Brendan Foreman penned this review.
As I noted in my review of their fantastic 1999 release, Amar de Nuevo, Inti-Illimani is a veteran Chilean musical group who has managed to weather the severities of Chile’s politics since the late 1960s (being more or less randomly out of the country during the military coup of 1973 certainly helped) while promoting free speech and other political rights through their music. They finally managed to return home in 1988.
With tracks selected from the four albums that Inti-Illimani has recorded for Xenophile Records during the 1990s, this CD celebrates the diversity and depth of their musical talents and offers an excellent and quite entertaining introduction to their own particular brand of Latin music. Certainly as evidenced by the selections of this CD, Inti-Illimani has never been tied down to one particular sound. There is a great range of Latin music here from Peruvian tradition to the Creole sounds of the Caribbean, from sophisticated serenades to rowdy rumbas.
Inti-Illimani began as a group of neo-traditionalists, i.e., an ensemble whose main goal was to re-create the sound and feel of the traditional music of their country. So there are naturally several tracks that sound almost like they were recorded right out of the mountains of Peru. These tunes, such as “Angelo” from their 1993 release Andadas, and “Yamor” and “Recuerdos de Kalahuayo” from 1998’s Lejania, feature a plethora of wind and string instruments which all combine to create a gorgeous, multi-layered, almost ethereal music. There’s really not any sort of folk music like it above the Border, although you can hear snippets of it in various Simon and Garfunkel songs, when Simon was plundering South America for new sounds.
Other traditional tracks are the simple, all too brief, Peruvian folk melody “Arpa Peruana” and the march-like Bolivian tune “Salake.” Inti-Illimani give the latter track an almost Portuguese sound with very emotional fado-like vocals and heavy emphasis on string instruments.
One of the most striking tracks is “Kalimba,” an Inti-Illimani original from Arriesgare la Piel. Slow and meditative, this tune begins sparingly with a guitar and builds wistfully — with the addition of more instruments — into a beautiful tapestry of sound. Contrasting with the smooth, introspective beauty of “Kalimba” is “Kulliacas” from the same CD. Rowdy, percussion-based, and certainly exciting, this is an excellent example of the Afro-Cuban sound that is getting so much attention of late.
From Andadas we get two vocal pieces: the rumba-like choral piece “Mulata” from Andadas and the fervent serenade “Fina Estampa.” There are also plenty of good tracks from their 1999 release Amar de Nuevo: the seductive “Negra Presuntuosa,” the ribald “La Fiesta Eres Tu,” and the tango-like “Entre Amor.” Also included here is the melancholy yet sultry bolero “Antes de Amar de Nuevo” wherein it is recommended that “Before loving again, cry a little in silence/Do as the rain does that washes your window…”
A friend of mine once advised that the best way to become familiar with a hitherto unfamiliar band or artist is to buy their “best of” album and decide where to start by buying the albums that have the tracks you liked the most. I’m afraid that this CD will not help you in this regard: after listening to this “best of” CD, you’ll want to buy every Inti-Illimani CD that you can get a hold of.
(Xenophile, 1999)
