Description

This record is a reminder that not so long ago, concerts were made in front of audiences. People sweated in small spaces, collaborating live with musicians in real-time. Botapierna is a unique recording that celebrates human interaction in these safe havens for experimental music. Some of these places are small mysterious taverns that survive almost intact to the inevitable passage of time and to the brutal pace of globalization. It might seem strange, but some of them have survived the pandemic in spite of neglect and unfair treatment by local governments and cultural institutions around the world. Maybe it is the imminent call to improvisation and the noise of musicians that keeps them alive. What is true is that their stages are some of the last places in which improvisers and adventurous musicians can expose to the world, their true declaration of principles: the pushing of sound boundaries. This was all very well known to Håker Flaten and Santiago Botero before meeting in 2017 at the Sonic Transmissions Festival in Austin, EEUU.

At the festival, Botero performed the United States debut of his fiercely danceable, heavy-groove cumbia band ‘Los Toscos’ in a unique formation that included master Carmelo Torres, one of the fundamental remaining personalities of the cumbia sabanera tradition from the Colombian Montes de María. At the same festival, Håker Flaten presented The Young Mothers, one of his most creative and expressive projects which features sound injections of grindcore, hip-hop, and free improv. Their professional friendship grew to the point Haker Flaten was invited by Botero to play with The Young Mothers in one of the hottest melting pots of experimental music in Bogotá, Colombia, the one and only Matik-matik, unaware that one week after the performance, the city and much of the world would be locked down due to the ravages of the global pandemic.

It was the perfect opportunity for Botero to combine The Young Mothers with his tropical-groove influenced project, El Ombligo (The Navel), for a one-time-only, mind-blowing concert. The date also fell on Matik’s 12th anniversary. The result: a 10 musician extended line-up that brought together both bands with the intention of creating a musical backbone inspired by Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew or On the Corner. The show was a spiritual experience that combined fiery extended free-jazz improvisations with traditional cumbia and gaita melodies and rhythms. A concert in which Pedro Ojeda, Frank Rosaly (drum sets), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Santiago Botero (basses), Jonathan Horne, Kike Mendoza (electric guitars), Jawwaad Taylor (trumpet / MC), Jason Jackson (saxophone), Ivan Medellín (organs), and Stefan Gonzalez (vibraphone) united to release the groove and improvised music that was inside their souls that one night, in that small and sweaty jazz tavern in Bogotá. 

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