Traditional Music from Panama

Panama is a music lover's--and a musicologist's--dream: the tiny country sits among the Caribbean and Central and South America. While admixtures of music styles particular to these regions are almost guaranteed to be compelling in any form, this collection presents a twist. All the songs come from styles native to the still-rural Azuero Peninsula, where most of the 11 musicians and eight vocalists originate. The region's music unfolds across a percussive bed that reveals African cultural remnants and an overall Afro-Caribbean sense of rhythm. But across the rhythms, played on upright hand drums (the pujador and repicador) and smaller, higher-pitched stick-played drums (the caja), is the distinctly "Latin"-flavored mejorana, a five-string guitar that looks and sounds a bit like a ukulele. Atop the instruments is a shifting set of vocals, from the mournful solo Spanish singing to the wailing antiphony of a soloist and chorus, both of whom perform outside Western harmonic scales, often in a shouting style. Producer Nigel Gallop has captured a huge swath of music, amazingly played by the same set of musicians throughout. --Andrew Bartlett