Here’s a killer record I picked up in Bogotá recently, a battle of heavyweights: salsa vs boleros!

(Or maybe I should say aslaS sv soreloB.)

I’m saving my favorite track off this record for the upcoming Pelanga: El Chino Latino compilation. Instead, I’ll let Roberto Blades’s horn section explain to you just how hard it is to move from the country to the concrete jungle.

I don’t know why a Panamanian is yelling the peruanísimo “Chim Pum Callao”, but I’m sure that a certain sector of the Pelanga readership will dig it.

Zoom into the back cover:

Our friend Sylvia (shoutout!) tells us that Treichville is a neigborhood of Abidjan. And yes, sure, the salsa craze hit West Africa hard. But there’s no way that a record called “La Verraquera! En Boleros: vs. Salsa.” was pressed in Cote D’Ivoire! (Especially when the “label”, Olympo, seems to have specialized in obscure rock in Spain.) Such is the Colombian obsession with African records, I guess.

papicultor