The legend of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold in South America, is an enduring fable that lured Spanish explorers lusting for riches and ended up causing disaster and suffering for Indigenous people and colonists alike. For Beny Esguerra, the Colombia-born, Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, spoken word poet, and educator, it represents a different kind of wealth: the incredibly rich cultural, spiritual, and musical heritage of Abya Yala, an Indigenous term for the Americas. Esguerra, whose musical career is marked by innovative and entertaining creative collaborations that seamlessly mix ancient and modern cultural traditions, keeps that legacy going with Somos el Dorado, a partnership between his New Tradition Music and Colombian composer and musician Leang Manjarres Wong’s solo project Gaita Loop. It is a riotous, exuberant, and dazzlingly inventive mix of Afro-Indigenous gaita folk music from Colombia and hip-hop from suburban Toronto that’s packed with bright, catchy melodies, vivid storytelling, and relentlessly addictive rhythms. Esguerra and Wong throw in everything—English, Spanish, Spanglish, and traditional Muysccubun languages, Colombian kuisi flutes and drums, guitars, turntables, beatboxing, even ocean waves—and form a surprisingly cohesive sound that incorporates different vocal, musical, instrumental, and rhythmic styles with powerful messages of anti-colonial resistance, cultural pride, and hope. Somos el Dorado is a dance party that is as meaningful as it is beautiful.
Mary Dickie is a Toronto music and arts journalist whose work has been published in a variety of different publications over the past couple of decades, including Impact, Eye Weekly, Maclean’s, ELLE Canada, The Toronto Sun, FASHION magazine and IN Toronto. She is also a member of the Polaris Music Prize jury.