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In 1990 at a small recording studio located in the infamous Bazurto market in Cartagena de Indias Colombia, Mariano Perez aka the “bionic accordionist” and Champeta godfather Hernan Hernandez teamed up to create the band Grupo Renacer. These recording sessions would prove to be extremely fruitful culminating in the bands first self-titled album Grupo Renacer - Vol. 1 Ushering a new sound by blending local folkloric rhythms from Colombia’s Caribbean Coast along with strong musical influences and styles from the Greater Caribbean region and Africa the result was a blistering set that included songs like “Rastafara” “Las Amargadas” and the local hit “La Bolsa”. Capitalizing on their success Mariano Perez went on to record a follow-up album Grupo Renacer Vol 2. Songs like “El Colera” and “Uhey Le La” would further cement Mariano Perez and Hernan Hernandez as legends in the local “pico” aka soundsystem subculture scene that had taken hold of Cartagena and Barranquilla respectively. While both original albums remain elusive and under the radar, Worldwaxrecords has decided to compile in one single album the songs that we feel best represent the work and achievements of Grupo Renacer and the vital role this band has had in shaping Champeta soundsystem culture not only in Colombia but all around the world. Ironically the word Renacer in Spanish means “rebirth” or to be “reborn.” We hope that with this timely release we can commemorate the arrival of a new year and the beginning of a new dawn. ( By Sanjay Agarwal)

Almost two decades after the release of the original, Grammy winning album, the romance of the Buena Vista Social Club continues with ‘Lost and Found’, a collection of previously unreleased tracks, some recorded at the first legendary sessions in Havana with producer Ry Cooder and others during the extraordinarily rich outpouring of music that followed.

The original Buena Vista Social Club album was recorded for World Circuit Records by Ry Cooder and Nick Gold over seven days in Havana in 1996, bringing together many of the great names of the golden age of Cuban music in the 1950s, several of whom were coaxed out of retirement for the sessions.
The album became a surprise international best-seller and the most successful album in the history of Cuban music selling over 9 million copies.

Two brothers, two guitars, two distinct identities, who become one soul when they compose music. Stephan and Alejandro, are the Hermanos Gutierrez, an instrumental music band with an unmistakable genre that is rooted in Western and Latin American sound. Born from an Ecuadorian mother and a Swiss father they grew up being forged by both cultures, bridging between two worlds, both of which are home.

Their mix of identities, that constant search across different countries clearly emerges in their songs. Their music takes the audience on an intimate journey through time evoking remote spaces. A magical sound that touches the heart, that sparks passion and nostalgia. An open invitation to a constant dialogue of melodies and instruments.

Playing together since their early childhood, a profound musical and interpersonal symbiosis ties the two brothers. If one of them has a melody, the other one completes it with harmony. There is a deep understanding between the two of them, without any need for words.

Active as a band since 2015, they have recorded four albums: “8 Años” (2017), “El Camino De Mi Alma” (2018), “Hoy Como Ayer” (2019), and the newly released LP “Hijos Del Sol” (Children Of The Sun). A body of work that has been inspired by their journey through the vast natural landscapes of Mexico, the silence of the desert, the sun, and their love for this country that made them feel “like going home”, as they affirm. Out came a soundtrack of the sceneries they’ve been exploring.

Brazilian soul, psych, bossa and jazz, reimagined from Berlin, via the Dead Sea, on Moriah Plaza"s dreamy first album for Batov Records: Moriah Plaza"s self-titled debut album is a major addition to the global soul and jazz scene. providing the perfect summer soundtrack for music lovers around the world.

El Palmas Music to reissue incredibly hard-to-find album by Venezuelan salsa bandleader and polymath.

