Aurelio (take 1)
(Next Ambience/Sub Pop)
[Ed. note: we somehow assigned a review of this outstanding and unusual record to two different writers, but rather than shortchange one of them at the expense of the, we decided to go on and publish both reviews. Go here to read the other version. So sue us - but make sure you hear the record first.]
World music, as a genre, has never made much sense. What, after all, can you do with a category broad enough to include Tinariwen's desert blues, Tom Zé's Bahian folk oddities, Tuvan throat singing and a hundred other traditions? The phrase "World music" is not just meaningless, it's disrespectful to the myriad specific musical styles that it encompasses, not to mention the artists that have spent their lives mastering them. And yet, if you were to go looking for someone who embodied "world music," that is, who crossed and melded as many non-western traditions as possible, you might end up finding Aurelio Martinez.
Martinez was born in a tiny coastal town in Honduras, part of a Garifuna outpost founded centuries earlier by shipwrecked slaves. In this polycultural environment, he absorbed, early on, African, Caribbean, Central American and even European music, all spliced together in Garifuna tradition. As a young man, he came under the influence of Andy Palacios, the Garifuna's biggest star, and Ivan Duran, a Belizean producer, whose Stonetree record provide a platform for traditional styles like paranda and Garifuna. Martinez recorded his first record Garifuna Soul in 2004. (A year later, he became a congressman in the Honduran National Congress, the first Garifuna ever elected to national office.)
Martinez's second album, Laru Beya (dedicated to Palacios, who died in 2008) continues to blend disparate traditions, bringing in not just the Garifuna influences of Martinez's childhood, but, through guest appearances, a global palette of sounds. Youssou N'Dour, who was assigned to Martinez through the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative, sings on some of the tracks, memorably on "Wamada." Senegal's Orchestra Baobob supplies a sinuous swing in others. There's an island-slinky, reggae-esque horn line swaggering through "Nuwaruguma," a butt-shaking samba beat under the West African call and response of "Ereba." The title track juxtaposes back-slanting, upbeat-popping Caribbean rhythms with a melting warmth and ease.
None of that would matter if the songs weren't good, but the fact is that they are. In any case, the songs fit together so well that you can't even tell where one tradition begins and the other ends. If it's all one world, as the cliché goes, and perhaps it's all one song as well.
DOWNLOAD: "Laru Beya" "Wamada" JENNIFER KELLY
