Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2019: Reggaeton, Salsa, Bomba, Latin Jazz, Bachata, Merengue, and more

https://remezcla.com/lists/music/50-best-songs-by-latinos-in-2019/

A little of everything but mainly reggaeton

Ozuna’s new album is called Nibiru. I wasn’t feeling the string of singles that preceded it all that much and have been enjoying him more on his features this year, but the album is sounding really good.

Loving the skippy beat in “Fantasía” (there’s not enough of it actually): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYwzpYh7dio

Fun track with Diddy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNKnxO7wAeU
Ozuna ft. Diddy & DJ Snake • Eres Top (working title “I Need A Top, Part 2”)

(pretty sure this is one of those Illuminati videos I keep hearing about)

Will give new Ozuna a listen. Also need to look at :

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/778227075/a-survey-of-the-year-in-latin-music-whatever-that-means

More top notch reggaeton:
Lalo Ebratt’s Numerología EP is lots of fun, in a Afro-Latino post-“One Dance” kind of way.

“Milkshake”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na8MZZU8haY

that's quite nice

Since we can never read enough discussion of Rosalia versus Latinx artists, here’s J Shepherd from the Slate music crit roundtable :

This is not to say that “authenticity” is the goal or even all that desirable as a flat concept, but when Rosalía is better known by mainstream English publications than Anitta or Natti Natasha or Amara La Negra or Karol G or even Becky G, the system has either gone wonky or is doing exactly what it was meant to.

https://slate.com/culture/2019/12/best-music-2019-fka-twigs-solange-holly-herndon.html

I might grant more weight to her statement if Googling her name paired with any of those artists' names yielded results. You can't complain that no one's writing about these artists if you're not writing about them either.

(She's an editor at Jezebel. If she wanted to get something out there, she could. The last time she wrote about Amara La Negra was in 2015.)

As editor, maybe she assigned someone else to write about them.

I wrote up a Karol G preview in 2017 for the Washington DC City Paper, and did Bad Bunny, J Balvin, & Maluma this year. There’s not too much English language coverage of Latinx music in DC area

https://remezcla.com/lists/music/10-best-latino-latin-american-spanish-albums-of-year-2019/

Less "urbano" than I expected, but still strongly represented. 1.'This Is How You Smile' by Helado Negro;2. 'Oasis' by Bad Bunny & J Balvin; 3. 'Ahomale' by Combo Chimbita; 4.'Almadura' by iLe;5.'Sueños' by Sech; 6.'Foam' by Divino Niño; 7. 'Soy Piedra' by Belafonte Sensacional;8.'Sombrou Dúvida' by Boogarins; 9.'System' by Debit ; 10-Joterías Bobas’ by Hidrogenesse

Not really seeing many Latin jazz albums on lists. The genre seemed formulaic years ago, but still hangs on. Pancho Sanchez did a Coltrane tribute I see. The NPR jazz critics poll usually has a separate Latin jazz category, but the 2019 poll is not posted yet.

Time to go to the 2020 thread:

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