Up & Coming
Lose your shit every night this week!
by STRANGER STAFF

Monday 1/17
Aurelio Martinez

(Triple Door) Honduran drummer Aurelio Martinez's Laru Beya, the second release on Sub Pop subsidiary Next Ambiance, is the end result of the terrible Middle Passage during which West Africans destined to become slaves on American soil would land on Caribbean islands and in Central America and mix it up with the locals. The cultural intermingling spawned some interesting musical hybrids, as Laru Beya demonstrates. Aurelio sets his paradoxically buoyant yet beautifully melancholic songs amid this tragic history, offering sonic sustenance and history lessons to those who sympathize with the plights of forcefully displaced individuals. With vocal help from Senegalese icon Youssou N'Dour, Balla Sibidé, and others, Aurelio creates vibrant Afro-Caribbean-Latin dance music with folkloric accents while spinning pathos-laden yarns into celebratory, deeply moving anthems. DAVE SEGAL