TERRAKOTA are a young multiethnic band from Lisbon who have already received full consent with previous releases, such as Terrakota and Humus Sapiens.
With their latest Oba Train they continue with an even deeper belief in genuine and heart-to-heart world music, inspired by the noises of the street and markets, real people’s live, the world’s social and political issue, all broached with straightforward and concrete lyrics. Without precluding any possibility of music crossover, TERRAKOTA are tweaking patiently and meticulously a collective sound of great interest, played on the variety of the language Babel, the prolific weave of styles, the originality of these combinations among countless instruments belonging to cultures at times even apart from one another. Among the band’s important features the overlapping and continuous and almost orgiastic crossover of female and male voices, in support of which upbeat rhythms of blatant Jamaican origin alternate to complicated polyrhythms with an African edge.
Romi, Alex, Junior, Humberto, Nataniel and the others are capable of blending together with taste and balance North African music and African blues, flamenco and ska, without leaving behind quotes from Caribbean and Brazilian sounds. In Oba Train we find all this with an added charge of all-involving enthusiasm, a communicative urge really hard to find these days. After all TERRAKOTA cut their teeth by living in direct contact with the audience and often their songs come from a live impromptu, drawing inspiration by the instant exchange that comes about during gigs among the people playing and the people listening - a joint spirit of sharing that TERRAKOTA manage to transfer skilfully even in this release.