Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2020: Reggaeton, Salsa, Bomba, Latin Jazz, Bachata, Merengue, Urbano and more Latinx

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/9427944/best-latin-summer-songs-2020

I like KAROL G - Ay, DiOs Mío!

and Rosalia & Travis Scott - TKN

Karol G one is more pop

This long Carina del Valle Schorske interview piece is worth a read — discussion with him re salsa pioneer Hector Lavoe and his role as a rural working class icon plus re Tengo Calderon and how Tego would have been more popular if he was white ( but was always a legend to Bad Bunny)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/07/magazine/bad-bunny.html

Meanwhile Bad Bunny is in a tv commercial with Snoop Dogg for a beer while there are McDonald’s ads with the J Balvin meal

Saw both of these while watching NBA or baseball

they are both phenomenally popular mainstream artists, yes

No prior reggaeton artists were able to get this amount of mainstream popularity

That NY Times interview with Bad Bunny has a lot that is worth digging into and reading, btw.

Xp no argument! But about four have now.

https://www.bluenotelive.com/eventsold/eddie-main

Eddie Palmieri afro-Caribbean Jazz sextet Thursday night stream from the Blue Note in NYC for $15

I missed the Palmieri gig ( but have seen in him in the past with various bands and solo).

Spacing out on a new reggaeton song i heard in the car that impressed me.

I dvr’d some of the Billboard Latin Music Awards on telemundo last night, and watched a little. Snoop rapped on Spanish with a Mexican traditional music group. “Calma” that has been out since at least April 2019, won best pop song.

still really curious what reggaeton song you were spacing out on!

Natti Natasha w/ Zion & Lennox “Te Mueves “ is the song

https://youtu.be/ceuhJ9F99DM

I have liked certain Zion & Lennox songs in the past too, but have never really sat down and listened intently. They have performed in DC area multiple times and I have yet to see them ( but I should).

yeah, “Te Mueves” is pretty good.

Am also liking Sech’s “Relacion” , although I kinda like the choir backing him up more than Sech on that cut

RIP Puerto Rican salsa singer Cano Estremera

https://heavy.com/entertainment/cano-estremera-death/

RIP 99 years old Cuban percussionist Candido

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/01/arts/music/j-balvin-fortnite-concert.html

j Balvin did a Halloween concert on Fortnite

In recent years, thee gloriously notorious La Montra, AKA Rita Indiana, has become better known for her dystopian novels, but now she's back with Mandinga Times, which is pretty amazing, esp. on headphones, and well-covered here, by Daniel Alarcón:
Last year, Indiana felt ready to come back to music. Much of the recording was done in the fall, just months after Puerto Rico’s most tumultuous time in recent memory, when two weeks of raucous street protests forced the resignation of the governor. The political energy of last summer is evident on the album; its songs, sung in the voice of Mandinga, Indiana’s gender-neutral alter ego, feel like anthems of discontent. The finishing touches were applied after the world had shut down, making the album feel less like a warning about a dark but still avoidable future and more like musical stenography documenting our current predicament. But, like Indiana’s earlier music, and like her work more broadly, “Mandinga Times” is also an immersion in hybridity: it’s merengue with a heavy-metal heart; it’s gagá mixed with thrash, reggaetón and punk, dembow, trap, and Middle Eastern melodies; it’s love songs and battle raps and protest music. When I asked Cabra to describe the album to me, he struggled. To say that it was eclectic was only half true, he said. In fact, each song was eclectic, diverse moods and styles alternating in a single track. “I find it hard to place Rita’s project within a genre,” he said. “If I describe how her music sounds, I think that takes away its power.” That's the album's producer, Eduardo Cabra, of the legendary Puerto Rican band Calle 13
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/26/rita-indianas-songs-for-the-apocalypse

Looks like Emilio Solla won the Latin Grammy for Best Album. Haven't heard the record but just looking at the members of the band makes me want to hear it.

Been watching some of it tonight on Univision. Saw Karol G song pop/ reggaeton; J Balvin reggaeton; some balladeers and some Mexican regional acts. Just now Pit Bull with a rap-rock group

X-post — Solla won for best Latin Jazz album

So he’s an Argentinian who moved to Spain and then US. This album with his tango jazz orchestra and guests came out in December 2019.

https://latinjazznet.com/reviews/cds/featured-albums/emilio-solla-tango-jazz-orchestra-puertos-music-from-international-waters/

Residente won song of the year for “Rene” beating out some bigger names

Natalia Lafourcade beating out Bad Bunny for Latin Grammys album of the year

Natalia Lafourcade beating out Bad Bunny for Latin Grammys album of the year

Good.

Natalia Lafourcade’s “Un Canto por México Vol. 1, got an honorable mention from Amanda Petrusich in the New Yorker.

The only Latinx album she listed . None in her top 10

I kinda like both. Lafourcade has moved away from the pop/rock En espanol she was doing to a more traditional Mexican sound with horns and such.

