The picture would become the cover art, and “Pluma y Vino’’ - pen and wine - the title, of Uribe’s debut album, which the Colombian singer and multi-instrumentalist was recording at the time.
“I hadn’t even given a thought to the cover,’’ Uribe says over coffee before another restaurant performance in Brooklyn. “And I loved this. It set the mood for the album. It was one of those organic things; it couldn’t be more perfect.’’
Indeed, “Pluma y Vino,’’ whose release Uribe celebrates tonight in a quartet at Regattabar, displays the songwriter’s deft pen and red wine’s mellow, nocturnal feel.
But it opens up as well, revealing structure and a fair bit of spice. The opening bolero, “Una Excusa,’’ is pure romance. But soon come vivid Afro-Caribbean rhythms, strains of clarinet and accordion, the sway of cumbia. And the words, which Uribe sings with plenty of articulation and space, so that even Spanish-language beginners should readily grasp their general meaning, don’t lack for social and cultural message.
“La Toma,’’ for example, addresses a remote Afro-Colombian community who face the threat of displacement from their mineral-bearing land by mining companies and paramilitaries.
“The song says, after 300 years of slavery and 200 years of neglect, all of a sudden now you’re interested,’’ Uribe says. He composed it for a documentary that was made recently about this situation. Another song, “Los Niños del Alma,’’ was written as a hymn for a foundation with which Uribe is involved, and which makes music and art education available to low-income children in several Latin American countries.
And Uribe’s usually soothing voice surges with anger during a passage of “Diga Usted Coronel,’’ a song he wrote about a controversial trial of a military officer in Colombia, Alfredo Plazas Vega. It’s a complicated case, Uribe says, but the song is about “a person who has been judged without any hard evidence.’’
