relocating to Mexico City, and one of his most collaborative efforts to date. Sung mainly in Spanish, the record embraces a wide variety of Latin American dance styles, and returns to the playful absurdity of his earlier albums, rather than the stark, skeletal rhythms of 2019’s Support Alien Invasion. One thing that remains from that album, however, is Aguayo’s embrace of different cultures, and here he works with producers, musicians, and vocalists from multiple continents while changing styles with seemingly every track. “Sentimientos Encontraos” is a perky, cumbia-inspired shuffle that Aguayo wrote with the intention of it becoming a future wedding staple. “Asuca, Rock, Roll” starts out as…
Since releasing 1994’s Ofrenda, singer/songwriter Lila Downs has been making records. That said, Cambias mi Mundo, her first since 2023’s La Sanchez, is also her very first consisting of all-original compositions. Her last offering was made during difficult times as husband and musical partner Paul Cohen’s long illness ended in death. This album, however, reflects new possibilities including romance. She co-wrote and recorded with a number of close companions and enlisted Alex Cuba as co-producer. The stunning album cover was created by Zapotec artist Alex José, who used the tarot card “the world” as an inspiration.
The set’s title track is also its opener and first single with bilingual rapper and guest collaborator Snow Tha Product. “Cambias mi Mundo”…
Fresh off the success of 2025’s Boleros Psicodélicos II, another star-studded collection of romantic ballads, Adrian Quesada formed Trio Asesino and took a slightly different path on their self-titled debut album. With his guitar providing the melodies, Jay Mumford’s drums the backbone, and Joshy Soul’s array of keyboards the texture, the set touches on hip hop, funk, jazz, laid back cumbia, and as it snakes and shimmies through eleven songs that won’t change anyone’s life but they will make it just a bit cooler for a while. The feeling is similar to his 2022 album Jaguar Sound, but where that felt like a producer’s album, this showcases Quesada the guitarist and prioritizes capturing a live band in a room. To that end, the sound is both punchy and relaxed, the group…
Active as a DJ since 2015, Colombian-raised, Mexican-based DJ Rosa Pistola has big credits to her name — performances at MoMA PS1, Glastonbury, Sonar, and Primavera Sound, among others, along with credits as an executive producer for music documentaries for NTS and Resident Advisor. A key figure in bringing the rhythms of Latin America’s underground to global stages, she has yet to make a bad record.
Perhaps aided by her background in experimental and noise music, Rosa Pistola often pushes the boundaries of club music, incorporating niche genres and fostering collaborations with underground musicians, resulting in fantastic hybrids like the reggaeton-meets-Mobb-Deep Tributo a la Mulata, the cumbia…
Less than a year after her luscious solo debut, Pacífico Maravilla, Nidia Góngora returns, this time as the frontwoman of Nuevos Ríos. Alongside her are members of her longtime group, Canalón de Timbiquí, and Toulouse-based Reco Reco, an ensemble that focuses on plugged-in renditions of South American styles. Together, the collective perform lively, electrified versions of music from Góngora and Canalón de Timbiquí’s finely honed repertoire, continuing to bear witness to the traditions and lifeways of the Pacific coast of Colombia for audiences worldwide.
Nuevos Ríos’ self-titled debut is nothing short of astonishing, a clear continuation of the work Góngora and her compatriots have long been doing, and yet something that feels wholly new.
Taracá is the 15th album by 17-time Latin Grammy winner, Uruguayan singer/songwriter Jorge Drexler. His first in four years, it marks his first time recording at home in two decades. Its contents offer a return to root sounds, in particular candombe. Candombe is a drum-based musical style that originated among the enslaved African population of capital Montevideo, and is based on Bantu African drumming. The musical style was racially marginalized and even banned over its existence (as were Brazilian samba and American blues) but survived, evolved, and in the 21st century, thrived. Like the aforementioned styles, candombe is at an ascendant moment in 21st century popular culture. Drexler plays homage to his recently deceased father here; to that end…