Label: Honest Jon's Records – HJRLP089
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Compilation, Limited Edition
Country: UK
Released: 30 Oct 2024
Genre: Folk, World, & Country
Style: Andean Music, Field Recording
Another mind-blowing Honest Jons compilation, this time focusing on the North Western Andres. (Mint / New)
‘Since the 16th century, the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas has been home to a unique Afro-Indigenous culture originating in the integration of the Indigenous Chachi and Nigua peoples with African Maroon communities. Juyungo documents significant Esmeraldan artists and bands playing the Afro-Ecuadorian folklore of the province, as well as including some older field recordings. Based mostly on the marimba, whose origins lie partly in the African balafon, partly in Indigenous percussion instruments, the music is laced with call and response chants, ambient insect and bird noise, the filigree finger-styles of the Andean guitar tradition and the panpipes of the mountains. This is resonant insider roots music at its headiest — the mystic revelation of Esmeraldas, gully deep and lustral.’ Francis Gooding, The Wire.
The fifth in our series of LPs compiling classic music from Ecuador. Customary Honest Jons runnings: a beautiful gatefold sleeve; superior pressing, with vivid, intimate sound; full-size, sixteen-page booklet, in colour throughout, with detailed, fascinating, bi-lingual notes, and stunning photographs.
The music is transfixing, magical; not like anything else. From start to finish, this album is continuously, profoundly immersive; a kind of journeying, trippy meditation about slavery and cultural resistance, identity and mix, places and spaces, futures and pasts. It’s inscrutable to net-surfing, algorithms, Shuffle. But for a taste try the insurgent marimba roller Agua Largo, jet-propelled by Rosa Huila’s rapturous blend of African spiritualist and Christian chant. ‘Healing music,’ Zakia called it on Gilles Peterson’s BBC show recently. And the ravishing pasillo Kasilla Shungulla — ‘calm your heart’ in the Quichua language — a duet between the Peruvian master-guitarist Raúl García Zárate and viola da gamba by Juan Luis Restrepo from Medellin, recorded in a baroque church in Buzbanza, Colombia
Tracklist
A1 Kofán– El Bejuco Umbilical
A2 Ensamble Juyungo– Chimborazo
A3 Llaquiclla– Agua Larga
A4 Asunción Quiñonez– Bambuco La Katanga
A5 Juan Luis Restrepo– A Saravino
B1 Juan Cayambe– Negra Muele Caña
B2 Rosa Huila– Andarele
B3 Ensamble Juyungo– Amanece
B4 Caynamanda Cunangaman– Candela Y Ron
B5 Llaquiclla– Ceremonia Matrimonial
C1 Ensamble Juyungo– Patagore
C2 Papá Roncón– Sanjuanito Chachi
C3 Ensamble Juyungo– Llacta Pura
C4 Llaquiclla– Ritual Embera
C5 Osvaldo Lindberg Valencia– Torbellino
D1 Raúl García Zárate– Kasilla Shungulla
D2 Ensamble Juyungo– Tren Con Ritmo De Caramba
D3 Ensamble Juyungo– Caramba Con Ritmo De Tren
D4 Llaquiclla– El Viaje Del Yage
D5 Ensamble Juyungo– Toquesito
D6 Llaquiclla– Galapago
D7 Llaquiclla– Carambalante
