Ernesto Torrealba y Su Conjunto -- Cumbia Sobre El Llano (1981)
A slow chugging cumbia from Colombia, with fading organs and a racing harp that conjures up dusty visions of the llano. Sonido Franko describes it best over at his blog Super Sonido, a clearinghouse for all good things cumbia, boogaloo, descarga, garage:
In Colombia, Los Llanos (the plains) are the vast agricultural lands of savannah that stretch all the way to Venezuela. Both the vallenato and cumbia originated in the northern Caribbean coast - whereas a different type of music from the plain region developed around the instrument of the harp. Musica Llanera, or so it’s called, never really got the attention that other musical genres did of the day. However, Ernesto Torrealba seems to have melded the two genres together quite well.
Cumbia Sobre El Llano is a quasi-reflection of what typical Musica Llanera is about: music with a rhythmic drive and vocals that verge on over sentimentality. But what other instrument can actually sound like the wind hitting the brush and savannah like the harp can? Possibly a testament of how bounded a music is to its own environment. Enjoy!