What a spectacular year 2015 was for Latin indie music! There was such a richly eclectic abundance of riches of new projects, it’s hard to know where to start. Here’s a few fascinating trends that we are seeing on the horizon.

Nuevo, Novo Folk

Several Brazilian artists have been at the forefront of a nuevo novo folk, characterized by a delicate but supremely satisfying austerity. These include the music created by immensely popular heartthrob Tiago Iorc, who sings in Portuguese and English. Iorc’s compositions show off a voice that sweetly ambles in gently textured ballads. Definitely music for note-sipping, not tune-gulping!

Internet sensation Anavitória is a young duo formed by Ana Caetano and Vitória Falcão, from a small city in Brazil (Araguaína) who prove that sometimes less is a whole lot more. Their sweet, delicate harmonies reach extraordinary realms thanks to phrasing which highlights the round-vowelled fullness of Portuguese flowing through what they call “rural pop”.

Also in this vein, several Peruvian artists are taking nuevo folk sounds in surprising directions, often with a touch of quirk. Great examples of this are Lima’s Alejandro and Maria Laura, who tell wonderful and sometimes fantastic tales about a chubby fish who escapes bullies, the dead who like to party and other magically-realistic moments. Also from Lima, Kanaku Y El Tigre write beautiful music that incorporates into their nuevo folk unusual elements such as toy synthesizers, found percussion and even Hawaiian-style slide guitar.

Andean Everything

2015 really was the year when Andean sounds made a resounding comeback in tunes of every kind, taking off in part from the pioneering work by Argentinian Chancha Via Circuito and his unique compositions incorporating samples of sounds from the Amazons and Andes.

This trend fits in nicely with other recent tendencies in indie Latino music, somewhere at the crossroads between an enthusiastic revisiting of Latin American folkloric music, explorations of new variants of atmospheric electronica and a renewed focus on the indigenous roots of Latin music.

From the emerging blends with hip hop and other indigenous sounds created in Montreal, Canada by Akawui, to the surreal beauty of Andean step created by Ecuadorian-French DJ/Producer Nicola Cruz (a genre Cruz himself invented and named) to the elegantly textured Andean blues created by guitarists Peruvian Ciro Hurtado (nominated to a Latin Grammy for his most recent album), all kinds of Andean sounds took on new forms in 2015’s indie Latin American music and are likely to continue doing so in the near future.

Mexico in New York

It is amazing to think that the city of New York is gaining fame as a hotbed of bands that are reinventing traditional Mexican music forms (after decades of reinventing Caribbean forms of our music with for example, boogaloo and salsa), but that is exactly what is happening! We predict that Mexico reinvented in New York City will be a continuing trend, fueled in part by the blossoming population from Mexico in a city whose Latino musical landscape has been marked primarily by immigrants from the Caribbean.

Mariachi Flor de Toloache was founded by Puerto Rican Mireya Ramos, who developed a love for mariachi by listening to her father’s mariachi records as a child. The band started busking on the New York City streets, but a Latin Grammy nom and also opening marvelously for The Arcs (the new psych-soul project of Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys), has put them on a whole new audience’s radar. Their fierce femininity in the macho-laden musical culture of mariachi, a vibrant multi culturality and a wonderful ability to careen from mariachi standards to indie pop classics in English without missing a mariachi beat (literally) augur a wonderful future for Flor de Toloache.

Banda de los Muertos, the very first New York banda band, is led by Oscar Noriega and Jacob Garchik, veteran jazz and classical musicians who have explored most recently a musical obsession with banda music from Sinaloa, Mexico. Distinguished by lots and lots of horns, this celebratory music has long been the musical staple of marching bands around Mexico. In Banda de los Muertos’ first album, the musicians present a homage to the early banda recordings from the forties. Despite the fact that Noriega’s and Garchik’s conservatory training shines in Banda de los Muertos’ sophisticated arrangements, the tunes never lose the original flavor.

Check out all the sounds out too on Beat Latino (beatlatino.com)!