Susana Baca: Espiritu Vivo

The most innovative world-pop tends to hit U.S. stores a decade or so after it would have been truly bracing, which creates a quandary for artists striving for stateside popularity. Should they aspire to be cutting-edge, or settle into the outdated sounds that will still seem fresh and warm to their potential new audience Susana Baca does both. The Afro-Peruvian chanteuse (and cultural curator) first made an impression outside of her local club-and-museum circuit when David Byrne's Luaka Bop label put one of her songs on 1995's Soul Of Black Peru compilation. Luaka Bop has since released three Baca albums, the latest of which, Espiritu Vivo, was rehearsed and recorded in New York City in September 2001, both before and after the terrorist attacks. A conjunction of sadness and hope suffuses its songs, which as always draw equally from the traditional and the modern. Album opener "La Noche Y El Día" sets the tone, lacing bongos and acoustic guitar with the distant whine of electric-guitar feedback; the instrumental backing drifts between languid and hyperactive, while Baca stays steady above the fray, singing a song of a love that survives the wrath of God. Baca's voice is her primary selling point, and it has a lightly raspy quality, allowing her to rub against the music as she whispers, chants, and moans. She invites further friction on the danceable roundabout "Caracunde," which dresses up a South American folk-festival standard with organ drone from John Medeski. Elsewhere, junk-rock guitarist Marc Ribot adds the avant-garde clang for which he's famous, and Baca ventures far afield herself, scooping up other world-pop subgenres by covering Caetano Veloso's "13 De Mayo," the Cuban jazz standard "Afro-Blue," the Edith Piaf-popularized ballad "Les Feuilles Mortes," and Björk's "The Anchor Song." Espiritu Vivo is a restless record, swinging from the freeform to an insistent, rhythmic pulse. Baca offers a comforting, old-fashioned approach, then dances off the floor, challenging her listeners to follow her to a place where music is a pure expression of emotion, divorced from nationalism.