El Keamo

Alfredo González-Martínez started** El Keamo** as a project in 2019. The idea came while listening to a cumbia playlist at a family gathering. In listening to these all so familiar songs, Alfredo wondered whether anyone had ever abstracted the sound in the same way that some of the electronic music that interests him had deconstructed and bent dance music conventions in new sonic ways. From the start, Alfredo says, he “wanted to approach the project strictly from the lens of the modern landscape of electronic music while retaining the essence of cumbia. It’s not enough to simply play that familiar guiro pattern over a house rhythm and call it a day, there’s a whole relationship and rhythmic quality that needs to be deconstructed and reassembled to create something that feels new yet familiar. Since the onset, I’ve tried to cast as wide a net as possible. I’m always searching for what I can bend next in the ‘formula’ we all understand as cumbia as opposed to finding a particular style and sticking to it.”

Music producer, DJ, designer and record label owner Talacha (Diego Gutiérrez) discovered El Keamo via Instagram, being introduced to his music in 2020 through DJ Daferwa. “I am most grateful to Alfredo for taking the gamble and being my first independent release after I put out eight Kumbia Obscura records,” says Talacha. “Since 2020 we’ve played in CDMX and Tokyo, and I’ve released three projects with him: Escalofrios, El Tocayo, and the El Keamo LP.” As Talacha sees it, El Keamo’s music is the most exciting contemporary take on cumbia because “he pushes it to places it has never been before.” Between the storytelling quality of his compositions, tasteful use of space, and carefully polished synth sounds that are mixed with organic ‘traditional’ cumbia textures, Talacha feels El Keamo “is elevating the genre to a level that feels like a museum performance executed with rave-like euphoria in the middle of a sonidero mosh-pit!” Peace & Rhythm feels the same way about El Keamo’s music, so when they proposed a joint release 7-inch 45 project for a reissue of the two top dancefloor jams from El Keamo’s album, it was the perfect match; and the rest, as they say, is historia. Visit El Keamo on Bandcamp for his releases.