Few artists worked as hard at their craft as Ramón Urbina. At the age of 15, and in thrall to the Latin jazz and tropical music he was hearing on the radio, he learnt to play tres guitar. Then he learnt bass. Then percussion, tumbadora, timpani drums, trumpet, trombone, piano, whatever instrument he could get his hands on. A true enthusiast and student of all the tropical music that was percolating through Venezuela and the rest of Latin America at the time, he wanted to understand the art of composition and arranging, and around 1972 he decided to put it to the test, forming his first group, Ramón y su Banda Latina. Taking inspiration from salsa ensembles like Sexteto Juventud, as well as Pastor López, a Venezuelan singer and bandleader who was having huge successes in Colombia for his mix of cumbias, guarachas and boleros, Ramón’s group toured throughout Venezuela during the 1970s. Then one day, he went to see La Dimensión Latina in his home town of Charallave, and he saw the future. The age of salsa with its multi-trombone sound was here, and he wanted to take part, recruiting new members to form Moncho y su Banda. After road testing their material, the new group was ready to record an album in 1981, but finding a record label was not easy. Ramón loved music but he was a homebody too and spent most of his time in Charallave, at a distance from the thriving music scene in Caracas. This, combined with the fact that he’d yet to record an album and create any kind of international reputation meant that he initially struggled to find a label. “God help me, even if I have to pay myself, I’m going to record my album”, he said at the time. Despite no guarantee of any album being released, Moncho y su Banda stepped into a recording studio and didn’t rest until they’d got what they wanted. Those who were there remember a feeling of being at a party, hanging out with family and friends, and dancing all night. After realising they’d forgotten to eat at a session, one of the group’s singers, Eduardo Fernandez, ordered a bottle of sambuca, and just like that they kept on recording, without pause, albeit with extra spirit. Once record label executives finally heard the album, titled Qué Bellas Son (How Beautiful They Are), they couldn’t resist its energy and a release date was set. It’s an album that captures the sound of a working band at ease, playing the kind of set that they would be knocking out at clubs around Venezuela at the time, full of life and passion. Whereas a formulaic salsa sound was forming in the early 80s, Moncho y su Banda bucked the trend, playing a mix of raw, unbridled salsa dura, as well as cumbias, merengues, boleros and chucu-chucus, all with a heady dose of Caribbean spirit that sets the group apart from the more urbane salsa ensembles of the day. Qué Bellas Son is the only album that Ramón Urbina ever recorded, though he has kept performing to this day, where you can still find him in Charallave. A true lover of music, we should be thankful that we have at least this one album of his to remind us of a band at the height of their powers.

Currently based in Berlin, Pedro Ricardo has been releasing music for the past eight years under different aliases via labels such as Wolf Music and his own imprint Hear, Sense and Feel. An eclectic DJ and selector, he hosts a radio show on South London’s radio Balamii, guested on Mafalda’s NTS show and can be found playing in clubs across all Europe. Stylistically, Ricardo became entranced with jazz from an early age, while also becoming enamoured with folk music – rooted in his Portugal childhood, now encompassing sounds from Cape Verde, Brazil, and Spain along the way. He intertwines these instrumental influences with field recordings, and electronics, on Soprem Bons Ventos. “The album translates to ‘Good Winds Blow’, shares Ricardo. “This idea of good winds blowing is intertwined with the feeling of missing something, and sadness. On a positive note, there is still an overarching sense that happiness also lies ahead. Soprem Bons Ventos represents an ode to the past, to those who came before me, connecting with my present and imagining the future.”

Originally released in 2012, the second album by the São Paulo-born composer Rodrigo Campos marks a turning point in both lyrical and aesthetic inspiration. “Bahia Fantástica” is the result of the absorption of a then recent influence of soul music (especially Curtis Mayfield) and is in the middle of this path marked by an unlikely geography in the lyrical part (São Mateus, Bahia, Japan) and by an expansion of sound ( from samba to the indefinable, with a passage through black American music).

The album turns ten years old in 2022 and exudes vitality. The soul reference takes on a different aroma when it passes through the filter of the composer and his band – formed by Kiko Dinucci on guitar, Marcelo Cabral on bass, Maurício Fleury on keyboards, Maurício Takara on drums and Thiago França on sax: it has Brazilian sauce, hints of afrobeat and a very particular seasoning. The lyrics bear the artist's mark: they project scenes in the listener's imagination and design the characters and environments with their own style of subjective chronicle. Bahia is both imaginary and intimate in Rodrigo Campos’s music.

