Editorial Reviews

Another in a long series of specifically themed world music albums well assembled and packaged by Putumayo, Women of Latin America is no exception to the exceptional standard of quality associated with the feel-good New York-based label. The album features women from a few Latin American countries in particular: Columbia, Chile, Brazil, Peru, and Mexico. So in that sense it's not a totally representative sampling of Latin American music. It would have been nice if the compilers would have rounded up a song or two representing, say, Argentina or Guatemala. Then again, because there are only 11 songs here -- just short of 40 minutes of music total -- Putumayo doesn't give itself enough space for such a broad representation anyhow. The label could have doubled the amount of music here, technically speaking at least. The music that is here, however, is quite diverse and quite good. Every song is a highlight, and favorites will likely depend on what style of music you favor: there's the beat-driven MPB pulse of Adriana Calcanhotto's "Justo Agora," the much more traditional acoustic ranchera style of Lhasa's "La Frontera," and the other songs, which all fall somewhere between those two musical extremes. The disc comes with a 31-page booklet that's not all that informative given its size but sure looks nice -- printed in full color and featuring photos as well as English-, Spanish-, and French-language blurbs about all the featured artists. Overall, Women of Latin America is a really nice compilation -- so nice, in fact, you can't help but wish it was more substantial. Jason Birchmeier, All Music Guide

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