Search - Various Artists :: Alma Gitano

IC B.
Reviewed on 7/15/2024...

This is a great mix of pop music styles from a time ('80s) and a place (Romani Spain).

This is the sound: blaring bands from a white-light night-time street party somewhere in Spain -- a little too close to a blazing bonfire -- where EVERYBODY is dancing: your friends, your grandma, your parents, kids and the whole damn' neighborhood besides. Definitely this record has a proud stripe of Spanish Romani heritage to it, with traditional cantaora vocals, fast, dark guitars, double-quick palmas and straight up passionate lyrics -- but stirred up with urban dance rhythms, disco, R&B, blues, funk and techno.

Interestingly...I'd say the songs have a dead giveaway hint of the pop-music 80s -- by way of Spain -- and are almost certainly from a decade or so earlier than the date on the CD. You just can't fake that unmistakable 80s-synth sound with patented drum-machine downbeat rhythms, no matter how hot the flamenco influence is...that, or this record is where all that classic equipment went when the 90s started! If that sound stirs good memories for you -- this will make you smile for sure.

Very cool stuff. It's a fun record, and kind of unusual, I think. Since the name and the cover might make it look like something staid, or traditional -- or like a hundred other vague pop-compilation CDs -- I wanted to make sure to give it a shout -- with plenty of Jaleo...Eso!!

1 of 1 member(s) found this review helpful.

The music of Alex Fox would have been a great touch........

04/04/1999

(3 out of 5 stars)

"to spice up this cd"