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

Here's some of his faves. He doesn't like his stuff to be linked or re-posted online, but since I liked his books on Cuba and on New Orleans, I think his interests are of interest to us here (he has a Spotify list too):

New Throned King (5pasión) is Yosvany Terry’s seven-year project of self-discovery with his group Ye-Dé-Gbé

Elio Villafranca and the Jass Syncopators’ Caribbean Tinge: Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (Motema) takes an inter-island view

Miguel Zenón’s Identities Are Changeable (Miel)

I want to shout out a record that I was peripherally involved in: Danny Rivera and Nelson González’s Obsesión

Pro tip: "Latin jazz" isn't hyphenated.

Salsa choke fad persisting in Colombia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPhbr64BS3o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO69ua3Nggs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB-84cii7C4

All this stuff sounds pretty good to me, for the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=galuD0vU1hc

yeah, i'm digging that!
http://remezcla.com/music/welcome-to-salsa-choke-7-tracks-reinventing-colombias-salsa-urbana/

me too

Holy shit, a new Tego Calderón album came out yesterday! His first since 2007. For a long time, it was supposed to be called Mr. T, which was kind of hilarious, but now it's called El Que Sabe, Sabe. He raps in English on "Canción de Hamaca"—not just the chorus, like on "Slo Mo" from The Underdog/El Subestimado; half the song is in English. One song with Don Omar, one song with Kany García. I'm only 1/3 of the way through it right now, but I like it. It's not quite as weird as El Abayarde Contra-Ataca, but it's definitely wide-ranging, stylistically.

Cool. Will look for it. He keeps touring periodically, but I haven't seen him live in years.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin-notas/6319476/tego-calderon-new-album-el-que-sabe-sabe

Plus he's been in some of the Fast and Furious movies and made his own music videos according to this article

he was supposed to be in the park for a free show last year but he fucked up his leg
http://www.latingossip.com/tego-calderon/tego-calderon-seriously-damages-knees-in-fall.html

Yeah, he and Don Omar have been a really good comedy team in at least two of the Fast & Furious movies. I've put in a request for an interview (specifying that it would be in English) but haven't heard anything back yet.

Never heard of the below singer, but thought I'd pass this on

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin-notas/6458543/celina-gonzalez-dead-85-cuban-country-queen

excerpt:

Cuban Country Queen Celina Gonzalez Dead at 85

By Judy Cantor-Navas | February 05, 2015 10:18 AM EST
Cuban Country Queen Celina Gonzalez Dead at 85

"She was the greatest Cuban voice that U.S. audiences never got to hear," said Qbadisc founder and Cuban music historian Ned Sublette after hearing the news of her death.

Celina Gonzalez, the singer known as Cuban music's country queen, has died. Gonzalez passed away in Havana yesterday (Feb. 4), according to a statement from the Cuban Music Institute. The Latin Grammy-nominated artist was 85 years old.

The powerfully-voiced Gonzalez rose to popularity with her husband, guitarist Reutilio Domínguez. Together they were dedicated to the preservation of guajira music, the Spanish-influenced acoustic Cuban country genre whose poetic lyrics are inspired by rural life. Gonzalez also brought an Afro-Cuban sound to her music, She is probably best known for her song "Santa Barbara" (Also called "Que Viva Chango"), a tribute to the popular Afro-Cuban warrior god of fire and patron of percussion, whose Catholic alter-ego is St. Barbara. The song was later recorded by Celia Cruz.

Gonzalez's version was featured on Que Viva Chango!, a 1993 compilation of music by the artist on the New York label Qbadisc, which brought some attention in the U.S. to the singer, who lived in Cuba her whole life.

Victor Manuelle's Que Suenen los Tambores is joyful stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dP-mkN6QiE

admirably nutty "music overcomes all of life's sadness" video too

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Feb. 16, 2015

Narrowing the 90 Miles
How U.S.-Cuba relations may play out for musicians

By LARRY BLUMENFELD

In late December, 10 days after Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro announced a path toward normalized relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the dressing-room conversation at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s nightclub, mirrored many on the subject: hope mixed with wait-and-see skepticism.
Drummer Dafnis Prieto, one of four Cuban-born musicians now living in the U.S. in an all-star group billed as “Nuevo Jazz Latino All-Stars,” said, “A truer relationship between the two countries is what many people, especially artists like us, have been longing for. But as artists, we’ve never had power in these decisions.”

Saxophonist Yosvany Terry, once Mr. Prieto’s conservatory classmate and bandmate in Havana, said, “The ideas are exciting, but we don’t yet know how this will be implemented. The devil is in the details.”

