Coco María presents Club Coco: vital new music influenced by vintage sounds

Coco María’s collection of bossa nova, samba, charanga and cumbia sounds, together with all sorts of curiosities collected from sunny faraway places mingle with joyful energy to inspire you to dance the night away and take your mind on a journey into the warmer side of the musical world. 

When Coco María is not digging or spinning tracks for her radio shows and compilations, she may be spotted exhibiting her unique musical vocabulary at clubs and festivals throughout the world – luckily, the 2022 edition of Le Guess Who? will be no exception. For the 'Club Coco' compilation, Coco María was "looking for current bands with organic music that are very clearly influenced by vintage and old sounds, while employing them in new projects."

Besides presenting a live edition of her ‘Club Coco’ show on Saturday 12 November at LGW22, Coco María also hosts Anatolian singer and multi-instrumentalist Derya Yıldırım; Bogotá-based group Romperayo, who enrich the rich musical traditions and tropical rhythms of Colombia with contemporary influences; and Mexican cumbia-punk band Son Rompe Pera. Below, you can dive into the stories and work of the artists who are part of Coco María’s program.

Derya Yıldırım

Photography by Celeste Call

Over the last few years, singer and multi-instrumentalist Derya Yıldırım has become one of the leading figures to introduce Anatolian folk music to a contemporary audience across Europe. With her mesmerizing voice and hypnotizing bağlama playing (long-necked lute, also known as the saz), Yıldırım has the talent of immersing the audience in her unique rendition of the melancholic sound of Anatolian music. 

Born and raised in Hamburg, Yıldırım learnt to play the piano, guitar, oud (short-neck lute-type, fretless stringed instrument) and saxophone. After studying at Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, she transferred to Universität der Künste Berlin where she specialized in the bağlama with the help of Taner Akyol. Currently, she is active as a performer in multiple projects, such as the Anatolian psych-pop super-quartet Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, who performed at LGW17. Nowadays, Yıldırım is also working with the German string ensemble Ensemble Resonanz, which collaboration resulted in ‘Derya’s Songbook’, a live music project consisting of new commissioned works alongside modern interpretations of traditional folk songs.

Derya Yıldırım’s enthusiasm for presenting her Anatolian folk music repertoire creatively is the main momentum she has, and this, together with her zeal for taking it into the future without neglecting its past, transform the stage into a world of tenderness and present listeners with a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Romperayo

Contemporary tropical music with a hint of electronic rituals and improvised jam sessions originating from the Colombian coasts, all accompanied by an alluring mix of synthesizers, accordion and percussion – this is Romperayo’s musical footprint. A fascinating journey through Colombian tropical folklore from the second half of the 20th century, contemporary rendition of the up-tempo rhythms of ‘descarga’ (improvised jam session consisting of variations on Cuban music themes) and the psychedelic sounds of 70’s cumbia, Romperayo is the epitome of Colombia’s modern folklore music stage.

As Pedro Ojeda, a percussionist who leads Romperayo, shares: the band started as a "kind of project, a laboratory in my house." Taking vinyl records and experimenting with them led Ojeda to take inspiration from many different musical influences, not only from Colombia’s 50s, 60s and 70s music culture, but also from Peru, Ecuador and Panama. By focusing on digging, finding and presenting the hidden treasures of Colombia’s culture, Romperayo attempts to represent the underrepresented and provide the audience with an unparalleled, inspirational and memorable musical experience.

Son Rompe Pera

Photography by Mauricio Sanchez

Since their formation, Son Rompe Pera, the fusion band formed by Kacho, Kilos and Mongo Gama and based in Mexico City’s municipality Naucalpan, have set out on a mission to keep alive the legacy of marimba music. Combining cumbia (musical rhythms and folk dance traditions of Latin America) and traditional Mexican marimba music with other musical styles, such as danzón, rock, punk and ska, Son Rompe Pera presents their audience with an energetic, uplifting and dance-inducing ride through their families’ cultural legacy.

Initially performing at local events together with their father, José Dolores "Batuco" Gama Melcho, the Gama-brothers now find themselves leading the contemporary worldwide cumbia stage with their sonic explorations of traditional Mexican folk music. Their utterly distinctive musical vocabulary is the result of a typical teenage rebellion when they abandoned their marimba-playing origins in favour of joining several punk, rockabilly and ska bands. Son Rompe Pera, the only garage-cumbia-marimba-punk band in the world, never disappoints on stage – their passion for music shines through as they present their modern interpretation of Mexican, Peruvian and Colombian classics, as well as some original tracks and surprise covers. Named after their beloved father, Son Rompe Pera’s first album ‘Batuco’ (2020) represents everything they learnt from him while growing up, alongside their first steps into a new, international career.

'Coco María presents Club Coco' art and design by Félix Vincent