This track called “San Lorenzo” is actually a traditional devotional song from the indigenous Tzotzil people from Chiapas in Mexico. The harmonic singing is all traditional, the use of violins and 12-string guitars is all traditional, but the music itself…the way they perform the song…is completely otherworldly. Imagine Tom Waits getting stuck in the Appalachian mountains with Animal Collective and you sorta get to the sound of the track…but even then, I know I am completely doing a disservice to how unique the music sounds.
Sometimes being such an avid music listener makes you feel predisposed to say everything’s been done before or you gotta hear this better version of something else. All this in disservice of rather giving the music presented a chance. This is worst thing one can do. Likewise, just dismissing old, folk, or traditional music as being worse than modern music is something that one can easily tie along with that way of thinking. It makes you predisposed to miss out on great music. What absolutely floors me, like this track does, is when I run into music like this coming from a sound space that I might never truly decipher. This is the kind of music that can’t help but grow your musical/personal vocabulary.