Those details are only beginning to take shape. The first steps of an earnest if tentative dance began on Jan. 21, when the U.S. and Cuba opened their highest-level diplomatic talks in nearly 40 years, in Havana. Thus began a process, as President Obama described in his Dec. 17 address, “to move beyond a rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.”

Renewed political ties hold special promise for the relations between jazz musicians from the U.S. and their Cuban counterparts, which are rooted in even earlier events. In the audience at Dizzy’s that December night was percussionist Candido Camero, a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. He first arrived in New York from Cuba in 1946, just as trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (after whom the Jazz at Lincoln Center club is named), along with Cuban musicians such as trumpeter Mario Bauzá, percussionist Chano Pozo and singer-bandleader Frank “Machito” Grillo began blending Cuban and American music in novel ways. These musicians created a new, popular and profoundly influential musical style but also furthered a bond that pianist Jelly Roll Morton recognized as essential to jazz’s origins—one never broken, yet hindered by a half-century of often-forbidding impediments.

Since the U.S. embargo of Cuba began, the ability of Cuban and U.S. musicians to travel back and forth has shifted with political winds. The late 1970s saw a brief but notable loosening of tensions. By 1985, a hard line restricted cultural exchange. In the late 1990s, even as the Helms-Burton Act tightened many sanctions against the Cuban government, some doors opened, particularly for artists, through an official U.S. effort to encourage “people-to-people exchange.” Trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s Grammy award-winning 1997 album, “Habana,” featuring stellar Cuban musicians such as pianist Chucho Valdés, was one reflection of vibrant cross-cultural collaborations at the Havana International Jazz Festival, then under the musical direction of Mr. Valdés.

The unexpected commercial success of the 1997 album, “Buena Vista Social Club”—produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder, recorded at Havana’s Egrem studio, and showcasing a collective of musicians then mostly unknown to U.S. listeners—generated a fresh U.S. wave of popular fascination with Cuban music. Still, the 1998 Carnegie Hall concert captured in Wim Wender’s Oscar-nominated documentary about that recording would have been impossible to produce by 2004, owing to harsh U.S. travel restrictions regarding Cuba. Singer Ibrahim Ferrer, a Buena Vista member, could not accept his 2004 Grammy award for a subsequent album onstage; he was denied a visa to attend the ceremony. In fact, following a memorable December 2003 engagement by Mr. Valdés at Manhattan’s Village Vanguard, no other musician living in Cuba played in the U.S. until 2009, when the Obama administration began loosening travel restrictions.

The present shift in policy is more formal and holds more lasting promise. Already, rule changes should bring more American musicians and listeners in direct contact with Cuba. As of Jan. 16, U.S. citizens can travel to Cuba for one of a dozen approved purposes (including public performances) without prior written license from the U.S. Treasury Department, a time-consuming process that has intimidated promoters, producers and American travelers. Out-and-out tourism will not be permitted, but visitors from the U.S. will be allowed to spend more, use credit cards, and even bring home up to $100 in Cuban cigars.

The removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, as is currently under review, would presumably end the State Department security checks and visa denials that have led to last-minute cancellations of U.S. tours by Cuban groups. Though President Obama’s call for an end to the embargo is unlikely to gain congressional support, a less broad easing of commercial restrictions might permit American presenters to pay fees to Cuban artists, who are now allowed only per diem and travel reimbursements. Such changes might enable longer artistic residencies and collaboration on a grander scale, perhaps even an orchestra or institution based in both the U.S. and Cuba.

The past and present of American jazz and Cuban music intertwine in obvious ways. New York’s current jazz scene cannot be adequately described without highlighting the contributions of Messrs. Prieto and Terry, the sudden ubiquity of percussionists Román Díaz and Pedrito Martinez, and the innovations of some half-dozen other Cuban musicians, all now living in the U.S.

Likewise, musicians from the U.S. have long marked the Cuban scene. When I interviewed Mr. Valdés in his Havana home in 2010, one wall of his study was dotted with photos of storied Cuban musicians, including his father, the pianist Bebo Valdés, who died in 2013, and who played with American stars like Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan during his decadelong tenure as pianist and arranger at Havana’s famed Tropicana nightclub. “Cuban music and American jazz, that’s what we lived and breathed in my house,” Chucho told me. “I learned to play Jelly Roll Morton by listening to my father play.”

Some fear, reasonably, that an influx of tourism from the U.S. to Cuba may encourage the packaged nostalgia that often accompanies increased commercialism. Yet a freer exchange between musicians from both countries could rekindle energy akin to what Chucho Valdés grew up around.

And it may foster something yet deeper.

