After bursting onto Taipei’s live music scene in 2012, La Cumbia del Sol quickly became one of the country’s go-to party bands, which was not exactly expected, considering there was virtually no audience for cumbia music at the time.
Cumbia was born as a mix of African drum rhythms and indigenous flute music in Colombia. When it was adapted to big band in the 1930s and 40s, horns — especially the clarinet — took over the melodic lead. By the 60s, cumbia had gone international, with regional variations appearing in Argentina, Mexico and elsewhere.
Local bands dabbling in Latin rhythms usually played to niche audiences at Sappho, Bobwundaye or other clubs featuring jazz, folk or acoustic music. But La Cumbia played everywhere, packing rock live houses like Revolver and Pipe and drawing a diverse crowd that included night clubbers, rockers, office types and teetotaling salsa dancers.
Photo courtesy of Jamie MacTography
La Cumbia del Sol has just released its second album, Pachamama, which includes seven original songs plus a cover of an old Italian folk tune they have made their own, Bella Ciao. The band will tour around Taiwan in the coming weeks to promote the release, starting with a gig at Bobwundaye in Taipei tomorrow night.
The band is led by Fabian “Fao” Torres, a multi-instrumentalist from Colombia who has lived in Taiwan since 2009. His musical journey has been truly diverse. Torres, 38, started with rock ‘n’ roll in high school before going on to serious study of classical music and music theory in university. He has studied cumbia in his native country, the tabla in India, traditional percussion in Turkey and the shamisen (a three-stringed lute) in Japan.
As a performer, Torres has taken these traditional forms in even more interesting and sometimes postmodern directions, mixing noise with African drumming while in Japan, electronics and live percussion in the legendary Goa dance party scene in India and now developing a new cumbia hybrid in Taiwan. In La Cumbia del Sol’s current lineup, he plays bass, though he truly shines when on percussion.
In 2012, with other musicians he met while drinking in Shida Park (師大公園), Torres formed the band La Cumbia Balkanska, a startling fusion of the traditional acoustic dance music of South America and Central Europe. Players hailed from Serbia, Colombia, Guatemala, France and elsewhere.
After a lineup shuffle in 2013, the group moved to a purer cumbia sound and rechristened itself La Cumbia del Sol. A core of players emerged, including Torres, Guatemalan bass player Carol Avila, French clarinetist Emmanuel Brotte, American trombone player Andy Francis and Taiwanese Alicia Lin (林亞蒨) on percussion, with other players cycling through on guitar, drums and horns. (Avila left the band and returned home earlier this year.)
“It’s very hard to find musicians that can play this music,” Torres says. “It’s not rock and it’s not jazz, but somewhere in between. You need someone who can really give it this certain kind of punch.”
The new album features punchy, upbeat horns, group choruses and cumbia’s steady driving downbeats. All original tracks are at least six minutes long, because “that’s the length of the compositions I have,” Torres says. “I don’t need to do a short song for radio, so why do that?”
The final tune, Bella Ciao, is thought to date to the 18th century and served as an anthem for Italy’s anti-fascist movement around the start of World War II. La Cumbia frequently uses it to close concerts, or as an encore.
Torres says there has been heavy metal versions of the song, but never a cumbia one. The band was able to record the song in one take.
“People connect us with that song … With that, the album feels really rounded, really complete,” he says.
The band’s upcoming performances are as follows:
Tomorrow at 10pm with Red Cliff and Peaks at Bobwundaye (無問題), 77, Heping E Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市和平東路三段77號). Admission is NT$500 with one drink, or NT$400 with a “proper Halloween costume.”
Nov. 7 at 10pm with High Tide, Skaraoke and DJ @llenblow at Triangle, 1 Yumen St, Taipei City (臺北市中山區玉門街1號). Admission is NT$300 with one drink.
Nov. 14 at 10:30pm at Rocks, B1, 219, Juguang St, Kaohsiung City (高雄市莒光街219號B1). Admission is NT$300 with one drink.
Details of a Tainan show the weekend of Nov. 13 has yet to be announced.
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