Sonic Tomfoolery and Rhythmic Savvy From Systema Solar
Sonic Tomfoolery and Rhythmic Savvy From Systema Solar
By JON PARELESJAN. 11, 2017
Grooves matter most on “Rumbo a Tierra,” by the Colombian collective Systema Solar, and they’re magnificent grooves. Systema Solar comes from Barranquilla, a major port city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, and its music makes connections to the sound-system D.J. culture that extends across and around the Caribbean, to Colombian folk traditions, to all sorts of electronic transformations and to anything else the group decides to latch onto, from Jamaican dancehall to Moroccan trance music.
“Rumbo a Tierra” is the group’s second United States album, after the release here in 2016 of “Systema Solar,” a compilation from albums released in Colombia in 2009 and 2013. From its beginnings — when the collective got together to play the opening ceremony of an art biennale in Medellín, Colombia — Systema Solar has been tossing together the folkloric and the programmed, the homegrown and the international; it also cultivates a visual side in costumes and images. It’s an impulse similar to the approach of the Mexican group Nortec Collective, but with different source materials and instincts. Systema Solar’s new album makes a huge leap from the group’s previous recordings; its fusions are far more sleek, seamless, comic and lavish with ideas.
Take “Rumbera,” a pure party tune so exuberant and ingenious that it was also chosen for the official soccer soundtrack album “FIFA 17.” Its syncopated little riff appears first on acoustic guitar. A bunch of percussion instruments sneak into the mix and mesh — check the stereo cowbells — while its raspy singer, Jhon Primera, gathers a rowdy chorus to answer him. Then some turntable scratching ushers in a shift toward the synthetic: pulsing keyboard parts, voices chopped into samples, the guitar suddenly distorted and stuttering. Somehow, every sound only stokes the unstoppable party.
Or try “Champe Tabluo.” As its lyrics laughingly praise the midtempo beat called champeta, the constantly changing track dovetails champeta into funk, hip-hop, blues, rock, Congolese soukous, Haitian compas and more.
“Rumbo a Tierra” is an album of boundless sonic tomfoolery and rhythmic savvy; a listener could simply enjoy the vocals as nonverbal sounds. Yet Systema Solar has far more on its mind than the grooves. The video for “Rumbera” makes a cheerful but unmistakable statement about diversity; its dancing women, the rumberas, are all ages, sizes, races and orientations, including some transgender ones.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/arts/music/systema-solar-rumbo-a-tierra-review.html?_r=0