As the 1950s drew to a close a group of students at Caracas’ Universidad Central de Venezuela caught the tropical music bug and decided to form an orchestra. With the majority of the students coming from the engineering faculty, they were duly christened Conjunto Ingeniería (The Engineering Group) and from the offset, they were ahead of the game. Tropical music, or música bailable (danceable music), was slowly making its way to Venezuela, but Conjunto Ingeniería had a secret weapon as one of their fellow students was studying in New York and every July he’d return with the latest Latin big band sounds: Tito Puente, Machito, they heard it first. And they wasted no time in making a name for themselves: nine young male musicians playing the hippest sounds around, they were the obvious band to play high-society quinceañeras (15th birthday celebrations to mark a “girl’s journey into womanhood”), which their original bass player, Juan Marquez, says they did at least 80 times in their heyday, as well as playing countless times at the university, on TV, at weddings, and at carnival, where on one occasion they accompanied Celia Cruz. “We played on all the TV channels”, says Marquez, “we were the first group to play at the launch party for ‘salsa’, a term that was established by the [Venezuelan] announcer Phidias Danilo Escalona… in Barquisimeto we were considered the best orchestra”, he remembers. On record their eclecticism and musical chops belied their age. In 1961 they released their self-titled debut album, which tackled mambo, guaracha, cha-cha-cha and charanga, veering from the Les Baxter-esque exotica of “Mambo Silbando” with its kitsch whistling, through the horn-and-percussion heavy stomp of “La Bola” (complete with bolero bridge) and on to “Amorcito”, their cover of The Diamond’s “Little Darlin’”, which was arguably the first rock ‘n’ roll song recorded in Venezuela. They followed it up with Aqui Esta El Conjunto Ingenieria, their second album in 1962, in which they showed once more that rock could easily sit next to Latin on tracks like “Mambo Rock”. Their last album, Boogaloo Con Ingenieria, arrived in 1967, and made clear the influence of New York in their sound, with the group adopting the boogaloo of Pete Rodriguez, Tito Puente and Ricardo Ray. Tracks like “Dame Boogaloo” and “La Boa” were the epitome of this, but they also took that sound into new places, as on the staccato groove of “Intermission Riff” which left plenty of space for the musicians to flex their muscles, or on the ominous “Aefo” with its unsettling vocals and dramatic Henry Mancini-esque melody. Conjunto Ingeniería came to an end at the beginning of the 70s, by which time many of their original members had left after graduating, but there can be no doubt they had made their mark. Though their recording output was nowhere near as prolific as their contemporaries Billo’s Caracas Boys or Los Melódicos, if you were turning on the TV, going to carnival or, especially, attending a quinceañera, in Caracas in the 1960s, then you would no doubt of come across Conjunto Ingeniería and their rock ‘n’roll-embellished New York-meets-Venezuela big band sound. On this compilation, simply titled Conjunto Ingeniería, El Palmas Music have cherrypicked a glorious selection of tracks from across the group’s career, capturing all the creativity and youthful excitement that made them one of the first titans of Venezuela’s tropical music history.

Limited Clear Vinyl edition, 500 copies! "Bossa Nova Soul Samba" came as Ike Quebec's best contribution to the fruitful marriage between Jazz and Brazilian music. Recorded in 1962 and released on Blue Note in the same year. this was Quebec's final recording before his death in January 1963. A beautiful studio session dominated by Quebec's tenor sax warm tone and the light and gentle groove provided by Kenny Burrell - guitar, Wendell Marshall - bass, Willie Bobo - drums and Garvin Masseaux - chekere.

A musical selection of alternative and modern Latin music with the label Gladys Palmera via Andy Grey. Gladys Palmera compiled by Andy Grey is an energizing mix of Latin rhythms and peripheral sounds. Ten songs which symbolize the strenghts of the new times in the Latin music. A box of tropical sounds linked by Andy Grey, resident DJ of Gladys Palmera and one of the producers that is already glimpsing how the night clubs will be in the future.

