Copyright The Boston Globe
“Part of Día de Los Muertos is the idea of sort of making fun of death so you’re not terrified by it,” says Brian Amador, composer, singer, and guitarist of the Boston pan-Latin ensemble Sol y Canto. “And part of it is also continuing to love the people that have passed, and to honor and pay homage to them.” Those elements will come to life at Sol y Canto’s upcoming “noche de muertos” show, hosted at Roxbury Community College’s Media Arts Center on Saturday. The family-friendly matinee coincides with the first day of the Mexican holiday, and will combine traditional songs with original material from Sol y Canto that honors Mexican musical styles. The show is a “distillation” of a similar “noche de muertos” program the band toured across the country in 2008. Brian and his wife, singer and percussionist Rosi Amador, have been performing together under the Sol y Canto moniker for 30-plus years. As proud “ambassadors” of Latin music, their individual backgrounds don’t limit their repertoire; Rosi has Puerto Rican and Argentine heritage, and Brian hails from New Mexico. Because he grew up in the Southwest, Brian says that Mexican traditions feel like part of his culture “tangentially,” citing the overlap between regional customs. Many of the original songs guests will hear Saturday feature rhythms and vocal stylings often found in mariachi music. Topical tunes to look out for Saturday afternoon include “Imagen De Ti” (“Image of You”), a Sol y Canto original that touches on mortality and loss, and the centuries-old tale of “La Llorona,” a weeping woman that Brian explains “was forced to drown her own children, and now her spirit wanders by bodies of water, wailing at night.” There’s more otherworldly folklore in store this week at a series of “All Hallow’s Eve” performances organized by Scottish fiddler Louise Bichan, a Berklee graduate who currently resides in Maine. Bichan learned how to play the fiddle while growing up in the Orkney islands in the north of Scotland, a region she describes as having “a great fiddle tradition.” For these five seasonal shows, including an Oct. 29 appearance at Passim in Cambridge and a Halloween night performance at Portland’s One Longfellow Square, she supplemented her knowledge of Scottish folk music with research about Halloween and similar autumnal customs in Scotland,“including rituals used to predict the fortune of future husbands,” she says, and other supernatural tales. While tapping into the traditions of All Hallow’s Eve and Samhain, a Gaelic festival that closes the harvest season, guests at Bichan’s shows can expect to be regaled with murder ballads, Bichan and her band’s arrangements of eerie folk songs like “The Three Ravens,” and “trowie tunes,” fiddle tunes said to be inspired by the music of trows, a type of supernatural being in Shetland’s folklore. There are a few customs woven into Bichan’s shows that most guests will recognize; costumes are encouraged, as is bringing along your “most frighteningly carved” pumpkin or neep (turnip) for the chance to win a prize. GIG GUIDE After a lengthy stint opening forDeftones and the Mars Volta earlier this year, Massachusetts band Fleshwater strike out on their own to headline the Paradise Rock Club on Friday and Saturday. The grungy shoegazers, who defy any categorization outside of “intense,” released their sophomore album “2000: In Search Of The Endless Sky” in September. Throughout the week, the Sinclair presents a paradise of folk-rock and psych-rock, hosting flickering folk from S.G. Goodman (Saturday), Chicago-bred psychedelia from Post Animal (Tuesday), and springy alt-country, courtesy of The Lone Bellow (Thursday and next Friday). In the Theatre District, Andy Bell – one half of British synth-pop act Erasure – promotes his third solo LP “Ten Crowns” at the Wilbur on Saturday. Legendary Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant leads his band Saving Grace at the Boch Center Shubert Theatre on Thursday; singer Suzi Dian, a featured collaborator on Plant’s recent covers album, will join the performance. Halsey brings pointed alt-pop to a smaller venue than usual for the “Back to Badlands” tour, which toasts the tenth anniversary of the singer’s debut LP; after performing at the Xfinity Center and TD Garden in past years, Halsey performs at MGM Music Hall on Sunday and Monday. GIVEON, on the other hand, continues his ascent in the R&B world with songs from his July album “BELOVED” at the venue on Tuesday. And if you’re not Halloween partied-out by the end of the weekend, KennyHoopla, whose tune “orphan//” is easily one of this year’s standout releases, bounces through his nostalgic twist on 2010s indie rock at the Middle East Upstairs on Sunday. Enigmatic (and notoriously stylish) emcee Playboi Carti romps around TD Garden Tuesday. The Georgia artist released his third album “MUSIC” this past March, although the post-Halloween show would be ideal time to summon vampiric cuts from his 2020 project “Whole Lotta Red.” NOW SPINNING Buffalo Tom, “Sleepy Eyed” (Expanded Edition). It’s a rewarding time to be a fan of 1990s-era Boston rock. Following the arrival of Evan Dando’s new memoir and Belly’s show celebrating the 30th anniversary of their album “King,” Buffalo Tom will release a beefed-up edition of their fifth album, “Sleepy Eyed.” The 30th anniversary version of the record tacks on six demos, including previously-unheard tunes “Hold Me Up” and “Don’t Blow Your Wind.” Florence + The Machine, “Everybody Scream.” For the most spine-tingling Halloween treat, look no further than Florence + The Machine’s sixth album, another marriage of folk and the baroque. Smoldering single “One of the Greats” earned praise for its unflinching lyricism (“It must be nice to be a man and make boring music, just because you can”), but it’s the primal title track “Everybody Scream” that truly ignites Welch’s vocal fireworks. BONUS TRACK Building on the momentum of their “Sleepy Eyed” anniversary, Buffalo Tom are poised to kick off Please Come to Boston Festival at Somerville’s Center for the Arts at the Armory. The three-day event, which begins on Thursday, will feature nightly sets from the Boston band, as well as a book reading and signing from frontman Bill Janovitz (who just released a biography of the Cars) and performances from homegrown acts like Moving Targets and Pogues tribute act the nÓgs.
