Clinker advertise themselves as a “ragtime quartet”, which leaves a lot of what is remarkable about the band and their music unsaid. This is somewhat remedied by a phrase on the label of their record Mi Gabán, which reads “musica llanera/joropo.” To the uneducated—a group in which I included myself before asking Wikipedia—this is a musical style with its origins in Venezuela and Colombia drawing from the musical traditions of Africa and Europe, as well as Native South American cultures.
Finally, Clinker also associate themselves with another style: rebetiko, a term describing “originally disparate kinds of urban Greek music which have come to be grouped together since the so-called rebetika revival, which started in the 1960s” (thank you again, Wikipedia). Taking all this information, together with the Montreal-based band’s own description of their music as “slappy sounds similar to a sack of mud hitting a whale’s back,” curious listeners might have a much better idea of just what to expect from their one record to date.
It might all sound a bit intimidating, but don’t worry—anyone even passingly familiar with jazz manouche or zydeco should be able to get their head around it. In fact, listening to Mi Gabán (it means “my overcoat,” in Spanish) is like being taken by the hand and led through a Mardi Gras parade, down a kaleidoscopic tunnel and a hall
