Cumbia Sampuesana

Aniceto Molina's "Cumbia Sampuesana" is sunshine made portable, a tribute to the town of Sampués that became a dancefloor staple across two countries. The accordion leads — bright, agile, endlessly looping its hooky melodic figures — riding a loping cumbia groove of güiro scrape, clipped percussion and an irresistible side-to-side sway. Molina, a Colombian-born accordionist who became a giant of the Mexican sonidero circuit, sings with the unforced warmth of a bandleader who knows the floor is already moving; his delivery is genial, celebratory, an invitation rather than a performance. The song carries the geography of Colombia's Caribbean coast in its DNA — the Sabanas of Sucre, the festive vallenato-cumbia lineage — yet it found its largest life in Mexico, where sound-system DJs spun it at weddings, quinceañeras and street parties until it became communal property. There's nothing melancholy here and no pretension; the joy is the point, the lyric a simple homage to a place and its people. The production keeps things raw and live-sounding, the accordion gloriously upfront, everything built for repetition and dance. This is music for a backyard party as the grill smokes and the beer goes around, the track that pulls grandparents and kids onto the same patch of dirt floor. Decades on, it remains a cross-border anthem of unkillable good cheer.