My friend Mike likes to argue with me about the merits of world music. He thinks he knows a thing or two because he saw FELA! on Broadway and once burned me a CD-R he called “The Emperor’s New Groove” that I later discovered was actually just a mix of various Numero Group and Sublime Frequencies b-sides.
Pablo Díaz-Reixa is not like Mike. Within the upcoming year Díaz-Reixa aka El Guincho is set to release a volume of covers of lost South American traditional folk songs called Piratas de Sudamérica. The first of the volume is a splendid little five song EP that is mostly Cuban themed. And unlike Mike, El Guincho does not need to prove his credentials through the depths of his crate digging. Granted, unless you are a seventy-year-old Cuban grandpa you’ve probably never heard any of these songs, but for El Guincho, it doesn’t seem that way. The vibe on this album feels completely natural, and the selection of covers seems to really reflect the nature of this native Barcelonan, and the true capacities of his style.
When El Guincho first came onto the radar with 2008’s Alegranza! it was hard to defend his rapid success from Animal Collective skeptics who arraigned him for chasing the drowned-in-reverb trend. Now, with a crisper, less cluttered sound, the Piratas de Sudamérica series proves that he is not a follower. While trademark textures and grooves still remain, the sound here is stripped down and simplified, and the result is more charming and effective than ever before. “Mientes,” a rendition of Cuba’s renowned Trio Matamoros, fits perfectly with El Guincho’s aesthetic. Its son cubano style that gained worldwide popularity in the 1930’s is preserved here and it sounds right up his alley. If this is what it takes for kids in Brooklyn to discover the origins of Arará percussion, so be it. And while El Guincho is certainly no less aware how effectively Spanish guitar combined with African rhythms lead the current indie chic, at no point on this record does it feel appropriated. For all you early naysayers, a once-over of this fifteen minute EP just might be enough to prove that El Guincho is not simply riding the Panda Bear coattails. Once converted, you won’t be able to get enough of El Guincho’s perfected, tropical crooning.
We’ll have to wait and see how the Piratas de Sudamérica series unfolds as it leads up to El Guincho’s second full length LP, Pop Negro, which is due out later this fall on Young Turks. In the meantime, anyone fixing for a little steelpan medley can stream Piratas de Sudamérica Vol. 1 in its entirety over at El Guincho’s myspace. It will have people of all backgrounds sipping coolattas and singing along to every line, even if you—like my friend Mike—don’t speak a lick of Spanish.
