Bentley's Bandstand
Los Cenzontles with David Hidalgo & Taj Mahal
American Horizon
LC Records

Any album that brings Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and roots guru Taj Mahal together has to be cause for celebration. But when it’s with Los Cenzontles and the songs on American Horizon, it’s time for a full-tilt fiesta. This band has been fashioning creative magic for twenty years, with founder Eugene Rodriguez the kind of artist who looks beyond the horizon and what can be seen to those vistas that live only in the mind. He is a seer as much as a musician, and joined by Lucina Rodriguez, Fabiola Trujillo and Hugo Arroyo these songs tell the heartrending story of American workers and all their challenges. Hidalgo has long been a master of all stringed instruments, and runs through his whole arsenal on songs like “La Luna” and “Parajo Cu,” capturing the endless beauty of Mexican-American music in a way that brings it to vivid life. There aren’t many players in Hidalgo’s realm, and whether he’s performing with Los Lobos or others, his strength of soul always shines through. Taj Mahal needs no introduction, but hearing him adapt so naturally to songs like “Suenos” and others shows just what an explorer of sound he has always been. The blues fiddle tearing off leads behind his cantina-fueled vocal is eclecticism as its most electric, and come Grammy time there is no way an album like this can miss. The real star of the show, though, is the honorable people these songs are about, the ones who rise each day faced with dilemmas beyond what most Americans have to face as they struggle to find work and stay afloat. Los Cenzontles (the Mockingbirds) have poured themselves into this music, and the way it allows us to enter the lives of others is an achievement of rare beauty, and a chance to find a way forward for us all.
— 11/03/2009