Album Notes

Wagogo, born, raised and loved in Albuquerque, NM, is an ecclectic group of musicians that make a rhythmic cocktail out of their Chicano influences, Northern Mexico folk songs, warm calypso island grooves, and the captivating spirit music of Zimbabwe. Their lyrics posses an equally enriching quality, being composed mostly by lead singer Armando Ortega, in a blend of Spanish, English, and the Shona language of Zimbabwe. With such a diverse repertoire, Wagogo inspires a multigenerational crowd to dance and sing, and even gets the old folks weeping with its dedication to preserving the traditional roots of music, in addition to exploring new sounds. Broadcast on radio stations from New Mexico to New York, California, and Zimbabwe, they have been reinvited to the Zimbabwe Music Festival for three years, and will be appearing in many other world music festivals to come. With all the intrigue of the Land of Enchantment, they are definitely a band not to be missed.

Wagogo is one of the longest-standing, most evolved local New Mexico bands of the past decade or so, having released four CD's (in three lanuages): "Waking Up" in 1999, a CD titled (in three languages) "Baile Sosegador" in 2000, "Familia y Amor" in 2001 and the self-titled "Wagogo" in 2003, on which their previous flirtations with African rhythms and indigenous melodies have coalesced into a stunning example of what a group of musicians can accomplish when their collective influences are simply allowed to flow freely.

Currently consisting of Armando Ortega (vocals, guitar, mbira, guit-jo, seperewa, melodica, harmonica, percussion); longtime musical partner Teles Sanchez (guitar, vocals); Mwata Ballantyne (drums, vocals, percussion); and Alyson Steinman (bass, vocals, percussion), Wagogo utilizes a host of guest musicians live and on their recordings which lends the band a unique familial quality that's instantly gratifying.