GWANDENA BY TIMPANA NOW ON PRIMAVERA ANÓNIMA
LISTEN TO GWANDENA
TIMPANA creates her own sound based on native vocal techniques from Bolivia, building bridges between physical and spiritual levels of consciousness.Timpana hails from the valleys of Cochabamba, the Bolivian Hinterland, where the plants of power bloom, and knowledge is passed on in songs, sung in Quechua language. Songs invoking rain, prosperity and fertility.
On her new Album Gwandena (released first by UK Label Sounds and Colours and now via Primavera Anónima), she maps out a metaphysical journey across her home country, and through various states of being. Indigenous and African instrumentation meet electronic drums and synths on an album that veers between moments of slowly-revealing transcendence and urgent, rhythmic cries as the world appears different to how we ever imagined it. Gwandena sees Lanza working with fellow Bolivian producer Chuntu, as well as fellow masters of Afro-Andean wind and percussion instruments. Together they have created a work that is complex in both its musical construction.
Discussing the use of Quechua and Guaraní, as well as Spanish, lyrics in the songs Lanza explains that their use comes from a tradition of telling myths and legends in these languages, that comes from her ancestors: “I found that the mystical and the mysterious are combined in such a way in these languages that the characters of Gwandena are born and are found there among dreams, rituals, the sacred and the profane. The languages I use, apart from the fascinating sound that I experience when singing them, come out of a desire that they last and not be lost. When I’m singing them it takes me to another time, to the beginning of all things.”
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