Mundo

1	Estampa (Profile) 7:22
2	First Circle 4:50
3	Primogenio (Beginnings) 3:51
4	Bochinches (Gossip) 4:41
5	Ella (She) 5:48
6	Parao! (On My Feet) 5:58
7	Como Nosotros (Like You and Me) 5:40
8	El Capitain y la Sirena (The Captain and the Mermaid) 3:29
9	Sebastian 5:06
10	Consideracion (Consideration) (Oriente) 3:51
11	Jiri Son Bali 4:20
12	Danny Boy 6:54
13	La Ruta (The Road) (Diha Cesto) 4:08
14	A San Patricio (Extracto) 2:33

Barnes & Noble

Marc Anthony may sing about going "Contra la Corriente"; Ruben Blades lives it. He's long been celebrated as Latin music's renaissance man: sonero, stage and screen actor, and once the music's biggest crossover hope. Nearly four decades into his career, Blades shows no sign of compromise -- Mundo is a bold fusion album that invokes Irish music, flamenco, and African and Arabian influences, but remains powerfully rooted in Blades's adopted New York home and the disaster that befell it in September 2001. It would be easy for a lesser artist to lose his way in such ambitious stuff -- and indeed, not everyone wants to hear Pedro Navaja go the Riverdance route. But backed by an estimable ensemble that includes percussionist Marc Quiñones, tresero Nelson Gonzalez, the Brazilian band Boca Livre, and vocal quartet De Boca en Boca, Blades turns in his most percussive collection since he became enamored of the Costa Rican string ensemble Editus back in 1998 (they show up on Mundo as well). The strong rumba that opens the album, "Estampa," knowingly acknowledges the Grupo Folklorico y Experimental Nuevoyorquino, whose Concepts in Unity explored pan-Latin music from a New York perspective. Against this Afro-Latin music, Blades connects the cross-cultural transfer of music with the travels of those immigrants who have borne it to America. Cinematic strings translate this sentiment to his stories of simple men, especially the moving "Parao," and the album's most surprising track, a salsa-fied "Danny Boy," in salute to the lives lost on September 11th. Finding the clavé in Irish reels replete with fiddle and Uillean pipes, in Spanish nuevo flamenco (for which he adopts suitably clenched vocals and gitano accent), and covers of material by Gilberto Gil and Pat Metheny, Blades offers another characteristically rich album, with more bite than its Grammy-winning predecessor, Tiempos. In marvelous voice, declaiming his powerful poetry, Ruben Blades once again raises the stakes for true artistry in a genre that often pays the notion mere lip service. Mark Schwartz

All Music Guide

All credit goes to Rubén Blades. He sees music as a global thing, and working from his established base of salsa, he's made some very credible connections between musics of the world, never more so than on Mundo, where Latin rhythms meet bagpipes and didgeridoos, Africa comes to Cuba, and the lilt of strings can develop into a percussion fest. In many ways, his singing -- although it's the glue that holds everything together -- is the least-important element; the joy is in the sheer diversity, as on "Primogenio," where the pipes work beautifully, or the most unusual version of "Danny Boy" ever recorded. But it's also there on "El Capitan y la Sirena," where the earthy tones of a didgeridoo underpin Latin accordion and rhythms, and in the airy, jazzy "Consideracion." Blades has always been adventurous, a real artist, but this is mature and considered, never brash or in-your-face. It makes sense and works, even when, on paper, it probably shouldn't. It's one world, and in his music Blades is attempting to bring it together. Chris Nickson

jazzreview.com

A joyful light filled experience.