The Montreal cumbia group Less Toches performed three times at Nuits d’Afrique. Each concert was different, with special guests, allowing us to explore the diversity of this style… while getting everyone dancing.

It all began on July 13 with a Vallenato evening featuring Remberto Zuniga, a veteran singer and percussionist based in Montreal. Vallenatos are a kind of Colombian griot who travel from village to village singing.

After five minutes, no one was sitting down anymore, even though the crowd was small on this late evening of torrential rain. This concert would have to be repeated in a different context.

The second concert on July 14 aimed to bring cumbia closer to traditional Quebec music. The special guest was Alice Bro, a tattooed banjoist with a radiant, contagious smile and a husky voice, who offered a Tom Waits version of trad-keb. The mix wasn’t perfect, but it was very promising. To be explored further. The crowd, significantly larger than the previous day, danced enthusiastically, including a Serbian university professor whom we met by chance. These concerts provide opportunities for unexpected encounters.

The third concert, on the 15th, was the only one I missed. The guest was Ons Barnat, a musicologist, professor at UQAM, and reggae and dub music enthusiast. Another bold choice, which must have brought a lot of people to the dance floor at Balattou.

Less Toches are anthropologists of cumbia. Daniel Rodriguez, the percussionist and flutist who perfectly imitates birdsong, tells you, in impeccable French, lots of stories about the different styles and their more recent adaptations. A bottomless well of knowledge.

Less Toches is a gathering of new Montrealers of Colombian, Argentinean, Cuban, and Mexican origin. Unlike other recent cumbia offerings, such as Brussels-based Chiva Gantiva, heard at Nuits d’Afrique on July 8, Less Toches does not mix cumbia with electronic music. Nor does it mix it with brass instruments. The group is based on multiple percussion instruments and the accordion, with electric bass providing support and sometimes the traditional flute. But it hits the mark.

It will be interesting to follow Less Toches in the coming months. The group is currently working on its first full-length album. In the meantime, it will be performing at numerous festivals this summer. Get ready to “cumbier”!

Photo Credit: M. Belmellat

Fans of modernized Latin American cumbia are in for a real treat at the beginning of July: after performances by Frente Cumbiero and Empanadas Illegales at FIJM, the 39th edition of the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique kicked off with La Chiva Gantiva, a group of Colombians based in Brussels, who quickly set the Balattou alight. Like a match on very dry wood. The fire crackled. Instantly!

La Chiva Gantiva is made up of five versatile musicians who alternate between percussion, keyboards and other sequencers, guitars and basses, and flutes both normal and synthetic. Rafael Espinel takes the lead on vocals and all kinds of other instruments, especially the conga.

La Chiva Gantiva has nothing to envy of Colombia’s great electronic cumbia groups. The group has found an original blend of sounds, sometimes ethereal, sometimes percussive, with playful, intense improvisations. Many of the pieces were taken from their latest creation, Ego, released this year. As Rafael Espinel explained to us in an interview, this album, while playful and danceable, also contains reflective texts, notably on the inordinate place occupied by egocentricity in our societies. And on hunger and the future of indigenous peoples.

There was a surprise guest to accompany the band for a few songs. Noé Lira, the Mexico native, part-Quebecer, part-Mexican, fit in perfectly with the Belgo-Colombians’ groove. And the audience? A cross-cultural, cross-generational mix who got right into it. Most of them danced for most of the concert.

Photo Credit: M. Belmellat