Rumba, Flamenco, Soul, Funk, Jazz, Disco, House,.

Sixth record by the Achilifunk Sound System "Super Soul Gitano". Txarly Brown, invents accidental Rumba Jazz Dance. Using as the starting point a collaboration with Jonatan Ximenis, the singer from Arrels de Gràcia, old soul, funk and jazz classics are revisited from the rumba point of view. From Bill Withers to Gino Paoli, everything is thrown on the beater. There are also some original compositions on B side.

The Achilifunk Sound System gives us their best record yet. Lalo López, Jack Chakataga and Txarly Brown have recreated all these classics, with the occasional help from Mr.Freak Ska and Voodoocuts.

El Palmas Music are back with a third instalment of rare Venezuelan sounds from the 60s and 70s, a wild trip through salsa, boogaloo, garage rock, jazz and delinquent pop. Venezuelan music was moving at such a pace through the 60s and 70s that almost as soon as a new craze was born, another was preparing to eclipse it. In barely 10 years, musicians latched on to the sound of the Latin big bands of Cuba, New York and Colombia, turned to the 60s pop and rock ‘n’ roll of England and the US, before heading back to salsa as it took root across Latin American, before forays into jazz, psych rock and Afro-Venezuelan rhythms took hold in the 70s. This fertile musical period, coming at a time when Venezuela was economically abundant and culturally as relevant as any other developed country, has always been the focus of the Color de Trópico series, and continues to be the case on this third instalment, though it should also be noted that the tracks are getting rarer and rarer, indicative of the curatorship of DJ El Palmas and El Drágon Criollo and their constant search for new sounds that reflect Venezuela’s musical treasures at this time. Color de Trópico Vol. 3 starts with Un, Dos, Tres Y ... Fuera’s “Aquella Noche”, a song that’s fully indicative of Venezuela’s coastline with the much-loved Un, Dos, Tres Y ... Fuera giving a llanero rhythm (normally played on a harp and other stringed instruments in its rural incarnation) a fully Afro-Caribbean makeover with pulsating bass and an electric keyboard that teases and energises the groove. It possesses some of that same mid-70s vitality and need to experiment as Grupo Vaquedanus, the band of sax maestro Santiago Baquedano, and their cover of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”, here fashioned as “Toma Cinco”. This version strips away all the niceties of the original, turning it in to a psych-fuzz jazz romp with Baquedano’s raspy sax leading the way. Step back 10 years and the energy remains even if the musical terrain was different. Girl group Los Pájaros hit hard with a boogaloo whose instruction is simple enough: “shake it baby, kiss for you, take the rhythm, and do the boogaloo”. Los Pájaros were one of a number of groups who were taking inspiration from the 60s sounds of the US and Britain but repackaging it for Venezuelan youth. Pop stars Geminis 5 were at it too with a fuzzy ballad “Tus 16 Años”, and Junior Squad even injected a bit of San Francisco hippy charm into affairs with their loose adaptation of The Turtles “She’d Rather Be With Me”, retitled as “Siempre Para Ti” and sounding as rough, ready and full of youthful vim as anything made north of Mexico. On the farthest end of the pop spectrum is The Pets with their cult hit “El Entierro de un hombre rico que murió de hambre” (“The Burial of a Rich Man Who Died of Starvation”), a true countercultural anthem that even dips into “The Funeral March” for a minute, and which is much desired by record collectors. Finally, we must mention the salsa ensembles and their big band predecessors, always an important element of any Color de Trópico compilation. On Volume 3, we find one of the earliest salsa groups in Venezuela, Los Megatones De Lucho, who recorded a pachanga, “Yo Se Que Tu”, long before salsa was even a thing. Influenced by Venezuela’s very own Los Dementes and Joe Cuba’s sextet, Principe Y Su Sexteto were one of Venezuela’s most prominent salsa ensembles. On their 1969 track “San De Manique” we get a different vibe altogether, it’s a creeping son with just vocals, bass and congas for its opening minute, before really kicking into action with a twisted guitar line and wild percussion, while always retaining a raw, Afro-Latin feel. Last, but not least by any means, is one of Venezuela’s most beloved salseros, Johnny Sede, who pipes up with a classic salsa, “Guararé”, showing how the style had developed in just a few short years. You could accuse El Palmas and El Dragón Criollo, the curators of this collection, as getting some sort of a sick thrill at throwing such a weird and unwieldy bunch of tracks together, and that may be true, but there is logic too. These are songs full of life and creativity that signalled an era of boundless optimism. Listen to them now, and you’ll find yourself feeling those emotions once again.

