WOMAD

Los de Abajo

From Mexico

It seems that The Great Musical Rulebook never got a Spanish printing. What else could explain the unstoppable torrent of bands from the planet's Spanish-speaking quarter freely taking styles from left, right and centre to create exhilarating music that revels in its impurity? WOMAD is no stranger to such mestizo (or mongrel) sounds - Barcelona's Ojos de Brujos, Madrid's Amparanoia and East Los Angeles' Ozomatli have all graced the Rivermead main stage in past years - and now here's the return of Mexico City faves Los de Abajo. A left-leaning, multi-membered aggregation raised on a diet of Mano Negra, The Clash and Zapatista rhetoric, they've been scoring freely for a good few years now with their borderless mix-and-matching of various Latin sounds, given extra depth by a more-than-generous measure of ska. Originally signed to David Byrne's unblinkered Luaka Bop label, the band have now been welcomed to the bosom of Peter Gabriel's Real World imprint and the first fruits of this relationship were tasted last year with the near-impeccable LDA vs The Lunatics, an album that drew superlatives from even the most misanthropic of journalists. Expect a cheerfully anarchic performance that combines the irresistible danceability of various Latin styles with Jamaican music's ability to shake speaker stacks. Delantero!

Catch this if you like… Manu Chao or Ozomatli

Check out Los de Abajo on Myspace