Customer Reviews

Pokito a Poko

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I love this band and this album. I have all of their albums, and this is the last one where the songwriting and composition are magical.

After this, they did a live album and DVD(Puro), and it was very good, but no new material. Their more recent stuff is okay, but it just doesn't "reach" me like Flamenco Chill, Endofinas en la Mente, and this one did.

After this album, things changed a lot in the band. Eduardo and Dani are gone, LaMari got cancer and was cured, and she got plastic surgery... I don't know the whole story, since I'm an American who speaks very little Spanish(I'm working on that), and so I don't know how to find out these things. I infer(perhaps wrongly) that Eduardo and Dani were more the force behind most of the composition on the first three albums. My perception, however, is that the band has become more The LaMari Show, and is less inspired and less inspiring. She also does a lot of duets with famous Spanish-language singers, most of them lovey-dovey type stuff. It's not all bad, but it's not like this early stuff that made them famous.

This band has been a HUGELY big deal all over Europe and South America. I've seen youtube videos of them live in places like Warsaw and Prague, and I get chills as the audience starts to sing along with the Spanish lyrics to Pokito a Poko. Everywhere they go. This music transcends language barriers, and learning the meaning only increases your appreciation of the music.

This album, like its predecessors, combines several styles of music. The magic it does -- and I only know of one other band that does this(Ojos de Brujo) -- is to combine them in a way that sounds in no way eclectic or forced or gimmicky or faddish. Flamenco, rumba, jazz, funk... I hear and recognize all of those elements and others, but I'm not at all alienated by their combination. It flows naturally and beautifully, as if this were the way music always was.

The industry term is "fusion", but when I think of that I think of some rather strained efforts to bring together progressive jazz with various forms of American pop. This early Chambao feels natural and in no way strained.

The music is rhythmic without being harsh, melodic without being too "pop", jazzy without being inaccessible, funky without being gimmicky or simplistic.

I recommend this album, it's predecessors, and the live album that was released after this one.

You will not be disappointed. I know many people with broadly divergent tastes in music, and the level of enthusiasm varies, but I've never seen anyone actually dislike it.