Mixing the cool with the hot just right

Chambao

“Pokito a Poko” (Sony Music Spain)

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THIS extraordinary and irresistible work provides yet another example of Spain’s artistic dominance in contemporary Latin music. And it reinforces the role flamenco has played as the root of the Mother Country’s pop renaissance.

Chambao, a group that started as a trio from Malaga, is credited with inventing a cool fusion of flamenco and electronic music, appearing on a 2003 Spanish compilation named for the new genre, “Flamenco Chill.” Since then, the group has refined and perfected its mix “little by little,” as the title suggests with its hip misspelling of “poquito a poco.”

Chambao is now led by vocalist Maria del Mar Rodriguez (“LaMari”) and guitarist-producer Eduardo Casan (“El Edi”), the group’s co-founders and co-authors, with Federico D. Santaella, of the set’s 11 songs. Recorded in Cadiz, the southern port city considered a cradle of flamenco, the album, released in the U.S. late last year almost without notice, reflects the group’s heavier emphasis on flamenco elements at the expense of electronica.

That’s just the right balance, taking out some of the chill associated with electronica and adding more of the warm-blooded passion of Andalusia’s gypsy roots music. What’s left is an organic amalgam that forges flamenco’s hand-clapping rhythms and entrancing melodies with hypnotic electronic grooves.

In Chambao’s blend, flamenco’s excess passion gets tamed and electronica’s machine-like lack of feeling gets humanized. The result is a cool sound with a lot of heart.

The group’s great groove and laid-back delivery belie the strength of their themes. Several songs deal with the quest for self-discovery (“Pokito a Poko”), personal growth (“Camino Interior,” Internal Path) and spiritual evolution (“Dibujo en el Aire,” Drawing on Air). They even have a barely veiled lyric about the medical benefits of marijuana, “Mi Primo Juan” (My Cousin Juan).

Kudos to Sony BMG’s U.S. division for releasing the album, which includes a DVD with equally evocative videos and a short documentary about the band. The Latin music market here has been slow to pick up on Spain’s new wave, but at least this one has landed ashore.

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Percussion that can set off reverberations

Miguel “Anga” Diaz

“Echu Mengua” (World Circuit)

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LATIN percussion connoisseurs consider Cuban-born Anga one of the world’s greatest conga players. But like many brilliant drummers, he remains a relatively unknown sideman linked to big-name acts, from the progressive Irakere to the nostalgic Buena Vista Social Club.

With this ambitious album debut, the Barcelona-based conguero steps into the limelight with an innovative set that stretches the already elastic boundaries of Afro-Cuban fusion. His work makes for a magical alchemy that takes various styles -- ritual bata drumming, avant-garde jazz, traditional danzon, European DJ touches, Malian guitar -- and melds them in sometimes stunning ways. The album is aptly named for the god of crossroads, Anga’s saint who shows the way in the Yoruba (Santeria) religion. With so many musical crosscurrents to navigate, literally without a chart in the case of the improvised “Simon Dracula,” the adventurous bandleader was well served by a spiritual guide.

He opens the album with a spine-tingling incantation in “Rezos” (Prayers), calling on the spirits of departed musical greats. One track, the graceful “Pueblo Nuevo,” features the late Ruben Gonzalez, the beloved Buena Vista pianist, on his final recording.

Plenty of other Buena Vista alums join Anga for the session, most notably bassist and past collaborator Cachaito Lopez. Anga also reunites with pianist Chucho Valdes and members of the legendary Irakere for the rousing celebratory finale, “Conga Carnaval.”

Anga’s experimental brew is sometimes witchy, as in the spooky version of Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” and sometimes just strange, as when Anga plays the melody of “Round Midnight” on seven finely tuned congas. The fusion is too cluttered in places, forcing the ear to sort out seemingly discordant, electronically layered elements.

But like all challenging music, it always commands attention.

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Classic songs, but not standard procedure

Lila Downs

“La Cantina” (Narada)

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THE cantina has become so emblematic of Mexican rural culture -- which is to say Western culture in the U.S. -- that the word doesn’t need translation. It’s the local tavern, a gathering place for townsfolk to celebrate, commiserate or drown their sorrows in a solitary ritual remedy of tequila, salt and torch songs called rancheras.

In her fifth studio album (in stores April 4), the acclaimed Mexican American song stylist uses the cantina as a thematic concept to compile a 15-song set of Mexican country classics and a few Downs originals.

But those expecting to hear sing-along, jukebox versions of oft-recorded standards are going to choke on their Coronas.

These are Lila Downs renditions all the way -- reconceived and reinterpreted in her wrenchingly emotional and occasionally off-kilter way. She and husband-producer Paul Cohen use startling arrangements to shake up comfortable old chestnuts, shocking the songs with electronic, hip-hop trickery or paring them to acoustic simplicity to reveal the ache in every mournful note, delivered in sonic slow motion as in “La Cama de Piedra” (The Stone Bed).

This ranchera songbook is a regional departure from the Oaxacan folkloric styles and traditions that have been Downs’ specialty. Purists will abhor her experimentation with these well-guarded traditions. Like all worthwhile experiments, it doesn’t always work.

A song such as “Tu Recuerdo y Yo” (Your Memory and Me) is the quintessential cantina tear-jerker, opening with the spurned man sitting in the corner of a bar with a shot of tequila and asking, “Who in this life has not known the oh-so familiar betrayal left us by a bad love?” Accompanied by a thumping drum machine and shrieking electric guitar that rip into the middle of the song, Downs musically barges into the bar, overturning tables and telling the poor guy off in an angry rap segment.

The late Jose Alfredo Jimenez, Mexico’s greatest ranchera composer, would roll over in his grave to think his macho anthem had been turned into a vehicle for feminist revenge.

Good thing the album features three other Jimenez standards, including the album closer “Amarga Navidad” (Bitter Christmas) that Downs delivers straight up in her voice that ranges dramatically from husky lows to high vibratos, adorned with sparkling harps and guitars.

She opens with a tasty dance tune she co-wrote with Cohen, “Cumbia del Mole,” that lists mole sauce ingredients with a verbal cadence that comes off bland in the English version. Texas accordion ace Flaco Jimenez adds his own spice to a couple of jaunty norteno polkas.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.