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Putumayo's 'Latinas' concert tour makes a stop in Marin
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Marin Independent Journal, Putumayo's 'Latinas' concert tour makes a stop in Marin >>
IF YOU EVER shop at Whole Foods or at some of the more artsy boutiques, bookstores, museums and cafes in Marin and beyond, then you're probably familiar with Putumayo, the independent world music label.
Over the past decade, Putumayo has become well known for its multicultural compilation CDs distinguished by exquisite production values and colorful folkloric-style art covers.
The company owes much of its brand recognition to its pioneer approach to music marketing, selling its albums in record stores as well as in the kinds of nontraditional retail outlets - more than 3,000 across the country - that I've mentioned above.
"I would dare to say that Putumayo has the best record distribution on the planet right now," says Fabian Alsultany, the company's events manager. "We're everywhere."
In collaboration with San Francisco rock radio station KFOG (104.5 FM), Putumayo also produces the first commercially syndicated world music show in the United States. In the Bay Area, "The Putumayo World Music Hour" airs 10 p.m. Sundays on KFOG.
Now, Putumayo has ventured into live music production with its debut concert tour - "Latinas: Women of Latin America." The show has been on the road since early October and arrives in Marin at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael next Friday night, Nov. 19 (call 499-6800 for tickets).
The tour introduces three singers who are virtually unknown in this country: Brazilian Belo Velloso, niece of the famous Caetano Veloso; Toto La Momposina from Colombia; and Mariana Montalvo, an exile from Chile now living in France. They are among the 11 extraordinary women performers on Putumayo's new "Women of Latin America" CD, the follow-up to 1999's "Latinas," a big seller for the company.
While large-scale pop and rock tours have been struggling, this show has been doing pretty well, the company says, playing in 700- to 2,500-seat halls in 28 cities across the country.
For this tour, Putumayo is drawing from its target audience of "cultural creatives," New Age-y jargon for the estimated 50 million affluent, well-educated people in America with a world view that takes them outside the musical mainstream. In the red states, they'd be dismissed as elitists. In Marin, they'd be the norm.
Putumayo is based in New York City, but has its roots in San Francisco. In 1991, Dan Storper, proprietor of a shop that sold international handicrafts and folk art, heard the Nigerian band Kotoja performing in Golden Gate Park. Inspired, he founded Putumayo World Music two years later.
While world beat is now an established genre, it continues to grow at an impressive rate in an otherwise depressed music market.
"In comparison with the pop, hip-hop, R&B and country genres, whose sales have been slumping, world music sales continue to increase every year by 20 percent," Alsultany says, adding that instead of buying the schlock churned out by the big record companies, Putumayo's customers "feel more in tune with taking money out of their pockets to support independent labels and musicians they've never heard of before."
--Paul Liberatore
11/12/04 >> go there
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