Caliente is Spanish for “hot”, and that’s a good description of the music on the channel — very high-energy, strong rhythms, lotsa bass. I liked it better than I liked the other surviving Spanish channel, Caricia, but it’s still not my cup of maté.

When I turned on Ngoma this morning, the song being played seemed vaguely familiar — after thinking about it for a while, I recognized that it reminded me a lot of Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime (which is not surprising, since David Byrne used a lot of world music in the band’s work).

But that was about the only familiar song I heard during my listening; I enjoyed the beat, but found the music to be more distracting than I wanted today. I might come back occasionally out of curiosity, but it’ll be a rare visit.