As if falling from the sky bearing humble and powerful messages, artist Hummana released her debut folk-rock album “Tribo”, all the way from Berlin, Germany. Composed of 11 stunning tracks and an angelic voice full of longing, Hummana is a music project representing convergence, identity, unity, and cultural heritage. Behind this breathtaking musical initiative is Cristina Viera, a Portuguese musician who grew up in Madeira island, where she was completely immersed in the traditions of the culture which she believes is rapidly disappearing. The music consists of work music played to the rhythm of laborers who forged the lives of the island. It’s what is called a musical patchwork, where she mixes ancient voices with a modern sound, eclectically.
Poetic and melting with mysticism and meaning, this album is like a big beautiful quilt stitched with pieces of different colors and faces of culture. Viera beautifully glued together ancient sounds of thousands of years into a modern mosaic painting. The music and concept are one of a kind, with the music taking you to a faraway land, somewhere you didn’t even know existed through her emotive vocals that are full of yearning. The overall sound of the album is both extremely melancholic yet encompasses some positivity. We guess that the emptiness of fading traditions is sonically displayed in the melancholic rock sound, and the hope of revenge and preserving them is the other side of the musical coins where we feel the dreamy and happy feelings in the album. It feels like sirens, nymphs, old sounds, and genies are all coming together in one force to deliver something of great value to us.
The soundscapes are mostly very slow and dreamy or slow lullabesque gloomy soundscapes. Accompanying these canvases are spacey and unearthly sounds, heavy rock sounds, and tribal sounds. The melodies are a mix of beautiful, slow, and soft sounds with dark tones. The genuineness in this album is how she mastered all these different sounds to create a unique listening experience that feels old and new at the same time. The musical arrangement is very rich with a lot of jungle and tribal percussion sounds and heavy drums, many string instruments, melancholic or happy piano rhythms, cymbals for intensity, xylophones for magic, and electric guitar and guitars for that rock element that is very prominent in the music. There is also notable usage of nature sounds like winds blowing and rain that play perfectly the part of ancientness and bring along wisdom to your ears. Viera’s voice was high-pitched, deeply soft, and hypnotic with undertones of sadness. Also, along with the rock element that makes the music edgy there are also textured sounds that create a spooky effect to some of the tracks that add a doom taste we dig.
The order of songs seems to go in an order of different emotions in most images of nature like ‘grass’, “fog’, ‘’my ocean’, and ‘mother of the hill’. Others describe emotions like ‘burden’ and ‘torment’. In many ways with the big picture image, this is what nature looks like, sometimes bright and sometimes very dark. And that’s what we really feel as we listen to this graceful and creative piece, the unity of light and dark.
https://hummana.bandcamp.com/album/t-r-i-b-o
