1. Belleza. I am a huge Ennio Moriconne fan and this is a nod to him. This is the first song I wrote for the album, when I decided to do an album of cumbias. Once I wrote that one, it set me in motion.

2. Mexicanos. This song was inspired by a great reggae musician named Jackie Mittoo, who was one of the fathers of reggae music. He wrote a lot of the old reggae standards and taught most of the reggae keyboardists that followed. I have always felt that reggae and cumbias and Latin music are intertwined. The song started out with lyrics about being proud of being Mexican, but it evolved into an instrumental. But the title is still a shout out to all those of Mexican heritage.

3. El Indio. For El Indio, I tried to imagine what people were grooving to in the days of the Mayans and Aztecs. I envisioned a bunch of people around a fire, shaking bones and beating drums, having a good time. So the song title comes from that. I am singing about a guy singing to a woman, pleading with her to take him back. The guy has the same emotions and passions that go back to the time of the Aztecs.

4. Chispas. The song title translates as ‘sparks.’ When you first meet someone. There’s this electricity there. I was on a three-day bus ride from Seattle to Austin at the end of a tour with Patty Griiffin. I was dying to get home, and I just couldn’t stand it any more, so I pulled out my computer and recorded this in the back of the bus. Besides the vocals and guitar the whole song was done in the back of the bus.

5. Carmela. This song started out as music I did for a short film. It was originally only a minute long. The film director let me put it on my record. This is one of the songs that I try to keep light. It is about a girl who dumps this guy.

6. Charanga Cakewalk. I was consciously trying to go someplace else on this song by taking traditional sounds and putting them over some kind of hip hop beat.

7. La Negra Celina. From the start, I wanted to put a traditional song on my record. I found this on a compilation of Colombian cumbia classics. It was originally sung by Cristobel Perez.

8. Romanticos Desesperádos. This song reminds me of my parents. The melody is very evocative of something I would hear when I was a child. If I feel like I’ve hit on something good, I’ll have a mini déjà vu. Something that takes me to another point in my life.

9. Acebo. This one was the most fun to record, because of the groove. It came to me really fast.

10. Prohibido. I was thinking about a married woman who told me that she liked me. I didn’t take her up on it. But it’s about the times when people are in this type of wistful situation.

11. Tu y Yo. I tried to make something closer to a Latin pop song. Sometimes when I write, I’ll just create a perfect world scenario. That’s what this one is.

12. Volcanico. One of my requirements for this album was I wanted to put out a nice ambient cumbia tune. I’ve always been taken by the similarity between cumbia and reggae. More and more, the line of distinction is becoming blurred. The now-popular Reggaeton style is a perfect example of this. This is a Mexican reggae piece; a chilled-out reggae cumbia.

13. Cumbia Lounge. This is the most straight-ahead Latin song on the album.

14. La Negra Celina [Remix]. Hex Hector, who lives in Miami, remixed this.  I think he was the first DJ to win a Grammy for a re-mix. There are vinyl remixes of La Negra Celina that are really hardcore. I’m barely on them. I love them, but they’re really different from the original song.

Additional Info
Charanga Cakewalk Electrifies Cumbia
Michael Ramos on the Songs on "Loteria de la Cumbia Lounge"

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