Uno

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:39:48 -0500

Malpaís is one of the most successful efforts by a Costa Rican group to fuse traditional and popular music, and to enrich this fusion with elements of jazz and rock. This doesn’t happen over night: it comes from a slow process, a reclamation of roots distilled in the province of Guanacaste, on the border with Nicaragua – “más al norte del recuerdo” (“North of Memory”) – but without rejecting the urban cosmovision and transformations of Latin American song over the past three decades.

Their debut CD, “Uno” has sold over 10,000 copies in Costa Rica alone, an astonishing accomplishment for any non-commercial band in Central America, and the attendance of audiences of all ages to Malpaís´s concerts keeps growing and growing.

Uno is made up of 11 songs that have managed to tap into the audience´s sensibility and to establish a very emotional relationship with them. The songs all include straightforward and enjoyable contemporary music and poetic lyrics blend into an innovative combination that has fascinated the public. Elements from Latin jazz, nostalgic acoustic song, Costa Rican folk genres and classic Latin rhythms are played with an original array of instruments, which makes Uno an amazing piece of contemporary art.
Uno focuses on the deep nostalgia Costa Rican feel for the loss of their small town life, contact with nature and a simple existance. As the song “Boceto para Esperanza” says: “Back when the air had traces of blue, and the backyard could fit all the existing light. Take me, grandmother, where I can sleep. If you´re going back, take me there”.
This longing for the past is a recurring theme in their songs. Another example is the song “Como un pájaro”: “And then I was again a little boy, running through the open plain. Crazed and shirtless I got lost in the summer in the dusty roads. I know you may not remember the blooming flowers or that fire, I know sometimes I look back, but it´s only to find out where I´m coming from.” These are the songs thousands of Costa Ricans have been singing passionately, also attempting to undestrand better where they´re coming from. The disk Uno has surely won a space in Costa Rica´s musical history.

Historias de nadie

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:39:48 -0500

The refined nectar distilled by Malpaís has nothing to do with some sort of academic exercise, and even less with simplified folkloric compilations made for tourists. We are face to face with something new and yet at the same time ancestral, hence the great and sudden popularity of their music.

Fidel Gamboa, Malpaís´s vocalist and songwriter, comes from a family with several generations of Guanacastecan singers and songwriters, including Adán Guevara Centeno and Max Goldemberg. His songs reflect the Creole, Mestizo and Mesoamerican tradition from which several themes in this CD are derived: “La Vieja”, “Mazurca de Dámaso”, “Presagio” and the very beautiful “Más al norte del recuerdo”.
Historias de nadie is consequently an event, preceded by a year of thunderous concerts such as the series of “jams” at the Old Customs House in the Costa Rican capital city, where thousands of spectators gathered together to make a handful of memorable songs their own.
This new handful of songs, in Malpaís’ second disk, will soon also be passed from mouth to mouth. These are songs of farewell and absence in which Guanacaste is a metaphor for any corner of the world where “dreams are lost” (“se van perdiendo los sueños”). As the last refrain of “Más al norte del recuerdo” leaves off: “Over there, by the stand of sweet acacia, dreams are lost, over there far away and it never seems we will arrive …the wind no longer sings of Guanacaste, it is no more; I have to look farther north of the memory…”

Please, play that again.

New Music From Malpais on Calabash Music

Uno

Historias de nadie