Search - Carlos Vives :: Clasicos de la Provincia

This is where it all began...!!

Mauricio Ramirez | Bogota, COLOMBIA | 11/03/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Carlos Vives will probably be remembered as the man who globalized Colombian music and musicians.



Clasicos de la Provincia is where it started. Being a Colombian, I really like vallenato. Even though Carlos didn't use the pure original rhythm, this CD is wholly based on it, adding modern sounds such as guitars.



Most of the songs are old classics, and they're top quality by their own. Yet, Carlos Vives manages to create a powerful mixture and made them accesible to another audience. Great combination, great energy... overall, a must-have if you like this type of thing!!! 5 stars.



"

The drop that filled the bucket

Manny Hernandez | Bay Area, CA | 01/26/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

""La Gota Fria" (translated "The Cold Drop") was the drop that filled the bucket, back when Carlos Vives broke into the forefront of the Latin American radio airwaves. He busted in with a blend of Colombian folklore music (vallenato) with rock instruments that was not just original, but also sounded amazingly contagious. Within a few months, everyone knew who he was and the rest became history.



After this album, he had a stream of releases, all of which have been up to the public's expectation, maintaining a seamless combination of the genres with lyrics that get you off your feet, either to dance, to fall back laughing or to kiss your loved one. Carlos Vives knows how to do it, and he does it well."

Amazing dance tunes from a little-known Latin genre

Chris Stolz | canada | 10/28/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This Vives' superb 1994 musical debut brought the amazing vallenato musical tradition to world consciousness. CLÁSICOS is a collection of twentieth-century Colombian vallenatos, a muscial form originally played with stick, drum and accordion, but here updated to include an impressive array of drums and electric instruments. This is coastal dance music, what Colombians listen to when they party, and it is simply intoxicating.



The classic heavy-groove "La Gota Fria"--radically different than Emiliano Zuleta's original-- kicks the disc off with its story of duelling musicians, and is followed by love songs, laments and even a track ("Alicia Adorada") which filters reggae through Latin sensibilities. From classic portraits of vallenato life-- the town drunk of "Compae Chipuco"-- to love songs like "Amor Sensible," Vives' collection explores the genre's best tunes.



Vives' band, La Provincia, includes members whose fathers wrote some of the tunes, and all are superb players. The music is fluid, supple, deeply groovy and compulsively danceable. The band-- and disc's-- highlight, however, is the awesome accordeon playing of Egidio Cuadrado. As a Guatemalan friend put it, "Jimi Hendrix was the Egidio Cuadrado of the electric guitar," and if so, "Purple Haze" must be Hendrix' guitar version of "Pedazo de Acordeon." Cuadrado, like Keith Richards or Bob Mould, drops blasts of rhythm, then drifts away into sly fragments of solos and back, all in a breath.



The album's genesis is also interesting. Vives was originally a Colombian soap-opera actor and rock musician (who wrote some really bad Colombian rock songs and ballads). He was approached by Colombian TV to play the role of the still-living Rafael Escalona, who is to vallenato what Hank Williams is to country, or Charlie Parker is to jazz, in an 8-part midly fictionalised version of Escalona's life. Vives and band formed to perform the songs, and then decided to record and release them. Vives'music has been dramatically changed by this recording--his latin pop now has a vallenato feel, and staples of his concerts are these tunes.



Another legend of note-- vallenato music was supposedly originally born in mythical time, when acordeón player Francisco El Hombre met the Devil, who told him that his time was over. Francisco challenged the Devil to a musical duel, beat him, and thus was born vallenato (a story echoed in the Brer Rabbit folktales of North America, and in "The Devil and Daniel Webster").



The Escalona film is interesting; the music sensational, and this was the disc that brought vallenato to first a non-Colombian and then world audience, and which paved the way for other artists sucvh as Juanes and Shakira.



Vives is also a superb live player and a fairly entertaining guy-- if he comes to your area, make the effort to see him, especially if Cuadrado is on acordeón."