A couple of years back, when I was better about keeping up with contemporary Afro-Cuban music, I became aware of Havana-born, London-residing, singer and composer Daymé Arocena through the buzz her Latin-jazz fusion generated. While I thoroughly enjoyed many of my one-off encounters with her music, her fifth Alkemi is the first full length that I've sat with and felt like I've had the opportunity to fully absorb. It's a pretty drastic departure from the Earth-shaking rumba I previously associated with her, as the record appears to be geared toward a wider audience of potential pop enthusiasts. While the performances are less mighty and forceful, the benefit of her new approach is an embrace of highly memorable pop melodies that manage a certain air of sophistication while not sacrificing any of their essential, bouncy energy. Here, Latin folk encounters the iconoclast uplift that American blues and jazz did when elevated by neo-soul in the late '90s, with results that verge on the experimental without sacrificing accessibility. What I'm most delighted about with Alkemi is that it breaks through a certain bottleneck that I experienced within Latin pop, which had been, frankly, a bit of a turn-off. There is a tendency to metabolize these traditions as either raw calories for EDM or abstract them to the point of sterilization and bizarre meta-criticism. Thankfully, Alkemi navigates around both like a ship threading the strait between Scylla and Charybdis. While Daymé' certainly has her exploratory side, the focus with Alkemi never loses sight of the essential, democratizing roots of her music, namely that a great rhythm paired with a beautiful melody can feed the soul while motivating the body to express freedom through movement all people yearn for through dance and a transformative appeal to community.
* In March, as you may well be aware, I am writing a fresh album review every day inspired by a different color. Today's color, gold, inspired my review of Daymé Arocena's Alkemi because it is not only a prominent feature of the cover art, but, more importantly, I think it's a solid gold hit!
