Music Recap 2012: Reviews and Featured Music

Feature photo by Carolina Sanchez

This was another incredible year for the Gozamos music section—so amazing, in fact, that we couldn’t fit our 2012 recap into just one post. So in the style of previous years, we have first gathered up a few of our favorite music reviews and featured music.

As our section’s motto suggests, our crew is not primarily interested in one type of music or another. Even compared to last year, we branched out in 2012, introducing ourselves and our readers to a multitude of artists and styles from all over the US, Latin America and globally. They fascinated us with their fresh notions of contemporariness, and challenged the sound and meaning of ever-evolving genres like hip-hop, reggae and World music. We got down to the nitty gritty—everything from melodies, textures, instruments, mechanics and lyrics to the composition of songs, music videos and albums as a whole. We also contemplated the art of performative prowess and aesthetics in reviews and coverage of gigs and festivals, and featured some sick and groovy tunes to jam out to.

We didn’t go behind music—we got all up in its grill. Check it.

Album Reviews

Bomba Estéreo’s Elegancia Tropical
Bigg Jus’ Machines That Make Civilization Fun
A Tribe Called Red – Free Download
Nouela’s Chants

Music Videos & Single Reviews

Nelly Furtado’s New Single Jumps through Hoops
“No Church in the Wild” by Jay-Z and Kanye West

Concerts, Festivals & Performance Events

Enrique Bunbury en Chicago – “Donde quiera que estoy, extranjero me siento”
Lollapalooza 2012: Highlights and Lowlights
Imperial Silence: Una Opera Muerta

Featured Music

Unísono 2012: ¡A musical feast!
FMEL 2012 Número 5: Sonic and Electronic Exploradores
Chicago World Music Festival