Playlist: Voices Together (Mostly) In Real Time

Further examples of resonance, power, beauty....

Breaking my usual rule about Echo Locator playlists – they should not be marathons!

It couldn’t be helped, because I kept running into cool and unusual examples of voices singing together in real time (or something close to real time), often featuring a lead voice mixing it up with a recurring phrase from a backing chorus. We begin with the most familiar thing here – the Beach Boys’ masterwork “In My Room” – and then visit Brazil, the gospel quartets of the American South, various parts of Africa and on and on. The Eddie Palmieri track, a lavish orchestrated reimagining of the tango “El Dia Que Me Quieras” released in 1981, features lead vocals from the endlessly expressive Cheo Feliciano and a coro built via multi-tracking by Feliciano and another Fania star, Ismael Quintana. While it’s true they’re not singing together in real time, these two veterans create a group identity that glances back to the traditional highly caffeinated coro sound of Johnny Pacheco but uses tense and thoroughly modern harmonies. One other thing to notice: The texture and timbre similarities between the chorales that accompany Mali’s Oumou Sangare and Brazil’s Renata Rosa.

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