Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2023: Reggaeton, Salsa,Bachata, Bomba, Latin Jazz, Merengue, Urbano and more Latinx

I think there's room for jazz artists to embrace reggaeton. It would probably require something like the R&B cyberfunk approach Miles Davis took in the late 80s. I mean, the reggaeton bat isn't that far off a go-go beat.

Will be on the lookout for jazz artists who incorporate reggaeton.

I also don’t hear jazz acts incorporating the music the construction workers next door to me are blasting— duranguese, ranchera, Banda, and bachata

Catching up on Eladio Carrion

Last year I was worrying that Eddie Palmieri had cancelled some NYC shows due to health issues. I just saw on Facebook recently someone's photos of him performing up in the Boston area , so that is good to see.

x-post - From Wiki on Carrion- On December 2, 2021, he released his third studio album Sauce Boyz II, a sequel to Sauce Boyz, this featured collaborations with international artists such as Arcángel, Bizarrap, Duki, Jay Wheeler, Jon Z, Karol G, Luar La L, Rels B, Sech, Myke Towers, Nicky Jam, Noriel, and Ovi.

And Carrion put out a mixtape in 2022

Good to know.

https://www.billboard.com/lists/latin-spanish-artists-to-watch-2023/

Rolling Stone re Bad Bunny opening performance on the Grammys:

The Puerto Rican superstar started offstage, moving through the audience while singing a few lines of “El Apagón,” or “The Blackout,” the anthemic track that celebrates the strength of his homeland amid constant power outages that have affected the archipelago for years. He seamlessly mingled with the crowd, dapping up LL Cool J on his way to the main stage. Then, he dove into “Despues De La Playa,” the mambo/merenegue-fused standout from Un Verano Sin Ti, that gave him an opportunity to offer a full-on tribute to the Caribbean.

He performed alongside eight plena dancers, who showed off the traditional Puerto Rican folk art, and seven plena musicians. Meanwhile, several cabezudos, characters with giant heads common at festivals and processionals in Puerto Rico, represented some of the island’s most beloved icons: baseball legend Roberto Clemente, reggaeton pioneer Tego Calderón, poet Julia de Burgos, songwriter Andy Montañez, and revered composer Ismael Rivera, among others.

Meanwhile, the Dominican band of Dahian el Apechao, who composed sections of “Despues De La Playa” performed live while about 40 dancers pulled off stunning merengue moves. The performance got Taylor Swift grooving and got Jack Harlow on his feet

While a bit disjointed, it was fun .

Mentioning it here rather than the Bad Bunny thread due to his nods to various genres and Afro-Caribbean culture

Grammys best Latin jazz - Arturo O'Farrill & Afro Latin jazz Orchestra -"Fandago at the wall in New York";
Best Latin pop album- Ruben Blades and Boca Livre- "Pasieros"
Best musica Urbana album- Bad Bunny - "Un Verano Sin Ti"
Best Latin Rock or Alternative album- Rosalia "Motomami"
Best tropical Latin - Marc Anthony - "Pa"lla Voy"
Best Regional Mexican - Natalia Lafourcade- "Un Canto por Mexico"

Jazz writer Gene Seymour 2022 Latin Jazz faves

Ryan Keberle’s Collectiv do Brasil, Sonhos da Esquina
HONORABLE MENTION: Miguel Zenón, Música De Las Americas (Miel

Mexican reggaeton status

https://remezcla.com/features/music/meet-charly-gynn-tempvs-music-the-future-of-mexican-reggaeton/

Celia Cruz will be on the quarter in 2024.

Wow! ¡Azúcar!

Wait how? She passed away 20 years ago.

Lol sorry my bad I thought the US Quarter was a venue.

Ha. Pretty cool she will be so honored in 2024

Lol sorry my bad I thought the US Quarter was a venue.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/arts/music/karol-g-manana-sera-bonito.html

Interview with Karol G re her new album

Still haven’t listened to new Karol G yet but intend to do so

Ha, Karol G album isn’t streaming yet. NY Times interview up early

Meandering, awkward long article about Cuba to Florida musician Willy Chirino who is subject of an exhibit in History Miami Museum.

Should I read the whole thing? I skimmed part of it

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/01/willy-chirino-miami-museum-florida/

Ned S likes to keep these Thursday zoom events on the down low

Pablo Herrera + Alexis El D'Boys: Afro-Cuban Rare Groove Sessions #1.
We listen to and talk about selected cuts of digitized vinyl referencing Afro-Cuban and African American popular music connections by Los Zafiros, Orq. de Música Moderna de Las Villas, Wilson & His Combo and more, drawing on Alexis's vast collection of Cuban 33s and especially 45s.

