Consumer Guide Album

Diablos Del Ritmo: The Colombian Melting Pot 1960-85 [Analog Africa, 2012]
You'll need the physical on this package because the 60-page booklet is part of the attraction: a detailed if not always fluent rundown of musical doings in the "dormant diaspora" of coastal Colombia, where the biggest port on the Colombian Caribbean, Barranquilla, was transformed by forces half understood into a voracious market for African dance music in the '70s and '80s. Although crate-digger obscurantism is big on this scene--Barranquilla is still home to a contest in which DJs compete to play the rarest African record--these two discs are a cherry-pick, and astutely programmed too. I prefer the one where Colombians imitate Africans, which is heavy on short-form soukous derivatives and makes room for Fela and Miriam Makeba rips as well as the sui generis Wasamay? Rock Group. But the jerkier, accordion-heavy "Puya, Porro, Gaita, Cumbiamba, Mapal?, Chand?, [and] Descarga" of the Latin selection has a gritty, fetchingly homemade quality. And if you want something smoother, try J. Alvear's "Cumbia Sincelejana." A-