Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2015 and onward: Salsa, Bomba, Merengue,Reggaeton, Bachata, Latin-Jazz and more

Saw Jose Alberto live a couple times many years back and he put on great shows both times. Will check that out

More salsa choque. This one has a guest spot by Nejo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6sPuZkLlHk

Not the best thing ever, but pretty much the only recent type of salsa that doesn't put me to sleep.

Not salsa, but same act as above:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLxokkBQFaE

Yes to ChocQuibtown. Below is an hour live performance video of Peruvian Amazonian cumbia and surf band Los Wembler's de Iquitos, whose final US gig (I think) on their current tour is tonight at Tropicalia in DC

http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/videos/?id=M6387&type=A

RIP Joan Sebastian, dead at 64 (bone cancer).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YicJ12EUZz8&list=PLhcFW8IkJSPLpJ8ziFTJ38ydsub5rc1AQ

Cuba's Los Van Van, led by the late founder's son are on a tour now. Have liked them live in the past:

07th WASHINGTON DC – Howard Theatre
08th NEW YORK CITY – Lehman Center
09th CHICAGO – Thalia Hall
13th LOS ANGELES – Conga Room
14th SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco Jazz Center
16th LAS VEGAS – Sam’s Town Hotel
19th ALBUQUERQUE – National Hispanic Cultural Center Plaza Mayor
20th DENVER – City Hall
21st NEW YORK CITY – BB King’s
22nd SAN JUAN, PR – Centro de Convenciones
28th ORLANDO – Majestic Convention center
29th MIAMI – James L Night Center

I was away and missed Los Van Van's gig near me.

Chico O"Farrill just was in Cuba again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/arts/music/cuba-the-conversation-continues-and-live-in-cuba-expand-a-musical-dialogue.html?ribbon-ad-idx=24&rref=arts/music&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Music&pgtype=article

Surely you mean his son, Arturo.

Ha, of course.

Speaking of Cubans, the current version of Buena Vista Social Club is on tour and the Pedrito Martinez Group is opening.

Author Ned Sublette is doing tours of Cuba starting soon. Twice a year I think

This YouTube channel is pretty great. A lot of amazing album covers.

http://www.youtube.com/user/carlosgulfo/videos

http://www.billboard.com/charts/latin-songs

Put here to remind me to check out some pop

Will do the above shortly, as I was checking out a live review of ArcAngel and De la Ghetto, reggaetoners who still/used to make the charts.

But Saturday night I instead saw NYC based Cuban percussionist/singer Pedrito Martinez and his combo do a half-hour opening set for Buena Vista Social Club(4 oldtimers plus 9 newer folks of various ages) out at Wolf Trap Park. Very enjoyable all around.

The 2015 edition of Jerry Gonzalez & The Fort Apache Band is at the Blue Note in NYC this week. Brother Andy G is just there on certain nights. Tain Watts is drumming

I guess he still lives in Spain now. No US gigs anywhere else

Today on Burning Ambulance, I premiered a track from Banda de los Muertos, a group of Brooklyn jazz dudes who play Mexican banda, and do it straight up, no Tzadik-y "let's mix it with Cambodian surf rock!" BS. Check it out if you want.

Thanks. I am barely keeping up on another ilx contributor's blog that covers banda and more

http://nortenoblog.com/2015/09/02/who-played-it-better-ariel-camacho-or-these-dudes/

Wow, that Youtube old-school salsa channel with the album covers linked above is something...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/reunited-arcangel-and-de-la-ghetto-spice-up-reggaeton-but-sizzles-missing/2015/08/30/34a78170-4f33-11e5-b225-90edbd49f362_story.html

So that Brooklyn banda band mentioned upthread just got mentioned on NPR Morning Edition ( a focus on 3 albums their global music person likes--others were a Bollywood soundtrack and a Sekou Keita kora one). But has a Mexican banda band ever been mentioned at NPR I wonder?

Worked late so i did not see Pedrito Martinez group on their return to DC-- a free gig on the front plaza of the Kennedy Center near the special temporary skateboarding bowl that was set up there. Woo hoo, Afro-Cuban jazz and skaters. They have had multiple genre acts out there. There might be video of them up on the K. Ctr Mill. Stage website.