Gonna have to miss this one sadly

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/latin-grammys-spain-first-time-not-in-us-rcna71762

Latin Grammys to be held in Spain! First time . Hmmm

For New Yorkers next week

friends & colleagues in NYC! a reminder that I'll be coming to town next Monday to talk dembow / habanera at NYU alongside @ReggaetonXGata (!!). our 6-8pm panel is open to the public with RSVP. hope to see some of you there!https://t.co/Gon9ivVbhW pic.twitter.com/1Mq9Mzh4px

— wayne&wax (@wayneandwax) February 22, 2023

https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/2023-premio-lo-nuestro-winners-1235259132/

lots of award winners

I missed Afro-Cuban Allstars latest dc area gig this past Friday but saw some nice video clips on Facebook. Have enjoyed them in the past

This is an old song but my wife just showed it to me because she heard it in Matar a Jesús, a movie by the Colombian director Laura Mora Ortega that she really liked. It's by a salsa group from Medellín called Sonora 8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_bf5tfkttc

Nice classic salsa there and a fun street scape video

New York French Canadian Bernard Labadie conducts Orchestra of St Luke’s “Viajes y Raices” (Journeys and Roots) string quartets by composers with Cuban and Andean roots, including Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tania León, inti figgis-vizueta, and Keyla Orozco; at Hostos Center in Mott Haven, The Bronx on Thursday, March 2, 2023 at 7pm. Free with registration

I am 5 hours or so south of NYC by car but can’t make This Thursday free event in the Bronx

That Karol G album is finally streaming and it has some songs on it that have already been on radio and streaming for a bit, plus some I haven't heard. I like her voice a lot. Some of this sounds great, some is formulaic Latin pop, some tries to do other things. I need to listen to it more.

Another Diaspora Playdate organized by @MotenSpeaks of the Go-Go Museum. “Go-Go Salsa”
I spoke on a panel w/ two dope Afro-Latino musicians. Watching the musicians jam was just 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾. Sponsored by @OLADCGov #BHM pic.twitter.com/hqsDDTyoz1

— Dr. Go-Go (@NatHopkinson) February 25, 2023

DC go-go band Sirius Company with DC salsa band Verny Varela group ( Varela is from Columbia originally)

Video clip in tweet

talking to a bunch of journalists from an earlier generation for an upcoming project has really highlighted to me how we're having the same debates about reggaeton's origins 30+ years after its inception

— Isabelia Herrera (@jabladoraaa) March 10, 2023

RIP NY dj Polito Vega

In an obituary in Billboard magazine, Leila Cobo, the author of “Decoding ‘Despacito’: An Oral History of Latin Music” (2020), wrote: “Vega’s importance to Latin music cannot be overstated. He was the most influential tastemaker in the country’s top market, dating back to when tropical music first became popular in the city in the 1960s and 1970s and stretching all the way to the 21st century.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/arts/music/polito-vega-dead.html

New York Times obit quotes from earlier NY Times article plus Billboard one

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/arts/music/27vega.html

In the mid-1960s Mr. Vega was one of the first radio personalities to identify and ally himself with the commercial potential of the musical style that came to be known as salsa. From the beginning of his career, he said, he was bothered by the difference between the powerful, driving music he heard in clubs and the tepid recordings that came his way.

“It was two different worlds in those early days,” Mr. Vega explained. “At the dance halls and up in the Catskills you would hear the Tito Puente and Machito orchestras tearing things up, but on the radio the kind of thing you heard was romantic trios, unless you were tuning in to Symphony Sid late at night.” ...

“He was part of the whole salsa movement, one of its pillars, really,” said Mr. Pacheco, a founder of Fania. “As we were building the company, he was there with us. I’d bring him the LPs, he’d listen and say, ‘I like this song, I’m going to push it,’ and he’d play the hell out of it.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/mar/22/can-you-copyright-a-rhythm-inside-the-reggaeton-lawsuit-that-could-shake-the-pop-world

This deserves its own thread I think- Steely & Clevie are suing superstars including Daddy Yankee, Luis Fonsi, & Bad Bunny and more saying that some of 56 songs took from their 1989 song “Fish Market “. They say the the dembow rhythm comes from their track and that they deserve credit and money

This might have already been discussed on the dancehall thread or elsewhere. Not sure

Kazzabe from Honduras are touring the US . They like to have twerking dancers in most of their videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI2GQtw0hrk

Combo Chimbita have gotten the hipster seal of approval. A gig tonight in a small DC rock club with an electro-hiphop opener and then off to the Big Ears fest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNoD-bGLths

X-post - Kazzabe are a Garifuna band playing Punta . They have not been invited to Big Ears alas, not even sure if they’re on the radar of reggaeton fans . Been around for a bit too, so not sure if they have tik tok attention

Charlie Aponte who sang with El Gran Combo for years is now touring and doing a gig in DC area with Orquesta Galvan at the Palace. Salsa gigs are fun at that place

Starting to get into the torchy Chilean pop singer Mon Laferte as a result of my recent explorations of Soda Stereo and Latino karaoke.

