CD Reviews

Pedro Luis Ferrer

Natural | Escondida

By BANNING EYRE | July 5, 2006

3.0 Stars

CONCISE, WITTY, WISE: Pedro Luis Ferrer

Sixteen gem-like songs — concise, witty, and wise — offer more evidence that Pedro Luis Ferrer is one of the most appealing songwriters working the folky outfields of today’s world music. Ferrer creates his own genre, changüisa, blending the poetic sensibility and social engagement of 1960s nueva trova songs with down-home Eastern mountain changüi and folkloric styles whose roots go back to African spirituality. Anchoring his winning sound are his elegant, plucked tres melodies and spot-on vocal harmonies with his daughter Lena. Whether singing about an all-girls’ party, with undressing and marijuana-induced “hallucinations,” or about the misfortune of a one-armed man who falls in love with a beautiful but “dumb” woman, or about love in any number of other quirky, sensuous manifestations, Ferrer conveys a magical and melancholy sense of Cuban reality. There’s even some political grousing — risky in Cuba — in “Repeticiones,” with its “Always repeating the old formula. . . . Don’t argue, don’t think, don’t try to dissent.”

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