If it has ever seemed that every musical sound has already been done then the music of Indus has not been heard. Indus is a project led by Óscar Alford, a producer in Barranquilla, Colombia. The project has released two albums, Negra is the second and most recent.
In Negra Indus focuses on the night. What would the night sound like? To Indus the night contains a mystisim that connects that aloted time to the cosmos. In Alford’s vision of this the night is a sesual time that is a mystery. However, Indus does not limit its album to only honor this vision as it also honors the older musical traditions from Colombia’s water areas. This second element represents land. To Indus this area is a place people leave and then always return to. This mix: land and night, alongside the different musical genres featured create what Alford calls a “confluence of various cultural universes.”
Indus separates each element of the project through sound. “On the one hand there’s the traditional music of the coast and river areas,” Alford says. “[There] are various maestros who collaborated on the record who brought that flavor, also there’s electronica which is a universal language, and even hip hop and more urban genres like dembow.”
This mentality Alford has is how Indus was able to accomplish its goal for this project. Each sound represents either night or the earth. Still it would seem complex to tackle the overall vision he presented for the album, especially since Negra only features 10 songs. However, Alford wisely has each song focus on one aspect of the album’s story. The first song “Deja” welcomes listeners to the world of night and the cosmos through synthetic sounds. Other songs follow featuring electronic sounds, but what sticks out in the repertoire is how the album brings forth traditional Colombian music to the present day.
This new album features many collaborations with traditional Colombian musicians, urban music artists, and other artists from the pacific and caribbean. In Negra there is no difference between these as all are presented as one. In this Indus is ahead of everyone. This music has been heard before, but together is completely new. It is as if Indus is preparing listeners to what will be heard in the future.
