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Grief calls for its personal not possible language. To confront the loss of life of a cherished one (or the lingering melancholy of diasporic displacement), you need to bend the principles. It requires new idioms, new phrases, new types of expression altogether. To take care of these emotions, the Los Angeles-based musician Fabi Reyna, aka Reyna Tropical, turns to the knowledge of a pithy neologism: malegría.
Borrowed from a 1998 Manu Chao music, the time period mimics “bittersweetness” by colliding the Spanish phrases for “dangerous” and “happiness.” It’s an idea that captures the radiant emotional spectrum of Reyna’s debut full-length, launched two years after the loss of life of her bandmate, Nectali “Sumohair” Díaz, in an e-scooter accident. The file is an imaginative meditation on the chances of diasporic style collage: Reyna, Díaz, and new collaborator Nay Mapalo gather hues of Peruvian chicha, Mexican zapateado, Congolese soukous, and a handful of different kinds, glazing them over one another like a extremely saturated watercolor portray. With its unfastened building, ingenious preparations, and liturgical tranquility, Malegría is an incisive exploration of the porosity of diasporic life.
Reyna is a nimble guitarist, in a position to glide fluidly between genres and settle within the house in between. “Lo Siento” is constructed on a bare-bones lyrical chorus about carrying data that’s painful, however the looping soukous melody feels soaked in marigold-colored mild, as if she’d harnessed apricity itself. “Conexión Ancestral” is a high-gloss stylistic detour with a punchy four-on-the-floor basis. “Suavecito” is a beaming prayer for serenity, constructed on dapples of Afro-Colombian percussion and a galloping dembow riddim. The music options London producer Busy Twist and Franklin Tejedor, one-half of Colombian digital duo Mitú. Tejedor comes from a protracted line of percussionists within the UNESCO-recognized city of San Basilio de Palenque, the primary free Black village of the Americas. He lends his voice and drumming to the observe, opening the music with a spoken intro in San Basilio’s creole palenquero language. With its shimmering guitars and clacking folkloric drums, “Suavecito” displays Reyna’s most exploratory impulses, conjuring an indelible second of tropical futurist magic.
The album is dotted with voice memos of conversations Reyna had with Díaz, doubling as a window into the pair’s inventive course of whereas additionally reflecting again on the album’s broader themes. Within the interlude “Mestizaje,” an unnamed narrator speaks concerning the harmful colorist racial ideology that has formed her household and so many different Latin American ones, by which marriages with white companions are inspired with a view to produce “better-looking” youngsters. Malegría succeeds, partly, as a result of Reyna isn’t afraid to confront the ugly elements of Latin American tradition, too.
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