Beck in cumbia. Or: A transformative Latin stroke of genius.
What’s wrong with Becks? “Loser” Wasn’t everything set in motion in the early 1990s? The American’s song became a surprise crossover hit, it referred the alternative rock community to hip hop and enriched the slackerism with an update of American blues music – with plenty of self-irony in the delivery. More than 30 years later, Beck Hansen picks up the guitar to play a variation of his “Loser”-To bring intros to a record by Eblis Álvarez (Meridian Brothers) and Camilo Lara (Mexican Institute Of Sound) – the contextual jump is completely successful, here it becomes iconic “Loser” the winner of a record so rich in transformations and references.
File under: Beck in Cumbia. Álvarez and Lara completed these ten songs in just a week, switching effortlessly from Colombian to Mexican cumbia and referencing the recordings of Rigo Tovar, who brought Moog synthesizers and rock guitars to Latin music of the 1970s and 1980s. The artists call what they produced “weird music.”
And that extends beyond cultural origins and the times when “Ritmo Babilonia” Not only Beck appears as a singer, but also a choir that is reminiscent of the early 70s recordings of the Brazilian Tom Zé, as well as trembling keyboards and roots rock guitar that complete the cumbia picture. On RUIDO TOVAR, two puppies from Lara’s possession are also used to howl, and when the musicians sing, we hear hymns about airplanes, songs about communism and heartbreak, but they are never meant to be entirely serious.