Wanna see and dance to Oscar D'Leon this weekend, but I have a conflict. He was great years ago when I saw him at a late night gig

Curious about bilingual Mexican pop-rapper Becky G, who is getting lots of attention these days

Plus Dafnis Prieto and band's new Latin-jazz effort Triangles and Circles

More than 20,000 recorded tracks by the likes of Irakere, Los Van Van, Bola de Nieve, Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo, among many others, will get new life thanks to a global licensing agreement struck Tuesday (Sept. 15) between Sony Music Entertainment and the Havana-based Egrem (Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales, or Enterprise of Recordings and Musical Editions in English).

With U.S. & Cuba Relations Thawing, Cuban Musicians Are Ready to Come to America

Egrem’s catalog, the most extensive catalog of Cuban music in the world, encompasses audio and audiovisual recordings produced since the 1960s.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6699585/sony-egrem-cuban-music-catalog-agreement

(Oops. Didn't edit that cut and paste properly.)

good enough to get the point across about all that music

http://www.billboard.com/photos/6686047/50-most-essential-latin-albums-past-50-years/6

There's probably another thread I should put this on

Never liked Mana

More from Billboard

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/6693102/bogota-music-market-colombian-artists-you-need-to-know

Interesting list. I've heard 13 of those, and there are a few more I'd like to check out.

N#d S#bl%tte on Egram and Cuban music and the US

Cuban music was repressed in Miami through terrorism -- I remember one DJ who played Cuban music on a non-commercial station there checking his car in the morning for bombs -- through repudio (organized mob action), through blacklisting of performers who traveled to Cuba, and under an absolute ironclad boycott enforced by Miami broadcasters, who wouldn't even take payola to play it, and ultimately by advertisers. "I'll play it when there is a free Cuba," said one Miami program director to me on the phone when I brought him NG La Banda in 1992, in tones of moral righteousness that I have never otherwise heard in hit-driven radio, about any issue.

It had consequences. The greatest, most innovative Latin dance music of the 90s -- Los Van Van, NG La Banda, Adalberto y Su Son, Charanga Habanera, Paulito Y Su Elite, Manolito y Su Trabuco, and many more -- achieved musical immortality, and built fan bases in cities all around the world, but they didn't get the kind of commercial rewards they merited, as mainstream outlets pretended this music just didn't exist. The genre of timba was mediatically silenced while it was at its apogee in about 1992 though '97, contributing to the climate in which the Buena Vista Social Club movie could popularize an image of a Cuba bereft of contemporary culture, though nothing could have been further from the truth.

Cuban artists occasionally wound up as a low-priority release on one or another major label, typically acquired as part of a foreign catalog from a third country, but generally were not heard on major labels or on US radio or TV, for reasons that had nothing to with content. (Though there was also the fact that the artists were generally blacker than most of what's allowed on corporate Spanish-language TV, which seems to take place in some Spanish-speaking white universe.) There still seems to be a commercial radio boycott of Cuban music in the US, but now that people under 30 don't know what a radio is and have stopped buying records, it matters much less.

Oops,didn't c & P the section on Egrem (now spelled right) just the latter portion

It had consequences. The greatest, most innovative Latin dance music of the 90s -- Los Van Van, NG La Banda, Adalberto y Su Son, Charanga Habanera, Paulito Y Su Elite, Manolito y Su Trabuco, and many more

It may be the most innovative, but I still think these bands are all overrated (yes, including Van Van). I wish there had been no embargo so that I wouldn't have to hear timba boosters belly aching about how their music missed its chance to become wildly popular with Latin music fans in the U.S.

The only Palmieri on the 50 album list is the mediocre collaboration with Tito Puente?

Looks like a number of the salsa selections are collaborations. Too many glitzy glossy balladeers on that list for me, but other choices are of interest

This is a quick, third-quarter reminder that all available tracks mentioned on this thread (and/or an album selection from each listed) are being updated to the thread-specific Spotify playlist as posted. I just did another top-to-bottom sweep prior to posting this message and have revised as of today with everything that's been added since first mentioned. Subscribe if you're into it!

It's 62 tracks, over 4 hours long.

Rolling Latin / Afro-Latin 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

So cool that you're doing this!

Dafnis Prieto and band's new Latin jazz effort Triangles and Circles

Finally listened...It's a decent jazz record.

Listening to LaFourcade again as she is on a North American tour. Album starts strong and despite a few weak cuts near the end, it satisfies in that guitar-pop manner she has long done. I guess as long she just sings in Spanish, she will never get much Pitchfork or other crossover love.

