Polyglotta Brand New Bag, and Not Just Full of Salsamuffins

Everything's falling apart, and Zorro can't be found anywhere anymore. Luckily, we have his sidekick, Sergent Garcia, a Spaniard from Paris who makes Cuban-Jamaican joints and jams, to voice proletarian paeans for us in Spanish and French and English.

photo: Youri Lenquette

His politics wear dope new kicks.

Details

Sergent Garcia
La Semilla Escondida
Shakti

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More About

• Sergent Garcia
• Kingston (Jamaica)
• Tyrone Downie
• Alexander Ferrer
• Tanya Stephens

And, luckily, Garcia has stepped up his game. His earlier stabs at what he calls "salsamuffin" (not to be confused with cumbiamuffin or reggaetón) were nice and sometimes hot, but his Locos del Barrio band just didn't have enough firepower. So he road-trips it out to Kingston and Santiago de Cuba, and suddenly his liberal sentiments are wearing dope new kicks. Reggae just sounds better when Tyrone Downie is playing your keyboards; a nine-minute son epic can't survive without a piano solo from Alexander Ferrer.

Tempting to say it's all about the guests (especially if it allows me to mention Tanya Stephens's fly toasting on "Nada Tiene Final"), but Garcia's songs on La Semilla Escondida are also better than ever: preaching hard in "L'Équilibre Est Fragile," decrying Babylonia in "Mi Ultima Voluntad," crooning sweetly on "El Asalto" about how sometimes you have to stop singing and just beat bad guys up and burn their houses. So who needs Zorro?