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JOLGORIO
(Times Square)
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If you love the sultry, jazz-tinged work of Afro-Peruvian diva Susana Baca, you owe yourself this excursion into the roots of her world-renowned sound. After 35 years of reviving and reinventing the African-derived music and dance of Peru, this group, who played the Berklee Performance Center this past Sunday, are enjoying a renaissance, one that’s fully evident in the 13 tracks on this elegant and well-documented CD. Perú Negro’s stock in trade is the rollicking festejo, a celebratory genre featuring the crack and snap of the wooden cajón, the pop of congas, jangling Spanish guitar, and mostly female call-and-response vocals. Most of these pieces accompany dances, such as the loping, 6/8 alcatraz, which involves love play reminiscent of Cuban rumba. The revelry here is broken by a few slower pieces, including a sensuous lando — the genre that put Baca on the map — in which notes and beats seem to hang in suspended animation between contrasting, conversing rhythms. These performances reimagine a lost past, but the reality could hardly have been more rich and spirited.
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