International touring acts don’t often route through Mobile — which made Bomba Estéreo’s stop at the Alabama Music Box a genuinely rare booking. The Bogotá band, one of South America’s most talked-about live acts, played the downtown Dauphin Street club on its North American run.
Cumbia Meets Electronics
Bomba Estéreo’s sound fuses traditional Colombian cumbia with electronic music — an electro-tropical style that has carried the group far beyond its home country.
In 2010 alone, the band performed at some of the world’s biggest festivals: South by Southwest in Austin, Bonnaroo in Tennessee, Lovebox in London and Bumbershoot in Seattle. MTV Iggy also named it one of the 25 best new bands in the world.
For Mobile music fans, the show was a chance to see a globe-trotting act in a room of a few hundred people — the kind of booking local venue watchers credited to the Alabama Music Box’s willingness to chase international talent.