Here's what was said about her earlier this year here--

------------ ----------------

Natalia Lafourcade's new album Hasta La Raíz comes out today. I'm listening to it on Spotify and it's fucking great; will probably buy it from Amazon MP3 by day's end.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6DWTUm9rifRvl5PTyNMwqV

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Tuesday, March 17, 2015 1:53 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Cool. Like her too and will give it a listen. My only concern in advance is that she was a bit uneven live when I saw her perform last year.

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, March 17, 2015 1:58 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's a very produced record. Not in the sense that it sounds of-the-moment; it's got a classic '60s vibe (strings, heavily reverbed guitars, etc.), with very few concessions to the 21st Century.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Tuesday, March 17, 2015 2:06 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Still need to get to that. On my list

― curmudgeon, Saturday, March 21, 2015 3:31 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Finally gave Lafourcade a quick listen. I like it too, and like Venegas it has that timeless Latin-American indie-pop feel that they both can do so well. Trying to figure out why they do it more impresively than many folks singing in English---better craft, better melodies...

― curmudgeon, Thursday, March 26, 2015 2:17 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark

the Lafourcade album i getting some sort of re-release now.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/6708068/natalia-lafourcade-latin-grammy-nominations-hasta-la-raiz-leonel-garcia

It’s been a huge week for Natalia Lafourcade -- and one in which she hasn’t slept much. But that’s quite all right, because the Mexican indie pop darling has been celebrating her five Latin Grammy nominations, including album of the year for Hasta La Raíz and song and record of the year for its title song.

It was a rather unexpected triumph, since Lafourcade hasn’t had a presence on the Billboard charts in years, but it’s also a reaffirmation that great music from quieter artists is still being recognized in a major way.

The magic is in Lafourcade’s collaboration with fellow Mexican singer-songwriter (and former Sin Bandera member) Leonel García, who scored the most nominations (six) this year -- three of them for Lafourcade’s “Hasta La Raíz,” which they co-wrote. The two had worked together on several past projects, including García’s Todas Mías album in 2013 and her own tribute album to the late Mexican icon Agustín Lara Mujer Divina in 2012.

Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club® has been invited to perform at The White House this Thursday, October 15, in celebration of Hispanic Heritage month, where a delegation of about 500 dignitaries and politicians from around the world will be hosted by President Barack Obama.

All the press release news you need to know...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESri9bP7qcI

Winstar?! My first thought was: get out of here! But I guess it's from the name of a famous car.

I heard a bunch of new "tropical" music in my room while I was out of town, on a Music Choice channel (odd operation), so I still need to sort through some of that, but I notice there is an awful lot of new reggaeton that sounds like a weaker version of Jowell & Randy from a few years back. Meanwhile, an entire pop bachata industry should be giving thanks every day to Aventura. I am ready for it to go away. And everyone is wearing leather jackets. I am hoping the younger Dominicans in NYC will come up with something new and exciting. (Maybe they already have, and I probably simply haven't heard it.)

I'm not sure I have ever been right when I've said about some pop music trend: this can't last.

Like some of what I heard by Jory Boy. Haven't listened to the album yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz3obZL2IGo&list=PLOKZoLC5WhHcgnmOkouuBF3Sx6hbrUVyQ

(Jury is still out.)

It may be that I was just hard up for music.

OK, this is one I heard and specifically like, now that I've listened to a bit of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbv6G6V2hfM

but I notice there is an awful lot of new reggaeton that sounds like a weaker version of Jowell & Randy from a few years back. Meanwhile, an entire pop bachata industry should be giving thanks every day to Aventura

Yep, can't really add to this, but that's my take on this as well

http://latinjazznet.com/2015/06/12/reviews/cds/tropical-report/ruben-blades-new-album-son-de-panama/

with Roberto Delgado's band

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/6678596/ruben-blades-salsa-alter-ego-fear-the-walking-dead

I haven't listened to this yet...Blades is keeping busy

Not seeing Blades album on Spotify. Spotify search engine can be weird. Will check again later and elsewhere

New Grupo Niche album. Have not heard it yet, but I think they are still a force to be reckoned with.

http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/25820.10?NrgkSHwE;;397

OK. On closer inspection it seems to be remakes, or mostly remakes at the very least, but that's not necessarily all bad. They've done worthwhile remakes of their own material in the past. I'm surprised to find there are still good Niche songs that I either haven't heard or don't recognize. Haven't looked on Spotify yet, but there it is for now on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYo6c9kMpvM