Far from the twin epicenters of New York and Miami, Carlos Ruiz and his Ebirac label were both feeling and generating the aftershocks of the mid-'70s salsa boom. Holed up in their own bustling Puerto Rican community center on Chicago's west side, these third coast salseros plied their trade outside the hot lights, cutting their teeth in city parks, VFW halls, and Holiday Inn rec rooms. Nearly 50 records survive in the wake of orquestas La Justicia, La Solucion, and Tipica Leal '79, the most impassioned, singular moments of which are compiled here.

We are true to the principles of the first "¡Naino!". Flamenco rumba fusion which in the hands of intrepid producers becomes Catalan Rumba under the influence of sounds coming from Cuba and Puerto Rico in the early 1960s, Rumba Pop under the umbrella of the British Invasion and American pop of the late 1960s, and Disco Rumba with the arrival funk and disco from the USA in the mid-1970s. Everything happens thanks to a flourishing record industry located mainly in Barcelona with labels such as Belter, Discophon or Vergara. After the death of the fascist, sanguinary dictator Paquito Franco in November 1975, the international record industry establishes in Madrid through major labels CBS, RCA, and a new fusion led by producer Jose Luis de Carlos and labeled as Gipsy Rock, Caño Roto or, in the Flamenco field, especially in couplets, Flamenco Pop. As Oriol Farràs pointed in the previous volume, rumba moved from tablaos to discotheques, understanding the concept of discotheque at that time with a slightly different meaning and less conditioned style-wise. The selection on offer here complements volume one. Starting with an A side packed with floor fillers, with Peret's "Chavi" as the top example of gypsy funk fusion under production of Josep María Bardagí and Josep "Rabbit Rumba" Cunill, and four examples of the answer to that sound as produced by Jose Luis de Carlos, showing the four cardinal points of this fusion success: Las Grecas, Los Chorbos, El Luis and Chango. De Carlos transforms the sound of Madrid's flamenco artists spicing it with soul, rock, glam, dub, funk, disco and gospel. These five opening tunes alone could feed a whole scholar course on the possibilities of rumba fusion and its incredible dance potential. Back to the record. There are not only examples of Afro-American flavored fusions. Progressive rock and Anglo-American psychedelia of the seventies are also influences represented here. They started a path that would later be known as "rock progresivo andalúz" (Andalusian progressive rock) with a crowded band scene and a hardcore hash impregnated following. But before reaching that point, here are some early efforts on side B. Synth-fueled rumba with Canterbury sound inspired electric guitars. A sound that, as it happened with rumba funk and flamenco pop, also had its moment of glory with the arrival of bands and solo artists such as Triana, Gualberto, Smash, Storm or Medina Azahara, or even the more blues-rock oriented Pata Negra.

