Rio Amazonas - La Madre y Sus Niños / Rio Amazonas - La Madre y Sus Ninos

This is one of those albums lurking in the underbrush of the music industry — self-produced works with a limited distribution. Some of it is in this ad-hoc pipeline because it's simply terrible. Some is in it because the music doesn't fit any pigeonhole. And there are albums like this, a personal journey through music. Chuck Jonkey is a mild, intelligent guy, and his music carries a host of Eastern and Western influences (he counts Ravi Shankar amongst his friends). He's also the creator of some fascinating hybrid instruments, such as the guitar/sitar. Rio Amazonas carries these influences with it, scattering them within the music with cheerful abandon from "La Gran Anaconda," with its steady talking drum and swelling synthesizers to "El Principio Y El Fin," which goes from raga with Brazilian beat through Amazon jungle to a reprise of the opening. Throughout the whole range of the album, you have the sounds of the Amazon rainforest (recorded by Jonkey on location) which alone is worth the price of admission, especially when you hear the result on headphones. It's a truly amazing album that both falls into the new age pigeonhole and opens it into places it's never had a chance to go before. It's certainly an album with a wonderful heartbeat.