Susana Baca

Posted on Wednesday, August 31

Susana Baca: Singing the musical dialects of the African Americas
Afrodiaspora (Luaka Bop, 2011)

By Catalina Maria Johnson, Chicago-based writer and host/producer of Beat Latino.

Afroperuvian music first came to the world’s attention in many ways thanks to Susana Baca´s magnificent interpretation of what would become her signature tune, “Maria Landó,”  included in the seminal compilation “The Soul of Black Peru,”  curated by Luaka Bop label owner David Byrne. This recognition and then a subsequent Grammy awarded her (“Lamento Negro,” 2002)  also made us aware of Baca’s work as an ethnomusicologist. Along with her husband and sociologist Ricardo Pereira, for decades she had documented Afroperuvian musical culture: little known rhythmical treasures forged in Peru as early as the 1600’s with the arrival of African slaves and the mixing of their musical heritage with that of Spanish and indigenous Andean peoples.

A few years later, when Baca was in New Orleans furthering her research, Katrina interrupted her plans and brought her to the University of Chicago to complete an investigation on the relationships between the different musics of Africans in the Americas. “Afrodiaspora,” her latest album and seventh for the Luaka Bop label, is in many ways is a musical white paper in which Baca connects and contrasts music from her own country with that of Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Venezuela, and of course, in the U.S., New Orleans.

Accompanied by her band of accomplished Peruvian musicians who are true masters of traditional instruments as well as Afroperuvian percussion instruments such as the jawbone, the cajón and the cajita (all slave instruments, created out of donkey jawbones, crates and church collection boxes, respectively), the CD’s songs transport us back and forth from Perú to other parts of the Americas via Baca´s extaordinarily lucid and velvety voice. They also incorporate a stellar series of invited musicians who add their own textures and help prove Baca´s point of the fundamental unity of all African-rooted music in the Americas. On “Hey Pocky Way”, Chicago´s Billy Branch counterpoints her voice with swinging blues harmonica riffs. California Chicano roots rockers Quetzal organically segue the classic Mexican tune “Que Bonito Tu Vestido,” from Mexican and Peruvian waltz-like rhythms into verses from “La Bamba”, a tune within the son jarocho genre from Veracruz that’s in and of itself an example of afromestizo music. On “Bomba y Plena”,  the duo of rebel raperos from “Calle 13” add call and response vocals to Baca´s take on those iconic Puerto Rican rhythms. The CD also includes compositions by well-recognized Latin composers, such as the cumbia “Detras de la Puerta” by Colombian Ivan Benavides (founding member of the pioneering electronica group Sidestepper and producer of  several of Latin Grammy-awarded Choc Quib Town´s most successful tunes). Spain is not left out in Baca’s musical reading of Africa in the Americas: She includes and interprets with particular delight the composition “African Queen” by Spanish poet and singer/songwriter Javier Ruibal,  that describes a lovely African woman stopping the port of Cadiz dead in its tracks when she steps onto the dock.

Baca has recently once again captured the media’s attention with her appointment as minister of Culture of Perú. Conversing prior to a recent concert here in Chicago, she affirmed with great conviction that her main task as minister will be to fight racism, and that this will take discovering  and celebrating what we have in common. And indeed, “Afrodiaspora” is an excellent example of musical common bonds. The full impact of this became clear to me after experiencing Baca sing its tunes in that concert. “Afrodiaspora” is really meant to be listened through in its entirety – its message is communicated through the flavors of the songs gently mingling in our minds as we listen.  Besides being a beautiful lesson in ethnomusicology, “Afrodiaspora” shares melodies and rhythms that throughout two continents helped sustain peoples who rose above heart-breaking circumstances, and along the way created a new musical language with an immensely rich variety of dialects.