NWR: A wide-ranging conception of Latin sounds

VS

Victor de la Serna
Being as basic in musical tastes as in wine tastes, I've been essentially listening to the blues and to Afro-Cuban sounds for many years. I've been quite taken lately with a new Madrid FM radio station, Radio Gladys Palmera (already in operation in Barcelona since 1999), with its peculiar mix of Latin sounds that extends liberally to Spain, Italy, France, Portugal, north Africa, west Africa, Argentina and, of course, the US. I mention it here because it's available worldwide on the internet, so those of you interested in these things may check it out bfollowing the link below. While you're at it, don't miss the video of Lila Downs singing the Cumbia del Mole - it gives an excellent recipe of the Oaxaca mole. Mexican-Colombian fusion. Hey, the internet is a nice invention...

 
originally posted by VS:
While you're at it, don't miss the video of Lila Downs singing the Cumbia del Mole - it gives an excellent recipe of the Oaxaca mole. Mexican-Colombian fusion.

Thanks for the heads-up, Victor, but mole in Oaxaca is hardly a singularity: at a glance, you have mole amarillo, mole verde, mole colorado, mole negro and without questions others less familiar to me. (It's like potatoes in Peru: a panoply of variants) Then there are the multitude of pipins...

Oaxaca is forever in my heart -- and my liver, too, courtesy of the hepatitis I contracted there,

Mark Lipton
 
Oh, but Lila does give a very Oaxacan recipe here, not just any ole' mole: "Se muele con cacahuate, se muele tambin el pan, se muele la almendra seca, se muele el chile y tambin la sal". Peanuts, bread, dry almonds, chile (which chile? she doesn't say, but probably several), salt. I'd say that this is a shortened version of mole negro, which 'in extenso' would be too long to explain in a song: I see in a classic recipe that the ingredients are "chilguacle negro, mulato, pasilla, ancho, guajillo y chilpocle; pltano macho, jengibre, cebolla, jitomate, mil tomate, clavo, pimienta negra y gorda; almendras, nueces, ajonjol y cacahuates; pan, tortillas, mejorana, hoja de aguacate, organo, tomillo, comino, canela, chocolate, azcar, sal."

At any rate, a wonderfully happy song:

 
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