#mestizx

[nonesuchrecords]

The Amsterdam-based duo of Bolivian-born singer/instrumentalist Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly's MESTIZX debut US tour kicks off in two weeks, with shows in Kenosha, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn, and a set at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville. Details/tix here.

[nonesuchrecords]

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly have released a remix of "BALADA PARA LA CORPORATOCRACIA," from their acclaimed debut album, MESTIZX, by Andy Moor, of the Dutch anarcho-punk band The Ex. You can hear it here. Ferragutti, Rosaly, and their band tour the US in March, with shows in Chicago, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, NYC, and Big Ears Festival in Knoxville. You can get tickets here.

[nonesuchrecords]

Bolivian-born singer and multimedia performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly and their debut full-length album as co-composers, arrangers, and musicians, MESTIZX, are the subject of a new documentary from International Anthem, with whom Nonesuch released the album, edited by David Burkart. Over twenty-two minutes and twenty-seconds, the short film follows the Amsterdam-based duo down their personal, creative paths to crafting the album.

[brujarojaderio]

I'm a white Latina (1/5th Mexican) but I was raised with my abuela (who is 3/4 Mexican) and raised in the Mexican culture my whole life. Am I still allowed to practice brujeria?

It is outside of my purview to give anyone permission to practice anything.

I think it is useful to ask what you mean by allowed?

Are you trying to avoid feelings of guilt about not being "Mexican enough"? Perhaps you should interrogate what that means to you and who in society you allow to gatekeep that for you.

Are you trying to avoid social censure? That other people in the community will reject you? Or that strangers outside the community will see you and think you don't belong?

These feelings are ubiquitous in the mixed experience, the feeling of Nepantla. Anglo society and colonial mindsets will always try to dissect you into discreet pieces that are unambiguously This or That, to find out what you REALLY are. But you REALLY ARE both things, at the same time, an estuary defined by the mixing of elements.

[dustedmagazine]

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly — Mestizx (Nonesuch/Intl Anthem)

Two musicians with Latin roots but primarily Western musical training and experience dig into a multicultural heritage, incorporating indigenous rhythms, instruments and sounds into intricate space-age explorations of history, myth and personal authenticity.

The two musicians in question are Frank Rosaly, a well-regarded free jazz drummer whose exploits have been frequently chronicled here at Dusted. Jazz fans may associate him primarily with a thriving Chicago scene, but he has Puerto Rican heritage and now lives in Amsterdam. His wife Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti is a singer and multimedia artist, classical trained but born in Bolivia. This is their first collaborative album, a careful excavation of the sounds and musical traditions of their respective Latin cultures, a reclamation, of sorts, of influences that neither artist feels fully able to claim as his or her own.

Authenticity, is, of course, a tricky concept. Ferragutti freely admits that growing up in Bolivia doesn’t necessarily entitle her to ownership of indigenous culture, while Rosaly, in the liners, admits to experiencing Puerto Rican culture largely as an outsider. Mestizx (a non-gendered term for people of mixed heritage) is as much about being estranged from one’s history as it is about participating in it.  

So there is joy but also a sense of longing in these multi-rhythmed, intricatedly constructed cuts. The beats are insistent, celebratory, all-enveloping, and yet you glimpse them as through a window. Elements may come from isolated rainforest tribes—the two enlisted Fredy Velásquez a scholar and performance artist with expertise in Colombian indigenous rites as a collaborator—but they are viewed through the whole of the western tradition: jazz, rock and classical. The gorgeous “Saber do Mar” flickers like a hallucination, threads of drone winding through intricate structures of malleted percussion; it feels both real and imaginary, a place visited in febrile dreams.

These songs are sung mostly in Spanish, with occasional diversions into other dialects. The titles indicate political engagement (“Balada Para La Corporatocracia” translates as “ballad for corporatocracy,” “Destejer” as “to unravel.”) yet the music is anything but didactic. It seethes and undulates with an easy fluidity, Ferragutti’s serene vocals cresting over the synchronized clatter of percussive instruments made of metal, wood and skin. Other artists, mostly from Chicago, drop by to play. Ben LaMar Gay, Bill MacKay, Rob Frye, Mikel Patrick Avery and Avreeayl Ra all make appearances.

All of which coalesces in some genuine sonic pleasures. “Turbulência” barrels down a groove like a freight train, the shush and pop of samba rhythms clattering amid grinding bass and the trebly sparkle of keyboards. “Writing with Knots” pounds a two-toned cadence, shakers and fluttery melody at play, the thread of dissolution always looming. This one, in English, recounts the terrible history of colonialism, but also points towards the future. Like the Meztizx project writ large, It sends tendrils back into the past in order to plot a better way forward.  

Jennifer Kelly

[nonesuchrecords]

Bolivian-born singer and multimedia performer Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and renowned Chicago expat jazz drummer Frank Rosaly's debut album together, MESTIZX, is now available on all streaming platforms via International Anthem / Nonesuch , following the May 3 release of the album on vinyl LP, CD, and digital download. You can get it and hear it now here.

"Sonic wonders colliding in really great ways," says NPR Music. The Guardian calls it "infectiously kinetic." Treble describes it as "an intricate, complex, and thoroughly gorgeous set of songs that weaves between folk, jazz, cumbia, bomba, art-rock and other sounds effortlessly and stunningly." Glide considers it "a mosaic of sound that challenges, delights, and inspires … a pivotal debut."

[nonesuchrecords]

"There is a dreamy, hard-to-place quality to the sound of MESTIZX," WNYC Studios' New Sounds host John Schaefer says of Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly's new album, which sets the tone for the latest episode of the show, focused on songs from the Caribbean and South America that "mix cultures and styles and instruments." There are tracks from MESTIZX; Gustavo Santaolalla's acclaimed 1998 album Ronroco, recently released on vinyl for the first time; and Gaby Kerpel's 2003 Santaolalla-produced Nonesuch album, Carnabailito; and more. You can hear it here.

[nonesuchrecords]

Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly's have released "TURBULÊNCIA," from their new album, MESTIZX. The video, featuring Ferragutti, Rosaly, Alice de Maio, and Rosanna ter Steege, was directed by Ferragutti in Rotterdam, with concept and art direction by Noralie van den Eijnde and direction of photography by Marc Riordan.