Flor Campestre by Son Bayou

Ramiro Rodriguez—Son Bayoú accordionist–shouted into the microphone: “We started at the pulga and now we’re here!” The crowd erupted. He adjusted his red Hohner accordion to lead his band into a blistering rendition of Andres Landero’s “La Pava Congona.”

“Here” was the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston: the Bayou City’s preeminent modern arts museum which invited the group to perform their barrio cumbia inside their hallowed spaces. When I first met them, formerly as Reyno Sabanero, they had in fact originated within Houston’s pulga circuit—a network of Mexican flea markets where cumbia, the people’s music of Latinoamérica, has long lived and thrived. I later hired them to perform at a Colombian Independence Day celebration I produced, where, along with two friends and deejays—Miles Ake of San Francisco and Felipe Galván of Houston—we spun cumbia on wax before the band stormed the stage with hand drums and accordions. A group of Colombians in the crowd asked what part of Colombia they came from. “Nah pues, somos de Greenspoint,” Rodriguez quipped: the Northside neighborhood where they proudly hailed.

Led by Rodriguez and Juan Torres, Reyno Sabanero morphed into Son Bayoú: an update on their roots sound with a nod to their H-town pride. Few cumbiamberos cite Andres Landero and DJ Screw as inspirations. But then again, Landero and Screw—icons of the pop underground, the latter a patron saint in Houston’s signature “chopped and screwed” sound—share more in common

than the disparate genres might suggest. “Soy Landeristo, 100 percent,” Rodriguez affirmed. His style descends from Andres Landero: the San Jacinto-born squeezebox renegade whose prolific 1960s-1980s recordings for mythical Colombian labels, from Fuentes to Tropical, define the sabanera tradition. As sophomores, Rodriguez and Torres, whose exposure to tropical music stemmed from early years in Monterrey—a cumbia capital with deep cultural ties to Houston—knew in their foremost band ambitions they’d pivot from synth-heavy Tejano cumbia around them to produce something as Colombiano roots as possible. Friends from Monterrey brought sonidero mixtapes. On YouTube, they streamed Soundway Records’ impressive anthology, The Original Sound of Cumbia, learning of faraway accordion kingpins from Anibal Velásquez to Aniceto Molina. Son Bayoú—hand-making güiros in high school, disciples of originators—is less a rehash of the Andean past as a new sabanera variant where la costa collides into the swampy concrete jungles of Screwstonia.

On a recent Austin trip, we linked with Adrian Quesada at his Electric Deluxe studio. The band laid their cumbia power to tape in a full-day session only briefly interspersed with smoke breaks and improvised rearrangements. Once Names You Can Trust put the finishing touches on the sound and package, Son Bayou’s initial ascent was complete in the form of this debut vinyl offering–a fitting introduction to a band carrying their cumbia roots from the pulgas to the world.

nyctrust.com