Pianist and bandleader Arturo O’Farrill learned of the current diplomatic breakthrough while in Havana, where he recorded an album combining his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra with Cuban musicians, titled “The Conversation Continued.” Mr. O’Farrill, who was born in Mexico and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is the son of the Cuban composer, arranger and bandleader Chico O’Farrill. Arturo’s immersion in Cuban music began with a personal search for identity but now reflects a broader aesthetic mission that he sees as enabled by renewed relations.

“Now we can begin in earnest to have a healthy relationship in which Afro-Cuban music is not so exoticized,” Mr. O’Farrill said, “one in which we look at each other as inheritors of a common legacy, and as true partners.”

It remains to be seen whether diplomatic relations will, as President Obama announced, “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas.” But the policy changes already in motion may help turn such a page for the best jazz musicians of this hemisphere.

Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal. He also blogs at blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes.

* * *

I am kinda interested in the above, but recognize what an insular little Cuban and NYC Latin-Jazz world he is referring too. No mention of timba or rap, or how this impacts other parts of the Latin Caribbean and Americas, but Blumenfeld is a jazz critic so maybe its wrong of me to expect more, and he only has so much space.

This show sold out the Garden

Puerto Rican reggaeton duo Plan B will headline The Best Latino Urbano concert at Madison Square Garden. Appearances by Daddy Yankee, J Alvarez, Arcangel, Tony Dize, Alexis y Fido, and Dominican artists El Mayor, Secreto and El Alfa have also been announced for the Feb. 6 all-ages show.

But Subl*tte's excited about the Latin-jazzers coming to the 92nd St Y in NYC (plus his upcoming trip to Cuba)

http://brianlynchjazz.com/2015/02/latin-on-lex-a-latin-jazz-festival-in-nyc-with-bl-at-the-helm/

Latin on Lex: A Latin Jazz Festival at the 92nd Street Y
Brian Lynch, artistic director

Wow, a 2015 version of the Buena Vista Social Club is touring the US this summer with Pedrito Martinez' group opening. Coming in late August to Wolf Trap Farm Park outside DC

Eugenia Leon's name does not turn up in the ilx search engine. Trying to get a grasp on the music of this Mexican singer--sometimes she sounds operatic, her roots are in nueva cancion folk I read, she's done a bossa album, sounds cabaret theatric jazzy too

I listened to Spotify and checked out some Youtubes. Her bossa album is ok, and she's done various other styles. Mostly diva-esque slow tempos although the bossa album is a bit more bubbly.

x-post- those Brian Lynch hosted 92 St Y gigs in NY include E. Palmieri on March 12th and the younger Cubans on the 13th

Yosvany Terry, alto sax & shekere
 Gregory Tardy – tenor sax
, Manuel Valera – piano,
 Pedrito Martinez – percussion
, Hans Glawischnig, bass, 
Obed Calvaire – drums

 And Brian Lynch, host and trumpet

While the Cuban jazz dudes in NYC get most of the media attention, I am still liking this Cuban timba & salsa singer who moved to NYC

GERARDO CONTINO Y LOS HABANEROS

A lawyer by day, Contino, or “El Abogado de la Salsa,” as he is affectionately referred to by fans, is singer and songwriter who is best recognized as the former lead singer of renowned Cuban salsa and jazz orchestra NG La Banda. Upon moving to New York City from Cuba, he formed Gerardo Contino y Los Habaneros, a group known for its refreshing take on salsa and timba tunes, its impressive rhythm section and interactive call-and-response performances led by Contino. The talented lineup includes Grammy winning bassist John Benitez,pianist Axel Tosca Laugart and percussionist Luisito Quintero.
The group released its debut album, Somos Latinos, in 2013 to critical acclaim, with Timba.com describing the record as a “treasure trove of state-of-the-art bass, piano and percussion work laid down by some the very best instrumentalists in the genre.”

Plus the Colombian salsa choque/ salsa choke that Rudiph mentioned earlier above

http://www.salomefm.com/events/festival-salsa-choke-15-de-febrero-2015/

Eddie Palmieri tonight in NYC, but I'm down farther south in the US of A

Gonna try to dance to Gerardo Contino tonight as he & his band are appearing near me (not that the wife and I know how to really do so)

If John Benitez is on the gig, tell him you are my friend. He doesn't know me by name but I see him all the time. Oh wait, you could describe me. Oh wait, we've never met in person. You figure it out.

He is listed as being the likely bass player.

I will try to see him on Sunday to close the loop

Cool. Bass player had a shaved head and singer Contino garbled the intro. I think it was him but am not sure. Did not introduce myself and tell him I know online the intranetz King of the borough of Queens.

