New Papaya Artists
Papaya Music, Costa
Rica’s premier music label, recently
announced the release of two new CDs by seasoned Central American musicians
Adrian Goizueta and Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy. It is the first release on Papaya
for both artists. The two celebrated the tandem release with a live concert at
La Vereda Terramall in San Jose.
Goizueta was born
in Argentina but has spent
more than half his life in Costa Rica
and has a sizeable following in Western Europe.
He has put out a plethora of albums with his band, Grupo Experimental. Adrian decided to release
a solo project that, “speaks of the past with the sounds of the present”. To do
so, he enlisted players from Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Peru, Argentina,
and Costa Rica,
including violinist Ricardo Ramirez of Editus. To put the package together,
Dutch producer Jos Haagman was brought on board. The final result, titled
“Tangoizueta” proves that incorporating musicians from various cultures was not
just a gesture. Goizueta wrote or co-wrote all the songs but plenty of room was
given to all the participants, which is brought out by the slick production on
this thirteen song, sixty-five minute disc.
The music comes
across as a fusion of son, milongas, samba and a jazz influence, especially in the
bass lines. One of the songs, “Tangouito Prohibito” has been included in
another recent Papaya release, “Guanacaste al Atardecer”, which I thought was a
nice marketing touch by the parent company. If I have one knock on the CD, it
is that I thought some of the lettering was hard to read in the booklet
included in the CD jacket.
One of the songs on
“Tangoizueta” was co-written by Luis Enrique Mejira Godoy, whose own solo
Papaya release, “Mis Boleros”, came out at the same time. Born outside Leon, Nicaragua
in 1945, Mejira moved to Costa
Rica after graduating high school. His
father, Carlos, was a popular local musician who also built marimbas. Luis
returned to Nicaragua
in 1979 to participate in the Sandinista revolution there. With his brother
Charles, he established the Nicaragua Company of Cultural Recordings, producing
over one hundred discs. In 1999, he received an honorary doctorate from the Nicaragua
government.
 |
| Godoy performing live |
While Mejira also
has many of his own albums under his belt, “Mis Boleros” is his first recording
in more than ten years. He was recently quoted as saying, “The bolero is a
mirror of all hearts, an inventory of sorrows and the melodies of the soul”.
The CD is a project he has been working on for the past three years. He penned
every song on the album, some of them as much as twenty years ago. All the
songs are previously unreleased. Mejira dedicated the work to Ray Tico, a Costa
Rican bolerista who recently passed away. Unlike Tico’s work, “Mis Boleros” has
the full accompaniment of acoustic and electric piano and bass, second guitars
and percussion and, at times, even strings, horns and woodwinds. The entire
disc is a real tribute to Mejira’s versatility and attention to detail. I think
it is safe to say that this project is a labor of compassion that comes through
on every song.
The packaging for
both CDs are purely Papayan, complete with booklets, perhaps demonstrating
their passion for music as well. “Mis Boleros” and “Tangoizueta” have a limited
pressing and distribution. In Guanacaste they are available only at Jaime
Peligro in Tamarindo, where they will gladly sample the music for their
customers. Any comments concerning this article are welcome.
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