Grief calls for its personal unattainable language. To confront the dying of a cherished one (or the lingering depression of diasporic displacement), it’s important to bend the principles. It calls for new idioms, new words, new sorts of expression altogether. To cope with those 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” through colliding the Spanish phrases for “dangerous” and “happiness.” It’s a idea that captures the radiant emotional spectrum of Reyna’s debut full-length, launched two years after the dying of her bandmate, Nectali “Sumohair” Díaz, in an e-scooter twist of fate. The document is an imaginative meditation at 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 alternative types, glazing them over every different like a extremely saturated watercolor portray. With its unfastened development, creative preparations, and liturgical tranquility, Malegría is an incisive exploration of the porosity of diasporic lifestyles.
Reyna is a nimble guitarist, in a position to float fluidly between genres and settle within the area in between. “Lo Siento” is constructed on a bare-bones lyrical chorus about wearing wisdom this is painful, however the looping soukous melody feels soaked in marigold-colored gentle, as though 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 manufacturer Busy Twist and Franklin Tejedor, one-half of Colombian digital duo Mitú. Tejedor comes from an extended line of percussionists within the UNESCO-recognized the town of San Basilio de Palenque, the primary unfastened 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 maximum 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 procedure whilst additionally reflecting again at the album’s broader topics. Within the interlude “Mestizaje,” an unnamed narrator speaks in regards to the bad colorist racial ideology that has formed her circle of relatives and such a lot of different Latin American ones, through which marriages with white companions are inspired with a purpose to produce “better-looking” kids. Malegría succeeds, partially, as a result of Reyna isn’t afraid to confront the unpleasant portions of Latin American tradition, too.