Show was kinda uneven, sadly. I love the 2013 album, but Contino live this time was trying so hard to please everyone and got kinda loungey and talked to much in between songs in multiple languages--this is a song for Colombians; this is a Buena Vista Social Club song; "my international people will know this one--"Bailando" (that's the Enrique Englesias huge hit w/ the video I like)-- that it didn't seem that impressive. They did a new song that was kinda bachata, plus another bachata-like cover. But little timba.

Think I know exactly what you mean. Sort of what I don't totally dig about what Pedrito does.

John's hair goes back and forth from dyed blonde to not, from kind of long and curly to super short.

John is a pretty big guy though, hard to miss.

Maybe it wasn't him. Also re the gig, Contino's voice lacked the authority and passion of some old-school salsa singers I have seen, and the music lacked the energy of some salsa acts I have seen too--not enough timbale and cowbell.

Timba is different from old school salsa dura.

Have not yet totslly warmed to it myself.

What I mean is live Contino and band did not have the funkyness of timba or the rhythmic clave style and power of athletic and graceful old-school salsa dura, or at least whenever they started to exhibit it, Contino would get loungy in his vocal style, and the music would change and the songs would end too quickly.

Interesting though in the choice of covers and the new songs. Once upon a time such acts would try to do a schlocky syrupy salsa romantica cut but now they do bachata.

I have liked the couple of timba gigs I have seen, and this live was not that timba.

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

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.

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.

Still need to get to that. On my list

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...

Ned S*blette's back in Cuba for the first time in a while

A quick music diary . . .

Saturday: Pedro Luis Ferrer
Sunday: Emilio Morales y Los Nuevo Amigos at La Zorra y El Cuervo
Monday: Harold López-Nussa
Tuesday: a triple play: the peña (regularly scheduled gig) of Pancho Amat at the Museo Nacional de la Música; Havana d'Primera at Casa de la Música Miramar; Aldo López-Gavilán
Wednesday: Roberto Carcassés y Interactivo at Bertolt Brecht
Thursday: Pupy Y Los Que Son, Son at Casa de la Música Galeano . . .
Tonight: Van Van at the Capri . . .
Tomorrow: Reguetón .

Ned is back from Cuba and preparing an article for Billboard. He is also checking out Cuban music that is not Latin jazz. A recent Sublette email mentions the Enrique Iglesias video for "Bailando" that was filmed in Havana (and is worth watching; it also has a huge # of Youtube views) and a number of other videos. I haven't checked 'em all out yet.

Still haven't

Haven't heard the new Omar Sosa album either....been listening to Giberto Gil, Dom la Nena, Richard Bishop, afropop, Danny Gatton, D'angelo, Kendrick lamar and more though

This is a quick, quarterly reminder that all available tracks mentioned on this thread (and a few album selections) are being posted as updated to a thread-specific Spotify playlist that I'm maintaining. I just did a quick sweep prior to posting this message and updated as of today with everything that's been added on Spotify since it was first mentioned.

That playlist is currently a bit more than two hours of music and is clickable below. Give it a spin and subscribe if you want to listen along through the year.

Rolling Latin/Afrolatin 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

This is very good, but it takes its time heating up. By the son of Puerto Rican bandleader Don Perignon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDSC183Mk9Q

The rest of the album is worth a listen as well, though that's the standout for me.

Ivy Queen has put out four albums, all entitled Vendetta (some of us are just less forgiving than others), in four different genres, which could probably be melted down to one solid EP. I like these.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fljU5MccE9Y

Salsa lite, the way reggaetoneros do it, but kind of nice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lLmhkw56h8

(Some back story for that first video: apparently she is pissed off about the way she was treated by music business types while she was pregnant.)

I vote in that poll, but I admit I didn't vote for a Latin jazz title. Didn't hear enough to offer an honest choice.

I listened to a bit of the O'Farrill and the Prieto releases listed, and was not wowed by either. They're ok

From J Shep's contribution to the Slate critics roundtable on the year in music 2015

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_music_club/features/2015/music_club_2015/kendrick_lamar_s_to_pimp_a_butterfly_captured_2015_better_than_any_other.html

Major Lazer’s reverse-crossover from the mainstream into the Latin charts was one of the year’s most interesting developments, precisely because it remains so difficult for Spanish-language artists to break into the American mainstream. Balvin was ubiquitous this year on the Latin charts, but outside of Latin publications we heard barely a peep about Dale, Pitbull’s latest Spanish-language album and arguably one of his best, or of Natalia Lafourcade’s typically gorgeous Hasta la Raíz, whose title track won not only Song of the Year but Record of the Year at the Latin Grammys.

