6/18/2023 0 Comments Quetzal puentes sonoros![]() An ensemble chorus lets its power be heard on Afro-tinged tracks such as “El Río” (The River) and “Te Quiero” (I Love You). On “Puentes Sonoros,” her voice alternates with that of veteran violinist Tylana Enomoto, who has come into her own as a silken-throated vocalist, and that of González’s musical prodigy and multi-instrumentalist son, Sandino Flores-González. Equally comfortable in the modes of sweet, longing love and hard-hitting, unbridled songs demanding freedom and justice, González delivers the songs’ Spanish lyrics with convincing directness and a rich palette of emotional shades. ![]() Lead singer Martha González’s velvet hammer voice is likewise a stamp of the group’s identity. In the 1990s, his attraction to the son jarocho melded his music-making with the binational jaranero movement, which continues to be as much a social movement championing disenfranchised people of the underclass (“los de abajo”) as it is a musical movement reinvigorating the tradition and propelling it to a prominent place throughout Mexico and in many parts of the United States. A Grammy-nominated producer as well as Grammy-winning artist, he is a founder and primal force behind the group’s sound, vision, and social message. Quetzal’s bandleader Quetzal Flores credits the group’s creativity to its style of collective composition, in which all members contribute. While not a single track is itself a son jarocho, all are jarocho-inspired, adding new dimensions of sound and human experience to the centuries-old tradition. Collectively, the tracks present a tapestry of songs imbued with the sound and sentiment of Chicano inventiveness. ![]() Add to this an armory of percussive punctuation in the form of foot-hammering zapateado, scraped and rattled quijada donkey jawbone, Veracruz pandero tambourine, and handclaps, and the Quetzal sound is complete. “Puentes Sonoros” stays true to the essential sound of Quetzal, with string-rich jarana guitars providing a rhythmic-chordal musical heartbeat set over a baseline of innovative bass lines and undergirding melodies expressed in dynamic vocals, violin excursions, and plucked passages by the distinctive-sounding Veracruz guitarra de son. Listen to Quetzal's 'El rio (The River)' HERE The album, out February 12th, 2021, interlaces dreamlike audio memories of people, places, and experiences in the rural heartlands of Veracruz, Mexico, with a range of original creations-some reflective, some boisterous, and all a driving juggernaut of rhythmic forward motion. rocker origins and their decades-deep engagement with the son jarocho, one of Mexico’s most prominent region-rooted folk musics, to establish their own voice of the here-and-now. On their third Smithsonian Folkways album, titled “Puentes Sonoros” (Sonic Bridges), Grammy-winning band Quetzal traverses past and present, rural and urban, Mexico and the United States. Quetzal Announce Third Folkways Album, Puentes Sonoros (Sonic Bridges), out 2/12
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