‘Himnopsis Colectiva’, is the title of the new album of Amparanoia, definitely one of Spain’s leading world music bands. Amparanoia stands since 2007 for an authentic southern mestizo sound with the caractheristic and unrivaled voice and appearence of Amparo Sánchez. This new album is the follow-up of the 20 years compilation ‘El Coro de mi Gente’ (2017) and the first studio-album from Amparanoia since the release of ‘La Vida te Da’ in 2005. ‘Himnopsis Colectiva’ is an album with 10 brand new songs that speak about very sincere emotions, definitely the perfect ‘synopsis’ of this strange year 2020…
Amparo Sánchez has always been a very active artist, both in terms of her social engagement as on the level of her artistic carreer. It’s only a couple of months since she released, under her own name ‘Amparo Sánchez’, the album ‘La Niña y el Lobo’. That album, recorded in her hometown Granada, is a kind of ‘soundtrack’ to the biography she published a couple of years ago and in which she tells the story of her eventful youth in Spain in what certainly were ‘roaring eighties’ in a country that just threw off the yoke of Franco’s dictatorship. And now there is this brand new studio-album with her band Amparanoia. 10 new songs that have been recorded between July and October 2020 in the small village of Santa María de la Vega (Granada).
The sound of this new Amparanoia-album ‘Himnopsis Colectiva’ is for sure the perfect soundtrack to deal with these hard times of Covid and lockdowns everywhere. There is of course the representative warm voice of Amparo Sánchez, that goes so well together with her typical musical style that deals of course with old style cumbia, some carribean reggae tunes, rumba or boogaloo, but even so with a more electronic approach, desert rock, Balkan-influenced songs or pure pop music. Amparo Sánchez always have been known for making music ‘out of the box’, and this new studio-album ‘Himnopsis Colectiva’ is another brilliant proof of this talent.
The album opens with ‘Mi Genética’, a lovely rippling reggae song about family, our ancestors and all the values we carry with us during our whole life. “It’s also a song about how every woman or man daily moves on in life, how we evolve every day again”, says Amparo about it. “It’s about time also, and that’s also what I am singing about in ‘El Dia que No’”. That 2nd track is an authentic catapult into the Central-European brass music with Balkan inspired trumpets and horns. ‘Yo te Doy’ is an original cumbia tune with funny lyrics about finding a truly balance in life. In other songs such as ‘De Principio a fin’ or ‘Centimetros’ the album takes the direction of honest pop songs, with positive lyrics and words. “Songs about how we have to start over every day again, with pardon and forgiveness, to learn those little things about ourselves”, says Amparo. At last, tracks such as ‘Ahora’ or ‘Cumbia Perfecto’ speak about living that present moment, without looking too much back or forward. And are the perfect songs for those brilliant and energetic live-concerts Amparanoia is known for.
The new Amparanoia-album ‘Himnopsis Colectiva’ is released on Amparo’s own label ‘Mamita Records’ and will be released in Europe in Spring 2021. The band will intensively tour the new album from September 2021 on.