Each month we visit with a member of the community to find out what music they’ve been digging.
Reyna Tropical’s Malegría is one of my favorite records of 2024, on the great Psychic Hotline label. Released in March, it’s a fresh mix of traditional Latin American and African rhythms that helped me out of my winter thaw, guided me into the welcoming of spring, and is now one of my favorite summer jams. Reyna Tropical started as a duo between guitarist Fabiola Reyna (who is also the founder and editor-in-chief of She Shreds Media) and Nectali Diazin in 2016. After the tragic passing of Diazin in 2022, Reyna kept the project going, and this album features moments of voice messages between the two, working out their musical collaborations and just being best friends. So while it often feels and sounds like a celebratory record, at times it’s also bittersweet remembrance of love and an honest processing of grief.
I’ve also been listening to a lot of Arthur Russell over the last many months. I’ve been DJing more lately, and I consistently find myself reaching for his records. And the book club I’m in is reading Richard King’s new biography, Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, A Life, so I’ve been going back through it all and falling in love all over again. He’s just a really special musician whose work remained incredible and poignant across so many genres: pop, disco, folk, electronic, classical, experimental, avant-garde, ambient—as you dig deeply into his life and his catalog, one is reminded that he devoted his life’s work to musical discovery. Calling Out of Context, a compilation album released in 2004, is a great place to start for new listeners.
This article appears in August 2024.