I'm wrapping this playlist for the year. It has been updated with a few new adds (Arturo O'Farrill, Grupo Fantasma, CocoBlue, Ivy Queen) and includes every track mentioned on thread that is available via Spotify's US catalogue as of EOY 2015. If I missed something or if a track comes available sometime in the future, bump here to let me know and I'll add.

Rolling Latin and Afro-Latin 2015 Thread Spotify Playlist

Cool, thanks

Forks, we are just gonna keep using this thread I think, because there are not usually enough postings. But you can go ahead and just change the year for a new Spotify playlist if you have the time. I appreciate your efforts on this...

Meanwhile, just saw this review in the Washington Post of the 2016 DC appearance of band Chicano Batman

My question--
Is multi-culti Los Angeles band Chicano Batman really better than mainstream Latin pop, or just different from it?

The band members, whose families hail from different parts of Latin America, have been playing together since 2008. It’s no surprise that a parade of multicultural rhythms filled their childhood homes. They’ve said in interviews that there was some Carlos Santana, some Cream, some pop-rock ballads from Los Angeles Negros. Chicano Batman’s namesake debut, as well as its most recent album, “Cycles of Existential Rhyme,” draws from all of these influences and pick up where their parents’ generation left off.

Onstage, these guys are as weird and idiosyncratic as their songs (in a good way). Martinez is a tangle of hair and energy as he alternates between flopping over his keyboard and bending over his guitar. The band members are rock stars when it comes to jamming out on groovier songs, but they keep it cool and relaxed for tracks such as the mopey, ­cantina-style “Itotiani.”

At one point, Martinez took a step back and gave the mic to bassist Eduardo Arenas, who provided lead vocals on “La Manzanita.” The song is everything good about cumbia: bouncy, buoyant and a little rickety.

Add the magical touch of Chicano Batman’s whining guitars, and it elicits the feeling you get when you spin around on the dance floor until the figures around you blur. With a sound like that, it could very well be that these four unassuming heroes can save the world from the monotony of mainstream Latin pop.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/chicano-batman-wins-over-crowds-with-unique-psychedelic-sound/2016/01/03/505f514e-b23f-11e5-8abc-d09392edc612_story.html

ILM's Rolling Latin & Afro-Latin Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist
^ will start updating around February

Someone needs to start new thread.

RIP Chocolate

One last thing: there was I guess a huge reggaeton song by Nicky Jam called "El Perdon" which was kind of a huge earworm for me despite my unfamiliarity with the genre. I'm really pussed at myself for nominating for the EOY thread, but I just learned the names of the song and the singer within the last 24 hours

Can I wish for more reggaeton itt? Trying to navigate the genre as something of a noob is quite hard.

Someone needs to start new thread.

RIP Chocolate

― Green Dolphin Street Hassle (James Redd and the Blecchs),

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/6835403/chocolate-armenteros-dies-trumpet

RIP

As for a new thread, my inclination was to just go with Rudy's suggestion that we just keep using this thread because there are not enough people here into Afro-Latin musics to justify doing new ones every year. But if a number of people choose to differ and outvote us, I guess we can.

As for reggaeton, some of us here were more into it years ago and then got bored with it. But now post-bachata it is back, with some slight changes-- more auto-tuned vocals, some bachata sappiness at times, plenty of Euro and Diplo club influences. Anyone who is into it, is of course free to chime in...

Can we keep the thread but modify the title slightly to "2015+" or something?

Sure, how do we get a mod to do that...?

Go to Mod Request Borad and ask, including link to this thread.

If it's causing confusion maybe there should be a distinct 2016 thread. (Sorry, starting to change my mind about that.) I personally don't feel like I am interested enough in current Afro-Latin music (at least the part of it I find out about) to try to keep a thread like this alive any more, but this thread did get a fair number of posts last year.

I haven't watched this, but Wayne Marshall seems good for reggaeton orientation. Maybe more academic than you're asking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLOXfSQ5Zao

But anyway, 240+ posts might be respectable enough to keep doing this as an annual thing.

IMHO, for the purposes of searching for information, unique threads is really the way to go. It's not a question of "not enough posts", it's for indexing reasons.

But whatever's clever

Chocolate was responsible for many great trumpet solos.

Thanks, _Rudipherous_! I definitely need something academic, but I also v much need some help sifting through the heap of wearying dross to find the nuggets of gold.

I'm also in favour of a new thread btw.

Mi gente: Vamanos pal hilo Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2016: Salsa, Bomba, Merengue,Reggaeton, Bachata, Latin-Jazz and more

Nice!