Holiday Bounty

Phirpo Y Los Caribes: Comencemos, Esa Pava Que and Mi Moooto
Taken from the album Parilla Caliente on Phillips (1973)

The holidays are a tricky thing. Surpluses of emotion, family drama, food, cold weather-related ennui, high school acquaintances and old friends flit and flitter, enter and exit, assert and reassert their power in ways that we manage to forget for most of the other eleven plus months of the year. More than anything, the holidays tend to overwhelm because they bring together so much in such a relatively short window of time.

For me things are further complicated by the fact that, after nine months in Southern Africa, and coming fresh off a blistering alter-hemispheric summer, I am in soggy, frigid San Francisco, wilin' out with the fam (Captain included) and all of our concomitant family drama, trying to work out in my head the sheer density of stuff going on in a world I haven't been part of for the last three quarters of a year.

And instead of driving myself batty, looking for solace in the stars or the good ol' fashioned pulse of American post-Christmas commerce, I decided to turn to a few newly acquired records (homecoming gifts to myself), which have managed to allow me to feel decidedly mellow despite the swirl of circumstance going on around me.

Here are Phirpo and his Caribes: mysterious afro-latin funkers from Medellin, Columbia, who for today will transport you away--if momentarily--from your snowy family antics and harrowing gift-return missions to Macy's, lift you across land and ocean and bring you to a warmer, sunnier place where the congas blaze and the horns blast; where the sand sifts through your toes and the palm trees sway... and you are dancing, just dancing.

To homecomings...

A gift to you all. Merry Holidays.