Mambo Sinuendo

As Cooder has written - ''You can look at this as a road trip through different worldless fantasy landscapes. Sometimes you're in bright daylight, sometimes the streets are dark & empty. You're riding with the Conjunto Sinuendo - drummers Jim Keltner & Jo If there's a certain instant familiarity to this collaborative celebration between U.S. guitar icon/musicologist Ry Cooder and Cuban fret legend Manuel Galbán, it's only testimony to how deeply the island nation's rich musical heritage permeated American pop music in the '50s, '60s, and beyond. Cooder and Galbán (a key compatriot in the American guitarist's Buena Vista Social Club project) invent a back-to-the-future sound--twin guitars fronting a Cuban rhythm section of two drum kits, congas, and bass--whose dreamy swing quotient is matched only by its sense of mirthful abandon. Thus tracks like "Dru Me Negrita" and "Los Twangueros" manage to evoke everything from Link Wray, Duane Eddy, and the Ventures to Mancini and Esquivel, while Cooder and Galbán twirl a standard like "Patricia" and the nervy title track around dueling poles of tradition and experimentation with deceptive grace. It's joyous, mercurial stuff that the two musicians conjure at their fingertips. --Jerry McCulley

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