#The village voice returns its voicey full#

Michael Musto, the longtime nightlife columnist, marked the occasion with a return of his “La Dulce Musto” column.īy mid-morning on Thursday, many of the publication’s distinctive red distribution boxes were empty, copies collected up by souvenir hunters. The 176-page issue features a 50-page portfolio of journalistic luminaries who helped define the publication, including Voice co-founder Ed Fancher, theater critic Michael Feingold and film critics J Hoberman and Amy Taubin. N 'Colores de Colombia' runs Sat-Sun, Barbican Centre, London, EC2 Toto plays 7.30pm Sun.Photographed in a salute, the image of Dylan was taken in January 1965, near the old offices of the Voice. Maybe next year some Cali narco-philanthropist can be persuaded to stump up a little cartel petty cash, which should comfortably cover the mega-fees demanded by Carlos Vives, and then we can see the rest of the picture. Never mind, 'Colores de Colombia' will act as an eminently satisfactory introduction to Colombian music, thanks in part to the Colombian Federation of Coffee Growers, who subsidised the weekend. It was felt that the limited budget should go on Toto's own show, and a good selection of back-up acts. There are financial reasons too, the promoters add. Why not someone like Vives himself? Because she does not want commercial music, as purveyed by the big record companies, Toto says. Toto has selected half a dozen interesting, varied artists as supporting acts for the 'Colores' weekend: from Cimarron, a septet specialising in the joropo plains harp music, to the Manga Brothers, roots practitioners of the wild vallenato accordion music made massively popular in rock form by the current Colombian megastar Carlos Vives. And another minority audience at the opposite end of the social spectrum, intellectuals: one of Toto's most prominent gigs in 1982 was in Stockholm, for the Nobel Prize ceremony, at the invitation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was receiving that year's award for literature.

#The village voice returns its voicey full#

Although modern bands from the 1940s to the present day, have adapted the traditional rhythms, notably the cumbia, it is only a dwindling population of country dwellers who espouse the full range of authentic old styles. Toto learned her art in the villages of Colombia's Caribbean coast, crucible of the dance and song forms that resulted from the mixture of African, Amerindian and Hispanic ingredients, and where the local cantadora and her flute and drum accompanists were still on daily call for courtships, weddings, funerals, spontaneous merrymaking and doubtless the occasional bar mitzvah. Hands were held aloft in simulation of the lit candles the white-dressed women brandish in the traditional cumbia dance, more aguardiente was consumed, and an elated Toto barged back on stage later to duet unannounced with a surprised Joe Arroyo. Toto's tour manager suggested to the organisers that she open for Arroyo, and the audience was knocked out by this unexpected traditional drum group and its folklorically dressed leader, wailing out the old cumbias, porros and bullerengues homesick Colombians still love to dance to in the breaks from modern dance music at parties. Joe Arroyo, one of Colombia's biggest tropical stars, was billed at the Empire Leicester Square, and Toto, who had been adopted by the WOMAD organisation the previous year, was in the UK between world music festival dates. The first time most London Colombians heard of her was in 1992, on an evening still remembered for the coup de theatre of Toto's performance. So who is Toto La Momposina? A singer, dancer and researcher, daughter and mother of musicians, named after the Caribbean coastal island of Mompos where she was born, with almost 30 years' work, mainly outside Colombia, behind her. The two constituencies have their own tastes, which overlap but don't coincide - the diet of the latter being selected in a haphazard fashion by festival organisers and record companies like WOMAD and its Real World label. Whether this weekend's mini-festival, 'Colores de Colombia', is quite what London Colombians, as opposed to London world music fans, need is less clear. London's Colombians are a significant community: they form the capital's biggest Latin American population and the largest Colombian community outside the American continent, having swelled to more than 50,000 since the first arrivals (mainly from the region of Cali) were recruited for menial hospital and catering jobs in the early 1970s. In purely musical terms, Colombia is an extremely significant chunk of Latin America, being the third largest record market after Brazil and Mexico and rich in both traditional styles and modern pan-Latin popular stars. In seeking to diversify away from 'high Western culture' and targeting local ethnic communities, the Barbican Centre should be commended for turning the spotlight on Colombia.