 The music of Laura García y su Banda balances gracefully between purism and accessibility. García y su Banda’s traditional Andean folk music, utilizing instruments like nylon-string guitar, pan pipes, accordion, and regional hand percussion, displays all of the rhythmic vigor, delicately intertwining fretwork, and unique melodic sense of the best of the genre, but is recorded with the clarity and polish of modern pop, giving it a feel that is decidedly contemporary rather than conservative.
That her music balances between two worlds so gracefully, slipping only rarely, is all the more admirable given García’s unwillingness to sacrifice folk rigor for pop sweetness or modern immediacy for purist orthodoxy.
Buscándote is a perfect example of García’s skill; mixing perky fills and swoopingly pretty pan pipes, the song’s accessible arrangement and playful, energetic performances present plenty to love for both fans of traditional Andean folk and contemporary Latin pop. Likewise, Gira La Vida supports its complicated rhythm and intertwining guitar parts while never seeming a slave to either, and Del Regresar,the closest of García’s hosted tracks to a mainstream ballad, fulfills the function of pop confection ably without ever becoming grating or overly simple. By taking off the purist kid gloves but maintaining reverence for the integrity of her music, García has found one way to keep Andean folk alive and immediate for anyone listening.
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