1040 are the days that have passed since the group took their first flight to Mexico 3 years ago until the album’s release date. An album full of stories and multicultural musical nuances that intertwine with different interludes, connecting the listener to this musical journey. At the core of the album, within the stylistic spectrum that La Sra. Tomasa unfolds in 1040, we find a nucleus of their signature sounds.
The misnamed musical label ‘world music’, besides being ethnocentric, is absurd because obviously they all are. However, it does make sense when we talk about an album like 1040 by La Sra. Tomasa, because, effectively, it gathers sound fragments (and also human fragments) from the numerous and disparate places where it has been recorded.
We could say that this is a road disc, although rather than narrating a journey, the one that took them on tour through Mexico, the United States, Colombia and Vietnam between the end of 2021 and 2024 (exactly 1040 days), they tell us what they have learnt from it. Because the journey, if made with eyes and ears wide open, always ends up being an internal one.
However, beyond their most recognizable style, the band flirts with musical elements from some of the cultures they visited on their journey. Like Vietnam, where they immersed themselves completely to create ‘MUNDO’ from local stories, instruments, and ingredients; Mexico, where they composed the ranchera ‘POR LA VIDA’ together with a mariachi band; or Colombia, where they recorded the sampled marimba on ‘BÉBEME AGUA’, a track with a very tribal and primal soundscape that, in a way, expresses the trust in the river’s power to learn how to go with the chosen flow.
On the other hand, the concept of the journey is crucial in 1040. The album opens with ‘UN RUMBO SIN DESTINO’, a track that invites us to move forward into the unknown in a journey through two worlds: the one around us and the one within, guided by the signs that manifest in beats and experiences. From here arises the inner fire that guides and helps us self-define and narrate our story, reflected in the frenetic ‘CAMINO’. Throughout the album, we also find certain tracks that celebrate the bonds we create along the way.
On this path, La Sra. Tomasa celebrates moments like those reflected in the interludes: meeting that guy who played a Colombian bagpipe in Brooklyn, or the 70-year-old man with a metal güira in Medellín, or the madness of a concert they saw before doing their own in Ho Chi Minh, or the son jarocho formation they did in Coyoacán, Mexico City, or that moment with Kiko, the owner of a studio in Austin (Texas), singing a cappella in memory of his mother...
All these memories, which don’t dissolve like tears in the rain, form a kind of mixtape of stories united by the value the band places on lived experiences, while also claiming the value of time as a finite resource. That’s why the only thing La Sra. Tomasa asks of us as listeners is that we understand that 1040 is an album meant to make you stop, not just to entertain you. Because art settles best when it’s an active exercise, not a passive one.