Flamenco Pop. Just like any other label, it is born out of the need to define in two words a series of songs that share a same stimulus. The term was coined in the late sixties on the eponymous record released by Alfonso Santisteban (Madrid, 1943 - Málaga, 2013) & Rafael Ferro "Flamenco Pop" (Sintonía, 1969 / Música para un Guateque Sideral, 2018), an easy listening wonder with a bossa nova edge that takes flamenco elements and melodies to recreate sophisticated instrumental atmospheres. Santisteban had previously produced recordings for Bambino, Lola Flores, La Polaca or Chacho, and was a renowned soundtracks composer. His pop flamenco shows were more an environmental sound that a pop one, but the label "pop" used as a diminutive for "popular" sets a pace for imagination. Santisteban, Adolfo Waitzman (Argentina, 1930 - Madrid, 1998) and Augusto Algueró (Barcelona, 1934 - Torremolinos, 2011) were the triumvirate of arrangers / conductors / producers who defined the genre and took it to the charts of the era. Waitzman, who married stylish singer Encarnita Polo in 1969, took her wife to the top of the charts with the single "Paco, Paco" (rca, 1969) first, and with the LP "Encarnita Polo y Olé" (rca, 1971) two years later–an LP on which he mixed his love for The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" with popular couplets (or "coplas" as we call them in Spain defining a whole genre) written by Quintero-León-Quiroga, Sevilla's very own answer to Holland-Dozier-Holland at that time. He had previously produced some beat and prog-rock outfits like Canarios, Pop-Tops or the legendary UK ex-pat band The End. Last but not least, Algueró, who married the explosive Carmen Sevilla in 1961, who had already attempted to mold his wife's flamenco talent on the "Flamenca Ye-Yé" 45 (Philips, 1965), was also a key character in the era thanks to his many soundtracks, among them the iconic "Tuset Street" (Philips, 1968).

The selection of this compilation has a bit of everything. A pack of exuberant "copla" singers presented as a folkloric mod squad: Carmen Sevilla, Encarnita Polo, Rosa Morena, Dolores Abril, Carmen Flores (Lola Flores' sister), Dolores Vargas "La Terremoto" and La Polaca. To name this line-up back in the seventies in front of a Spanish "macho" was an instant activation of his lust.

Pointing out this idea today is possibly a crime of female objectification. On prosecution we'll have Manolo Escobar, Juanito Valderrama, El Principe Gitano, El Noy, Moncho, Richart and Los Nevada. If someone had told me these names a few years ago I would have bet they all came from a typical sixties Spanish film by Mariano Ozores, but do this: drop the needle, close your eyes, hear their stories – no matter if you know the artist or not – and try to fit it in its time (the 1970s, Franco's Spain, grey colors, austerity), but above all do listen to the music. We should refund your money if at any point you think "wtf?". And if your imagination can't go that far, just look for the clips on the films mentioned below.

“We are inspired by our own experiences, as well as those of others. The last year was the beginning of a new era for all of us and it has left us with much to analyze and the need to rethink our priorities. There’s been so many changes on this planet: the confinement, the constant looking back at the past, the struggle of many against endless injustices, love, all this leads to the fact that our new songs have very current themes but that also transcend time. They continue the characteristic sound of Acid Coco, with the undeniable influence of the Caribbean.” Acid Coco If we can define folklore as the passing on of traditions from a particular group of people, then there can be no denying that Acid Coco, whether consciously or not, are playing an important role in disseminating the folk culture of Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Throughout their music there are links to tradition: the gaita flute typical of rural cumbia, the effervescent guitar licks that are such a big part of the coast’s Afro-diasporic sounds, the teeth-rattling bass indicative of communities brought up on picó sound systems since the 70s, the unmistakable sound of the marimba wooden xylophone (each note like a rain drop on the jungle canopy), and then there are the lyrics. Tradition should not stand still, and in Andrea’s words we find the oral traditions of the last 30 years: on “Hoy Como Siempre” she sings of the need for women to stick up for themselves, to not fall in love too easily; on “Cara Dura” the sentiment is even stronger, its lyrics picking out a male predator on the dance floor who will not be tolerated; and then there’s “Mundo de Mentira” where vulnerability peaks through, the story of a woman whose life has become a “world of lies” since their lover has left – who can she believe now the one she trusted the most has gone? They are stories that could have spilled out of Cali’s salsatecas, Cartagena’s picós or any club the world over, yet through Paulo’s canny production there is no doubt where we are. Dembow, cumbia, reggaeton, even on the spiky Caribbean folk of final track “Por Las Venas” or chiptune melody of “Aquí y Allá”, there is nowhere we can be other than on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. It’s music that comes from lived experiences, from growing up in Colombia’s clubs and through its violence and daily realities. Culture is being passed forward.