The latest effort by Puerto Rico’s salsa rebels Orquesta El Macabeo is a very timely cover version of the Daniel Santos anti-imperialist anthem “Yankee Go Home” appropriately coupled with the title song from their last LP, “La Maldición Colonial” on the flip side. In choosing to reinterpret “Yankee Go Home”, the original of which was released decades ago on the LP “Los Patriotas” (a joint release from Daniel “El Jefe” Santos and Pedro “Davilita” Ortiz Davila) as a daring protest song that sang “truth to power”, Orquesta El Macabeo give a fresh new take on the long, rich tradition of...

After the departure into James Brown afro-Latin-funk territory for Heavy Hustling, the Latin soul adventures of the Boogaloo Destroyers, side projects like the tropical psychedelia concept album Go South/Vaya Pa’l Surby Los Terrificos with Jake Fader and several solo recordings under his own name that had a digital dance culture feel to them, Ray Lugo is back with the full band Kokolo Afrobeat Orchestra in what is being hailed as a “return to form” featuring the classic Fela-influenced yet highly original sound forged on earlier records like Love International (2007) and More Consideration(2004). Though not exactly a reunion album—the band haven’t...

Spring is in the the air and guess what? We've got a fresh bouquet of Flor de Toloache songs for you! The amazing all-woman Flor de Toloache and your humble servants at Peace & Rhythm have teamed up again, this time to reissue—for the first time ever on vinyl—the band’s auspicious debut recording, the 2015 Latin Grammy Nominated album Mariachi Flor De Toloache. In 2016 our label released a 45 of two dance floor tracks from the album ("Dicen" / "When We Love") just in time for us to present them, along with Deans Beans Fair Trade Coffee, on the stage at Green River Festival that...

Moments of Ecstatic High Energy Melt Into Soft Expansion "It takes audacity to start a song with questions as big and unanswerable as 'Where did we come from? Who are we really?' But for Western Massachusetts duo Home Body, those kind of grand cosmic queries are totally natural, fitting snugly into music that digs deep and shoots for the stars. The soaring voice of Haley Morgan and the throbbing, hovering electronics of Eric Hnatow create songs that are always on the rise, grounded by cardiac beats but unafraid to fly into the sun. On their ambitious second full-length record, Spiritus, Home Body ruminates on darkness, the...

Guitarist and vocalist Iván Fariñas de Armas is the “Grandfather” of Cuban rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, you heard right, Cuban rock ‘n’ roll has an ‘abuelo’ — maybe you didn’t know there even was such a thing as ‘el rock cubano’ — but there is, and even if he’s not a household name, Iván Fariñas should be, as he’s extremely talented and is arguably the oldest still practicing rockero from behind The Mango Curtain since he started in the 1950s. He claims to have written and recorded the first Cuban blues-rock tune in English — over 40 years ago. Fariñas...