Iowa debut | Zemog, El Gallo Bueno (aka Zemog,
the Good Rooster) plays 21st century Latin music. That includes all the contradictions and cultural tensions
that being Latin in America in 2010 involves.
Bandleader Abraham Gomez-Delgado, of Peruvian
descent, left his native Puerto Rico as a child and relocated to the US.
As
a result, Zemog’s music incorporates everything from bomba and plena to Sun
Ra and Van Halen in a unique if uncategorizable sound. Downbeat
magazine says Zemog “does for Afro-Latin music what Tom Waits did for
Weillian cabaret, bringing a madcap energy and willful weirdness to the
basic ingredients and blowing it up with his personality.”
The sound of Zemog, El Gallo Bueno —
which is “Gomez” spelled backwards, followed by “The Good Rooster” in Spanish
— starts with Gomez’s quirky tastes. “I really love roots music from Puerto
Rico,” he says, “mountain music and field recordings. It’s so raw … it’s like
rock and roll. Crazy nasally screaming.”
The band’s repertoire is a direct
result of Gomez’ bicultural experience, his musical past, and the rest of
the band’s expertise. They are the cream of Boston’s salsa and avant-garde
jazz scenes, stalwart players who form a beefy back bone to Gomez’s wacky
and post-salsa sound.
Crucial to Gomez’s musical development
was his earlier band, Jayuya, which had similar influences but was a
four-piece rock/salsa band. Zemog’s instrumentation is that of a nine-piece
salsa band, but lyrically stays close to the rock-n-roll stream of
consciousness approach.
“When I came here, there was the culture
outside and the culture inside of my house … always a big culture clash,”
explains Gomez. “My friends had me listening to Metallica. My sisters were
listening to salsa and disco. My brother got me into Kraftwerk. And my dad
was listening to Bach and Mozart. I still love it all.”
