Son de la Frontera, Peter Walker and Pacifika on Flamenco's True Frontiers

"It looks pretty simple: A guy on the right of the stage playing guitar, a guy on the left playing a different plucked-string instrument and three guys between them alternately clapping rhythms, singing and dancing. The performance of the group Son de la Frontera at the Echoplex in Los Angeles' hip Los Feliz neighborhood is anything but simple, an invigorating set of music as complex as it is passionate. And on such pieces as 'Un Compromiso/Toda Una Vida' (listen to it here), it's immeasurably passionate, the sounds of the instruments bearing equal amounts of highly disciplined precision and gifted instinct, with the highly demonstrative singing and dancing, at times bordering on overwrought, coming from the depth of the soul of the performers and from the depth of the centuries of dramatic history behind this flamenco music.

But it was also more than that. It was a living map of this group's approach. Think of Paco de Amparo's guitar as Andalusia, the home of Son de la Frontera. On the other side of the stage, Raúl Rodríguez's stringed instrument, the Cuban tres, represented Latin America, the true frontier of this Son. Flamenco didn't stop at the edge of Spain, of course, but came along with the exploration and settlements of the New World. And between these two geographic stand-ins, singer Moi de Morón, dancer Pepe Torres and Manuel Flores -- all of them contributing the compás (clapped and stomped beats) -- are the passage across the Atlantic, reaching even across the Americas into the hills of Mexico and to the Pacific coast of Peru and Ecuador in sounds that echo in this night's music." - Steve Hochman (full article)