Welcome to the start of a new monthly feature, MANO’s Video Favorites! This month’s list includes work by Bomba Estéreo, Caloncho, Helado Negro, Esteman and Sabino.
Featuring a Rhodes electric piano, Helado Negro’s newest video is for the song “Agosto,” which seems appropriate for our first week of August favorites.
The track is from his latest album, Far In, and it’s an awe-inspiring dreamy pop affair that floats about in the rush and frenzy of moving water. The delicate voices, his and Buscabulla’s, are meant for this type of song and it’s been on repeat on this writer’s playlist since its release.
In press material, the artist explains that the song was written with “thoughts on the humid atmosphere of his South Florida hometown where flower petals and fruit fall and sweetly decay on concrete.”
Helado Negro is currently on tour.
Sabino is releasing new songs every Thursday, and his recent single, “Duele,” landed in this week’s favorites. It’s a little different from his more hip-hop-ish singles, something he referred to on his Instagram, saying he “wanted to have Sabino songs to sing when there was a campfire and a guitar.”
Although he’s always sentimental in his songs, we like this new, more melodic, somewhat softer approach to music.
This video by Bomba Estéreo is something more than a music video. It’s a short film titled, “El Duende,” which they describe as “reinterpreting some of the images of the film Divinas melodías, directed by Lucas Silva. The music is based on remixes from the album Los Duendes de la Marimba by Dinastía Torres. It is an homage to all the musicians and marimberos (marimba players) from the Colombian Pacific Coast, a powerful natural territory where the forest, the rivers, and all the heritage of the Afro ancestry speak through music.”
The short film is directed by Lucas Silva, Simón Mejía, and Simón Hernández.
“Naranja a Morado,” which translates to “orange to purple,” is a song about the Mexican state of Sonora and its deserts, the home of three singer-songwriters: Caloncho, Charles Ans, and Carlos Colosio. The song’s composer, Caloncho, explains that the video is about “a trip with friends spiced up with a little bit of psychedelia.”
“I wanted to talk about Sonora,” he says, “but the opportunity had not presented itself, so I looked for very talented people from Sonora, very dear to me: Carlos Colosio and Charles Ans. It has scenes of Sonoran sunsets and Sonoran situations of things that are associated with Sonora such as bacanora and the desert.”
Colombian singer-songwriter Esteman is the most romantic of songwriters. (Sigh.) Not only did he share his proposal to his partner on Instagram for all of us to experience—which took place in Paris, by the way—but the song he wrote to accompany this romantic gesture now includes a video. To experience the moment for yourself, watch the proposal before the music video. So lovely!
To be considered for MANO’s monthly Video Favorites, send details with your new video to MANO.
Featured image: Album cover art for ‘Far In’ by Helado Negro
