New Songs, Protest and Poetry: Anna Colom, Haydée Milanés, Natalia LaFourcade and Gaby Moreno

Women who won't lower their voices.

Four of my favorite singers, with their respective collaborators, have released new music over the past couple of weeks. They are all women who have forged their own paths, and they share common ground both artistically and in their convictions. Geographically, they are artists from Spain, Cuba, Mexico and Guatemala, whose music is plaited with sounds and stories from their own migrations, and the itinerant roots of the music itself. (Read down to listen to these songs and more from the artists in a playlist.)

Anna Colom and Las Migas, “A medio mar”

Like putting your ear to a shell, listen to flamenco and you can hear the sound of the ocean. The metaphorical theme of water is in the lyrics of so many flamenco songs that are meditations on the ebb and flow of life.

The Barcelona-born vocalist Anna Colom and the trio Las Migas dedicate “A medio mar” (“Out at Sea”) to the contemporary migratory crisis that has turned the Mediterranean into a mass grave:

Cruzando de lao a lao/una embarcación perdía/el nombre de los ahogaos
las olas se llevaría/En este mundo tan malo/no hay derecho a la vida

Crossing from side to side/a lost boat/the names of the drowned/will be carried away by the waves/In this world so evil/these is no right to life

As the song-played on guitar, violin and pandereta drum-accelerates into a whirling dance, Colom makes a plea for a less apathetic world.

“A medio mar” is based on a traditional song in the melancholy flamenco style called petenera, popularized in the early 20th century by the Spanish flamenco great La Niña de los Peines. The origins of the petenera have been traced by some historians to Veracruz, Mexico. Colom and Las Migas highlight that cross-cultural connection by incorporating Mexican huasteca music into the song.

Anna Colom will play at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid this Saturday, March 22, and has several dates in Brazil at the end of the month https://www.instagram.com/annacolomtadeo/

Haydée Milanés Featuring El B, “Duele”

Images of the the ocean and forced migration are collaged with scenes of unrest and despair in the video for Haydée Milanés’ “Duele,” featuring the Cuban rapper El B, of the group Los Aldeanos.

Milanés’ goose-bumping voice can make anything into a fervent love ballad, and such is this very personal lament for Cuba. The interludes from El B serve to provide a sobering commentary, while, holding her hands in prayer or clasped to her heart, Milanés addresses the listener, her voice husky and rising, and then softly singing the words “Cuba duele” (“Cuba hurts”).

“Duele” is certainly not the first track in recent years to come from an artist representing a disillusioned and forthright generation that grew up in Cuba. As the tough scenes in the video by filmmaker Alejando Gutiérrez Morales make clear, this is a protest song, however velvet its delivery.

But there is a particular context which makes it even more of a statement. Milanés, who has lived in Miami for the past couple of years, is the daughter of the late Pablo Milanés, who was the composer of some of the most enduring Latin American love songs. But of course not only that. However his views may have evolved later in life, he was a singer synonymous with the Cuban Revolution. And for some he still is. He died in Madrid in 2022.

Haydée Milanés, who made some very beautiful recordings in duet with her father, has expressed to me that after being effectively canceled by the governement for statements that she made about the daily and dire struggles of Cuba’s citizens, she made the difficult decision to leave the island. She describes “Duele,” which cements that break with her home, as a necessary song.

Natalia Lafourcade, “Cancionera”

Natalia Lafourcade, the Mexican singer of bolero and folklore who is a spinner of gold records and Grammy awards, will be releasing her next album, Cancionera, in April.

After listening to the entire record, I can say that Lafourcade has confirmed her commitment to recording simply beautiful songs with exquisite phrasing. The album was recorded analog, produced by musician and actor Adán Jodorowsky (also known as Adanowsky) at his studio Sinfin in Mexico City. They previously worked together on Lafourcade’s album De Todas las Flores.

The title single from the album, out now, is a spare, surrounding bolero-tango.

"This song came to me one morning before my 40th birthday," Lafourcade told the writer Ernesto Lechner for Rolling Stone. "It speaks to me about the importance of being, of existing both in this world and in my own world, walking my truth - without fear, without repressing anything. It sings to that something that we should never allow to fade within us."

The singer will start an extended North American tour in Xalapa de Enríquez, Veracruz on April 23, and is set to wrap up in Miami in October. Here are the full tour dates: https://www.natalialafourcade.com.mx/en/concerts

Orquesta Failde featuring Gaby Moreno, “Aquellos Ojos Verdes”

Gaby Moreno is known both as an indie pop star in Latin America and, in Los Angeles, where she moved some time ago from her native Guatemala, as a lusty interpreter of her own brand of blues (and also the co-writer of the theme song for “Parks and Recreation.”)

Moreno sings on a newly released classic from Orquesta Failde, an old school orchestra with young players from Matanzas, Cuba. Their goal is to bring traditional Cuban dance music to young and old, as the sweet video above shows. Ethiel Failde, the great-great grandson of danzón pioneer Miguel Failde, has determinedly spread that gospel for the last decade or so by collaborating with high profile singers, most often Omara Portuondo.

Here, Moreno digs into composer Nilo Menendez’s “Aquellos Ojos Verdes,” written in 1929, which was a hit in the U.S. when Jimmy Dorsey recorded it as “Green Eyes.” Nat King Cole covered it in the original Spanish.

Gaby Moreno’s next concert date is at Fitzgerald’s Historic Nightclub in Berwyn, Il on April 11.

Listen to the playlist on Qobuz:

Listen to the playlist on Spotify:

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