Eva Ayllon

Nearly a decade ago Luaka Bop released The Soul of Black Peru, a compilation that helped introduce Afro-Peruvian music to the world.  The album gave a giant boost to the international career of the great Susana Baca, but its 15 tracks also included a song by Eva Ayllon, who was and continues to be a bigger star in Peru.  Baca is something of an ethnomusicologist, devoting much of her energy to preserving and documenting obscure Afro-Peruvian songs, and only began performing in the 90s; Ayllon has been a successful singer for 30 years, and has more than 20 albums to her credit.  Although she’s performed for the immigrant Peruvian community in the States, the new Eva! Leyenda Peruana (Times Square/World Connection) is her first recording to be widely distributed here.  Her music is driven by syncopated, percussive piano, zesty acoustic guitar, and percolating hand percussion from a conguero and two players of the cajon, or box drum; the album includes a salsa number, but most of the songs employ specifically Peruvian rhythms like the festejo, vals, and lando.  On upbeat material Ayllon can explode into spontaneous, full-throated exhortations like a top-notch salsero, and on ballads she’s a match for any Cuban diva you can name, from Celia Cruz to Omara Portuonda, singing with hothouse fervor and exquisite tenderness.