Jorge Emilio Pardo Vásquez, also known as El León Pardo, calls Cartagena, Colombia, home to one of the richest musical regions in South America. On his latest album, Viaje Sideral, the trumpet player wades mystically through the deep trough of gems the region has on offer. However, this is not an LP of hardcore Champeta or Afro-Colombia Bullerengue.
While there are indeed a few hints of the raw Cumbia or Afrobeat-inspired experiments found on vintage Discos Fuentes or the Discos Machuca label releases, Pardo often carves out new corners while slipping in a few nods to pre-colonial indigenous musical concepts, soaking them in reverb and gussying them up with slippery grooves.
Take “Cuando el Río Suena”, for example. Pardo begins the tune on the kuisi, a native Colombian beeswax flute (also known as the gaita), played by Palenques, the free Black community established by the formerly enslaved. The kuisi is drenched in echo, arising out of a blurry mist before a band drops in, the guitar repeating a single line, percussion panning the speakers, the kuisi at one point nearly dissolving in a puddle only to spring back. It’s subtly relentless, soaked in dub, and as hypnotic as a Kombilesa Mi performance.
Because Pardo is an improviser on the trumpet, his kuisi explorations aren’t bound to traditional melodies and rhythms, though he most certainly acknowledges them. The opening “Invocación” is a repetitive, increasingly intense solo performance for the instrument, seemingly emanating from the Cartagena region’s Cueva del Caballo. As the volume increases, a drone engulfs and finally obliterates the tune.
There is a certain cosmic spirituality that informs Pardo’s playing. In an interview, he claimed that the first time he witnessed a gaita performance, he “saw a huge purple light emanating from the instrument”. This record’s narcotic title track was based on a dream; the lyrics reference the vision of two stars colliding with the Earth. Other tracks address extraterrestrial beings (“Urmah”), or a house cat acquiring otherworldly travel capabilities (“Sophie entre constelaciones”). His concepts are not significantly different from those of another Colombian-born experimental musician, Lucrecia Dalt.
By the time the final track, “La Perica’s” distorted electric guitar opening rolls around, one might be forgiven for having forgotten that Pardo’s music is capable of drawing more clearly from Colombia’s musical traditions. Almost a cumbia, the track features tight, lightning-fast hand drums, a deft, repeated bassline, and a chorus of gaitas for a frantically paced reminder of how firmly grounded Pardo’s music is.
The improvisations have merely allowed him to incorporate elements of body-shaking reggae, featuring guests such as the experimental Bogota-based group Frente Cumbiero (“El Porro del Olvido”), as well as cumbia-inspired astro-travel, as seen in the previously mentioned “Sofi Entre Constelaciones”. Ultimately, his music isn’t a journey into the unknown so much as it is a 21st-century, celestial reimagining of the known.