Makatumbe regularly goes on treasure hunts for musical gems. The traditional-sounding melodies found or invented are packaged into modern dance grooves and peppered with many of our own sound ideas. The unusual line-up makes you sit up and take notice: vocal acrobatics à la beatbox, raggamuffin and overtone singing meet accordion and clarinet, drums and bass form the driving and grooving basic structure. On stage the band presents a very wide spectrum: from cumbia, reggae (sound) and hip-hop to Balkanesque and oriental to techno. What unites the band's sound is the explosive energy of the musicians. No dance stays still. At the finale of the creole festival 2017, Makatumbe won both the award for outstanding musical diversity and the audience award with his colorful palette and sparkling enthusiasm.

For Los Guayabo Brothers, we can say that they are one of those groups that approach of the heritage of Latin American/folk/Afro and world music, adding some of their own touch and an expressive step forward. In any case, it is not an easy task, but this team of musicians, whose performing energy is evident, expand expressive research in their own way, giving their music an authentic stamp.

Psychedelic Peruvian Cumbia and Chicha from the archives of the legendary Infopesa label, 1968-1982. Alberto Maraví was the man behind the Infopesa label from Peru. A key figure in the creation of the Peruvian Cumbia, he recorded and produced legendary bands like Los Mirlos, Los Orientales de Paramonga, Juaneco Y Su Combo, Los Pakines and many more. Original Records from the Infopesa label are now heavily sought after by collectors and discerning DJs worldwide, who marvel at the exotic mix of jungle sounds, reverb drenched electric guitars and delay effects.

“Whoever has been following the musical movements happening within our culture, must have noticed this young singer hailing from the North of Brazil. An absolute master of Baião, Côco, Batuque and other related musical genres and the owner of an art one hundred percent his own, Ary Lobo is the ideal interpreter of northeastern songs."

Almas Conectadas (Connected Souls) is the sophomore album from renowned British producer Will “Quantic” Holland and Colombian folklore singer-songwriter Nidia Góngora. Bubbling with symphonic flourishes, the release explores the unique, rich, and mystical musical traditions of the Colombian Pacific Coast while being recorded at Quantic’s Brooklyn-based studio and creative powerhouse Selva.

Border music without borders. Sergio Mendoza (a longtime member of Calexico) grew up on both sides of the US/Mexican frontier. On the band’s 3rd album, “Curandero,” his musical melding of that experience explodes from the speakers. Boogaloo, cumbia, ranchera & rock’n’roll.

On 12 February 1949 an angry mob stormed into the centre of the Ecuadorian capital of Quito, burning the offices of the city’s main newspaper and its oldest radio station to the ground.

Less than a hundred miles inland from the capital city of Lima lies the great Peruvian jungle, an untamed land of impenetrable forests and endless winding rivers. In its isolated cities, cut off from the fashions of the capital, a unique style of music began to develop, inspired equally by the sounds of the surrounding forests, the roll of the mighty Amazon and Ucayali Rivers, and the rhythms of cumbia picked up from distant stations on transistor radios. With the arrival of electricity, a new generation of young musicians started plugging in their guitars and trading in their accordions for synthesizers: Amazonian cumbia was born.

After the very acoustic "¿Dónde estás María?". I decided to try a new experiment taking as a reference the legendary group "Cumbia siglo XX" which is a group who explores a futuristic vision of coastal cumbia in the 80s, together with other groups such as "Grupo folclórico", "2000 voltios" and others, mainly under the label Machuca and Felito records. This new 80s cumbia was a combination of funky basses and a further evolution of the rhythms, blending this style with disco and even rock music and superimposing the traditional versus the urban context and the modernity.