Sendero Mistico

“The Mystic Path (Sendero Mistico) begins in Mexico City's daily existence. Wrapped inside it, tributes and favors solicited from pagan deities silently remain. These picturesque rituals and sorceries occur day after day; however, they are looked upon with a gaze accustomed to the extravagant. Exotic treasures are assimilated as part of daily life.” ---liner notes written by Sonido Gallo Negro for “Sendero Mistico” Sonido Gallo Negro (Black Rooster Sound) is a stunning 9-piece, instrumental combo from east Mexico City (Aragon) that channels both the mystique and mysticism of 1960’s Peruvian cumbia. The band integrates styles like Amazonian cumbia, huayno, sonidero cumbia, boogaloo and chicha with electric guitars, Farfisa organ, Theremin, flute and of course fluid Latin percussion. Spaghetti western soundtracks, psychedelia and surf music also echo in their compositions. Their premiere album Cumbia Salvaje (Wild Cumbia) was released in Mexico in 2011 and it quickly catapulted them out of Mexico City’s heated underground scene and onto major festival and television performances. Albeit a very young group, they were invited in 2012 to the Kustendorf Festival in Serbia, curated by the famed Serbian Director Emir Kusturica (Time of the Gypsies). Also in 2012, they performed in Italy and Spain. Their shimmering second album, Sendero Mistico (out in Mexico in 2013) will be their first ever-international release, and Glitterbeat’s first full-fledged release away from the African continent. On the new album Sonido Gallo Negro follow the lay lines between cumbian sounds and instrumental rhumba tracing the heritage left by masters like Jaime Llano, Tulia Enrique Leon and the Hammond driven sounds of Eduardo Azurite. But for all its glances to the past, this is decidedly contemporary music, also evoking the band’s collective love of indie rock and post-psychedelic moods and textures. The mind-bending ritual of this music can best be understood by witnessing their live show. Clothed in monk robes and backed by spectral video and light projections, on stage Sonido Gallo Negro is a very impressive proposition. The band’s liner notes for Sendero Mistico climaxes with this sentence: Instrumental cumbia can show you impressive, disconcerting and mysterious images, where everything invisible becomes present. This is instrumental music with discernible and bold intentions. The Black Rooster Sound has arrived. It is time to set your controls to the heart of: Sonido Gallo Negro.