Pedro Luis Ferrer and Lena Ferrer make an astonishingly big sound for two people. La Bunga is the kind of album that keeps giving you reasons to listen.
Dot Time Records
Pedro Luis Ferrer – lead vocals, harmony vocals, batá drums, timbales, keyboards, lute, tres, guitar, bass guitar, strings, brass, piano; Lena Ferrer – harmony vocals, marímbula, cajón, hand and pedal claves, güiro, güir.n, maracas, keyboards, piano
On La Bunga, Pedro Luis Ferrer and his daughter Lena create a surprisingly big sound with a remarkable variety of instruments. Background vocals can sound like a choir, percussion seems to surround everything, and Ferrer’s beautiful playing on Spanish guitar and Cuban tres winds through it all. All of this from just two people.
Even with all those sounds in the mix, there’s something wonderfully unforced about Ferrer’s music. He sings with a crystal-clear, melodious voice, mostly in the mid-range, but he can reach higher without losing that clarity. Lena Ferrer, also a fine singer, plays hand percussion and the African marímbula, a plucked box that provides bass lines.
“Celebración” opens with a lovely acoustic guitar, its smooth, woody tone set against percussion that seems to fit perfectly underneath it. The rhythm is hard to sit still through—you can feel the music nudging you to move. Ferrer and the voices backing him are superb. The more you listen, the more you notice how beautifully the layers fit together: guitar, percussion and vocals.
The rhythms can be even more surprising. In “Güir.n Del Coco,” percussion bumps and thumps underneath a guitar that seems to dance across the top. The batá drums almost become a countermelody to the guitar. Little piano flurries appear, the vocals glide over it all. To call this joyous music is an understatement.
“San Sucé” has a happy, rockin’ pop sound, with strumming guitar and Pedro and Lena singing together. Pedro’s voice is something else. The background vocals add so much to his singing, while a ringing guitar line follows the vocals and makes the song even brighter. An instrument in the background sounds almost like an accordion, while the marímbula provides plenty of bass.
Then “Consciente” slows things down. Clicking and clacking percussion sits behind the strumming guitar, with a lot of background vocals and nice vocal harmonies. Ferrer’s voice floats over the music. The song feels a little more serious than the tunes that came before it.
There’s very little melancholy on La Bunga, but “Nengona mía” hints at it. The song begins with a booming bass sound and Ferrer’s guitar, his fingers moving through more intricate patterns. There’s a low background vocal that repeats a sound like a grunt or a “humph.” It’s so rhythmic that it becomes part of the percussion.
With 14 tracks drawing on Afro-Cuban traditions such as son, trova and guaracha, La Bunga has plenty of room to move around. Pedro Luis Ferrer and Lena Ferrer make an astonishingly big sound for two people. La Bunga is the kind of album that keeps giving you reasons to listen.
