Bogotá’s The Toughers recorded “Libre Como El Viento” entirely live to 8-track analogue tape in the Colombian Andes. The track opens their debut LP Eclipse de Soul, out on Chicago’s Jump Up Records, and the tape catches everything at once: horns biting over a first-wave ska rhythm, the bass and drums sitting right on top of each other, no space cleaned up in post.
The band is the project of Pablo Araoz, known as Mambe, founder of Colombia’s first reggae band Alerta Kamarada and director of One2 Records studio in Bogotá. He assembled The Toughers as a supergroup pulling from Colombian reggae, jazz, salsa and funk, with a vocal line-up that brings Afro-Caribbean and native Colombian voices into a tradition rooted in Kingston’s first-wave ska. Eclipse de Soul sits alongside references that include Ska Cubano, The Aggrolites, The Skatalites, Lee “Scratch” Perry and Chicano soul, folded into Colombian genres like son and merecumbe. “Libre Como El Viento,” which translates as “Free Like the Wind,” is the album’s most direct ska moment: a track built for a dance floor, carrying a message about resilience and the particular freedom of movement.
The album arrived just after The Toughers opened for The Skatalites in Bogotá, and its nine tracks split across two sides: ska-steady and soul dub. Available on sunset yellow vinyl, eco-lite CD and green cassette, it is one of the more fully realised debut statements to come out of Latin America’s growing ska revival, a scene whose reach has been spreading through Mexico, Argentina and Colombia for years.
Listen to “Libre Como El Viento” HERE and get your copy of Eclipse de Soul following THIS LINK.