Bad Bunny bends the framework of reggaeton a bit, and sometimes gives subtle nods to some salsa greats he loves

Lido Pimienta and Bad Bunny in the NPR top 10 ( list is longer than 10)

This X Alfonso album by a Cuban guy into hiphop and more that’s in the bottom of the NPR top 50 album list looks intriguing

loving the Natalia Lafourcade

on Bad Bunny being the world's most streamed artist and how the UK didn't see it coming:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/dec/04/how-did-bad-bunny-become-the-worlds-biggest-pop-star

(reminded me of that cursed ILM thread about the "reggaeton-lite fad" supposedly being the "the 'Shit Trend' in pop music right now")

it's funny to see the anglo side of the american industry try to cross maluma over (via "hawái," perfunctorily remixed w/ the weeknd) when "dákiti" is right there, handily outperforming the vast majority of anglo hits week after week without even trying

i gave bad bunny's album a listen... honestly, it could stand to be quite a bit shorter. but the stretch from "dákiti" to the end is strong

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/chart-beat/9495004/bad-bunny-el-ultimo-tour-del-mundo-billboard-200-number-one

I still haven’t listened to latest Bad Bunny. Earlier one this year has made some critics poll lists

“Si veo a tu mama” has crept up to be one of his biggest songs this year which was weird for me at first since it’s an unusual casiotoned beat for him (think “hotline bling” or “cha cha”) but I guess it makes sense in a world without parties to dance to Dakiti, Vete or Ignorantes which are also huge but expectedly so.

today I overheard a norteño version blasting out of a car of “si veo a tu mama”; I don’t know what to make of it but I love that it exists

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CjWs1Cpb4o

Despite the “girl from ipanema” reference it actually sounds a lot like 50s/60s rock n roll songs... a case has been made by mashing up with Ramon Ayala’s cover of Despeinada by Los Hooligans.

Here’s the original:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DCBSI5m8fY

Here’s the Ramon Ayala cover v Bad Bunny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN7R6rFSsI8

It’s a bit forced but I can definitely hear what the person who did the mashup heard first.

Los Angeles has long had ( so I have read) a radio program that plays 50s rock and doo wop music that is aimed to a Latin audience. That may be the case elsewhere too. Bachata has also drawn from 50s sounds, and there are likely Latin pioneers who deserve props. So all of the above makes sense. Thanks Moka.

Kali Uchis draws from the old school Cuban Los Zafiros doo wop and 50s style Sleepwalk guitar a bit on her latest.

I don’t turn to Ann Powers at NPR generally for Latin picks, she is mostly into Americana & some r’n’b these days, but I am curious about Gabriel Garzon-Montano album Aquita that she included in her top 10 and she says has some reggaeton aspect to it

X-post - Norteno & reggaeton together at last

If you want to hear reggaeton in a different context, check out that Rita Indiana album I stanned for upthread.
Re the 50s, this album is fun---here's my 2007 Columbus OH show preview:
Los Straitjackets
Thursday @Little Brother’s

Mexican-wrestling-masked Los Straitjackets specialize in mad-to-mellow surfabilly instrumentals, but their new Rock En Espaňol, Volume One sports several vivacious guest vocalists on reborn 60s Spanish-language radio hit versions of contemporaneous Top 40 hits, dance pop all the way. Los Lobos’ Cesar Rosas gets “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” into (and out of) “El Microscopico Bikini”; Little Willie G., of East L.A. mainstays Thee Midnighters, lilts and tilts “Dame Una Sena”(“Gimme Little Sign”); and “Calor” (AKA “Slow Down”) is cool-rocked by Big Sandy, special guest on Los Straitjackets’ current tour.

Well, 60s, yeah, but continuing from the 50s, like "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" and "Slow Down" were Larry Williams records in the 50s, covered by the Beatles etc.

Good radio interview: Tracks include "De Dia y de Noche" ("All Day and All Night"), popularized by the Kinks, "La Hiedra Venenosa" ("Poison Ivy"), made famous by the Coasters, and many more. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10936204

A couple of years later, they came back:
Los Straitjackets
Launched via surf and desert twang, masked instrumental combo Los Straitjackets embody giddy light years of rock ‘n’ roll history, including its recurring Latin inflections. “My Heart Will Go On” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” are also welcomed to the pulp jungle. Their latest album, The Further Adventures, channels z-movie soundtracks, garage punk and other radical radiation into LS originals. Guitarist Daddy O Grande is currently unable to tour, but his cousin Gregorio has stepped up.
09/11 @ The Rumba Cafe, 2507 Summit St.
9 p.m.

Los Straightjackets are good , but are coming at it from a different cultural perspective- white guys into rockabilly, surf, Mexican wrestling masks and more.

At least I think they’re all Anglo.

But you’re right that via their Rock En Espanol effort what they’re doing is related.

All of the records and live sets that I've heard tend to go toward what John Storm Roberts called the Spanish tinge of American pop-rock continuity, in the time frame they draw from----I mean for inst, in the surfabilly stuff, Dick Dale was not shy about crediting the influence of his Middle Eastern background, but that of course also goes around the Med to Spain, Mexico, California, surfacing also in their Spaghetti Western themes and so on---they're not deep, or trying to be, but it's fun and they know what they're doing.

(Although I'm no doubt subject to the power of suggestion as well.)

Via author/musician Ned Sublette's newsletter: Israel Berriel González died of a heart attack in Jovellanos, Cuba Dec 18. A top Cuban rumba & ritual singer/composer of Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, & previously w/Afro Cuba de Matanzas, Berriel was born on Sept 21, 1937