COLOMBIA, MADE IN HUNGARY
Press release by Istvan Dely
Cartagena, Colombia

Colombo-Hungarian artist David Dely finally releases his first album, Son Maloso, with his Fringe award winning band Tumba y Quema. He has traveled a long way across time and space to get there and the resulting work shows it was worth the labors. Rootsy Colombian and Africaribbean Tribalglobal music at its best. And all made in Hungary!
Son of Hungarian percussionist Istvan Dely and Colombian singer/songwriter Leonor, David was born in Bogotá in 1976 and raised in Cartagena and Barranquilla on the Caribbean Coast, the very heartland of Afrocolombian folklore and Gabriel García Márquez’ magical realism. As a musician he grew up amidst a host of Africaribbean drums and Native American flutes of his father’s percussion school, and together with his parents and his younger brother Shangó has been a pillar of their musical group Millero Congo for over fifteen years, where he was imbued with the spirit of experimentation, world-embracing fusion, creative freedom, always growing from his local roots: the tribalglobal approach. Much of the spirit and instruments of village music, many of the means and sounds of urban music, with a nature and purpose new and ancient.

After leaving the family nest he moved to Bogotá where he formed his own group, Tumba y Quema, a term that has multiple meanings and describes well his musical goals. On the one hand it refers to the slash-and-burn technique in jungle farming; on the other, to burn away old trash to slash a path for the new. And tumba, of course, is an African word for several kinds of drums and dances. Soon after he moved to Hungary, his father´s old country, with wife Claudia, in 2001, he established the present line-up of his group with young Hungarian musicians eager to explore world music. Three years later he was joined by his virtuoso drummer brother Shangó coming from a three-year stint in the USA. Playing all the major festivals and alternative music venues throughout the country they consolidated their repertory of mainly David’s own compositions set in an unusually wide variety of Colombian and Africaribbean rhythms in ever-changing crossovers and global sound references, and expressing an explosive, overwhelming and contagious sense of vitality and joy that is the hallmark of the Caribbean, this supreme melting pot of races and cultures. They won a Budapest Fringe Festival award and an Artisjus contest to produce their first album:

DAVID DELY & TUMBA Y QUEMA: SON MALOSO – 13 songs ranging from cumbia, porro, bullerengue, paseo vallenato, to son montuno, gahú, capoeira, conga and merengue, recorded by David Dely (lead and background vocals, guitar, bass, Native American flutes, percussion), Claudia Andrade (lead and background vocals), Shangó Dely (ethnic drums, percussion, Colombian gaita flute, background vocals), Márton Takács (didjeridoo, drum programming – he´s also the sound engineer of the recording and mixing), Bálint Kovács (solo and effect guitars), György Szappanos (bass), and Norbert Kovács (drums). There are also two guest musicians: Istvan Dely (congalegres), and Murad Abbas (trombone). David’s original paintings supply the framework and inspiration for Máté Jakab’s beautiful and stylish artwork. Mastered at Tam Tam Studio, produced by David Dely, coproduced by Shangó Dely, executive produced by Márton Takács, David Dely and Shangó Dely, published by Chamaleon Records, this album is most certainly a unique gem of the cultural globalization of our days and, more specifically, of a new COLOMBO-HUNGARIAN CONNECTION.