This Cumbia titled "Shacalao" is actually a 1975 cover of Fela Kuti's 1972 afrobeat track called Shakara. With its sparse but powerful percussive push and chanting chorus, "Shacalao" strips Fela's more groove-laden "Shakara" down to rhythmic studs, pushing it forward with the two-step beat that lies at the heart of cumbia (Colombia's most popular Latin music export). Yet, while Cumbia Moderna remakes Fela, it also gestures to the deep tradition that bonds eastern Colombia with western Africa. Cumbia's distinctive rhythms derive from African traditions first brought into South America via the transatlantic slave trade of the 16th and 17th centuries (It is thought the Cumbe rhythm from Guinea is at the roots of Cumbia). All covers could be said to be homages, but in this case, "Shacalao" also serves as a profound nod to cumbia's ancestral African roots. As different as "Shakara" and "Shacalao" may seem on the surface, beneath their textures pulses a heartbeat with a common, intertwined bloodline tracing across thousands of miles and hundreds of years. The complexity and serendipity of those rhythms was always at the heart of Fela's funky fusions. As Cumbia Moderna so powerfully demonstrates, the original "Black President" inspired the same impulse amongst musicians around the globe.
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