Latin Playground

Before you stomp around a Putumayo playground, park your preconceived notions at the picnic bench. The label may not set the world-music crowd on fire with its regular releases, but this series, aimed at kids but translating up, sizzles. Latin Playground's party gets started with a wind-you-up traditional Cuban number (Omara Portuondo's "Guantanamera") and from there traverses North, South, and Central America, making stops in Mexico City, Colombia, the American Tejano region, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico. There are sample wacko lyrics ("The day will come when I will leave you / Because you smell like the armadillo," from Lila Downs's "Hanal Weech"), unexpected instrumentation (accordions punch up the polka flavoring of Flaco Jiminez's conjunto, "De Bolon Pin Pon"), and not a whiff of what's expected from the latest slice off a music education program--even the informative, engaging liner notes are gentle gatekeepers to a land of rhythms everybody wants to get into and get down with. Forget the kids--see if you can make it through Cubanismo's "Mardi Gras Mambo," Nazare Pereira's "Rodopiou," and Carmen Gonzalez's "Chocolate" without waving a set of air maracas or busting into a booty-shaking session to make Ricky Martin blush. --Tammy La Gorce