Man, I need to update this blog more. So many articles have been and gone, and perhaps not has as much love on here as they deserve.

One of my latest is a piece on Afrobeats for Songlines. I’d been wanting to write something on Afrobeats for a year or so after being seriously impressed by some of the pop music I heard coming out of Africa.

This was a chance to get a bit deeper into the subject, and thanks must be laid out to Chief Boima and Antoinette Isama, who were crucial in helping me put this one together.

The article is in Songlines #164, which is out now!

Hey, so some time ago now, possibly last year, or maybe even 2018 or earlier, I wrote an article about Peruvian rock for Long Live Vinyl, a magazine which was recently killed off by COVID-19.

At some point Long Live Vinyl put the article up on their website, albeit with the credits for any photos, or even annotations for what each photo is about, non existent. Anyway, you can still read it. Here’s the link:

10 years ago I started Sounds and Colours in my parent’s spare room. I can’t find the list of original names there was for the site – though I’m sure there was something along the lines of Banana Milk or Tropical Treason amongst them (so I think I made the right choice). I wasn’t sure of the plan at first, other than I needed to find a way of writing about a LOT of Latin American music that I was loving but that there was little information I could find out about, at least in English (here’s looking at Os Novos Baianos, Eduardo Mateo and Ney Matogrosso, to name a few off the top of my head). Then people started getting in touch and wanted to write for the blog too, and I realised there was a big community of like-minded souls in London, New York and spread out across the world, and it took off, at least as much as a niche-interest website can.

I feel very fortunate that it’s loved by so many people these days, and that I get to work with so many amazing collaborators, including all our writers and all the artists, musicians, record companies, PRs, events promoters, other media, etc., etc., that are part of this community we’ve found ourselves in.

We’re now in a position where it feels like we can really push Sounds and Colours to another level, to make it an even better resource for Latin culture (esp. as there is so much incredible content on the site, but which can be hard to find) and to get involved in different types of content (podcasts, short docs, big research projects, regular compilations, online film festivals, and we have many other ideas too!)

So to celebrate our 10th anniversary we’ve launched a fundraiser, with all money raised going towards making Sounds and Colours even bigger and better. As part of that campaign, you can buy our compilation of new Latin American music (have a listen: https://soundsandcolours.bandcamp.com/…/sounds-and-colours-…), pre-order a 10 Years anniversary book and also buy some amazing perks donated by Mr Bongo, Mais Um, And Other Stories, Songlines, Names You Can Trust, ZZK Records / Zizek Club, Peace & Rhythm, Discos Rolas, Movimientos and Soundway Records, as well as grab a few choice items from my record collection!

You can find out more about the campaign at https://www.indiegogo.com/…/sounds-and-colours-10…/x/627815…

Thanks for reading!

Every now and again I get asked to run music PR campaigns for upcoming releases, so I figured the time was now right to make things a bit more official and set up a brand for doing just that.

Hence, here’s Quipomundo, a new company specialised in Global Music PR. Led by myself, but also using frequent collaborators as needs be.

My first campaigns are for El Palmas Music, a record label based in Barcelona led by Venezuelan Maurice Aymard. Maurice has been releasing music in various forms for many years, but with El Palmas he is focusing on music close to his roots, getting into tropical sounds, and they have some exciting releases on the horizon.

One of these is a split 7″ single featuring tracks by two Colombian producers, El Dragón Criollo and La Jungla. You can listen to the tracks here.

I’m also very excited that, as part of the campaign for this release, Afropop agreed to premiere the video on their site.

Check out their site to watch the video and find out more about the release.

As is always the case myself and the rest of the Sounds and Colours team (which just keeps on growing!) ran a poll to find out our favourite albums of the year at the end of last year, resulting in our list of the 25 Best Albums of 2019, a fine selection to some of the great things that came out of Latin America and its diaspora last year.

We also put together this Spotify playlist featuring tracks from our favourite albums: