Kombilesa Mí: Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST

For the second consecutive year, NPR teamed up with globalFEST in January 2021 for a thrilling online music festival we call Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST: three nights, nine bands, and a world of musical traditions hosted by African pop star Angélique Kidjo. Now, we’re posting all the sets from our festival as individual Tiny Desk (home) concerts. Bob Boilen | January 28, 2022 Born from the rich musical and historical heritage of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia (the first free Black town in the Americas), Kombilesa Mí fuses the traditional sounds of the community with urban pop. The band’s members experiment with the instruments created by their ancestors (and introduced to them when they were young) by layering them between new sounds. Over traditional percussion, metal handmade drums of their own design, and marímbula, Kombilesa Mí rhymes and raps in Spanish and the traditional Palenquero language, a fusion of African Bantu, Portuguese, French and English. During