I guess she’s a Mexican citizen now.

Focusing first on her 2015 album Mon Laferte Vol. 1.

Now checking out some more recent ones. There are also some slightly bizarre videos of her out there doing battle on a Mexican Idol-type show called Yo Soy against a Peruvian Amy Winehouse imitator named Ana or Ani Rodríguez.

Norma was supposedly recorded in one day in Capitol Studio A with no overdubs. Sounding pretty good upon first listen.

Seems like she got her first big break on a Chilean Idol show called Rojo when she came in third and became part of the Clan Rojo. She was calling herself Monserrat Bustamante at the time. Her full name is Norma Monserrat Bustamante Laferte. She's got a big voice and it seems she can sing almost anything.

She is holding a big onion on the cover of Norma like she is about to cut it. Wonder if it symbolizes música cebolla, a genre I never heard until I just looked her up a little while ago.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/this-great-new-book-chronicles-the-indie-blog-era-across-latin-america-and-its-diaspora/

Isabelia Herrera talks to author of new Spanish language book re early 2000s Latin indie

If you are a millennial elder (or viejiennal, as I like to say in Spanish), you might remember a time between the mid 2000s and early ’10s when it felt like music blogs ruled the world. Back then, entire scenes and careers blossomed thanks to websites run by overeager nerds who fawned over artists no one else cared about. This is the largely extinct ecosystem that inspired Testigos del fin del mundo, Javier A. Rodríguez-Camacho’s ambitious survey of the last decade of Ibero-American (or U.S. Latine, Latin American, and Spanish) indie music.

Cool. I don’t know anything about any of that stuff at all.

Jon Pareles in NY Times has Karol G album in his best of 2023 list

And Pareles has Peso Pluma and Kali Uchis in his additional top 20

Just got a copy of Eddie Palmieri's Live at the University of Puerto Rico in the mail. It's a double LP recorded in 1971, while the campus was full of demonstrations and battles between students and cops; it's been edited down to a single CD in the US (and on streaming services) but the whole thing is available as a 2CD set in Japan, so that's what I bought.

Cool to get the full thing

That jazz critics poll always has a separate “Latin” category. But it doesn’t get posted till January I think

*NPR Jazz Piano X-Mas w/ Cuban pianists Melvis Santa, Alfredo Rodriguez, & Hilario Duran @ Kennedy Center tonight Saturday December 2 (pricey ticket)

Anyone know these pianists? I don't . Need to research 'em

I still haven’t googled those Cuban pianists

https://los40.us/2023/top-latin-artists-of-2023-13881.html

X-post re Melvis Santa- she’s a Cuban pianist/singer now based in NY I think, who has a band called the Jazz Orishas

Her bio- Melvis graduated from the prestigious Amadeo Roldan Conservatory in Havana Cuba in 2001 in Piano and Music Education. She has toured and performed extensively with multiple projects as a bandleader, as well as part of other bands, including Kenny Garrett, Chucho Valdes and Irakere, Muñequitos de Matanzas, and Buenavista Social Club. Other special collaborations include Charles Tolliver, Andy Bey, Ravi Coltrane, Arturo O’Farrill and ALJA, David Virelles, Roman Diaz, Xiomara Laugart and others.

Karol G, Peso Pluma, and Bobby Sanabria showing up on a few 2023 best of lists

Come back to this thread please ilxors

Or not

Ha, you rang? Meant to post earlier that I didn’t even know Bobby Sanabria had a new record out recent.

Actually I think Arturo O’Farrill “Fandango at the Wall “ has gotten more attention now that I think about it

I gotta study the Rolling Stone top 50 Spanish language albums of 2023 list when I get a chance

Happy 87th birthday Eddie Palmieri! WPFW dj Jim Byers played some great songs from his first solo album Sunday night on Byers radio show

x-post

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/the-50-best-spanish-language-albums-of-2023-1234922548/

From Tainy’s mind-bending opus Data to Diego Raposo’s brash reinventions on YO NO ERA ASÍ PERO DE AHORA EN ADELANTE, SÍ, some of the most interesting sounds this year embraced innovation head-on. Música mexicana continued to reach global heights with artists like Peso Pluma, Junior H, and Carin Leon plotting new paths. And other acts, among them Francisca Valenzuela, Grupo Frontera, and Karol G found magic by embracing a sense of honesty and intimacy.

Grupo Niche - Sinfonica is the one salsa album on the list

Critic Geoff Himes has Pierrick Pedron and Gonzalo Rubacalba album “Pedron Rubacalba” on top of his jazz album best of list. Maybe it has some Latin tinge ( haven’t heard it)

Pedron Rubacalba is a nice jazz effort but I don’t hear any mambo, salsa, son, Norteno, reggaeton, Latin trap, etc

I need to dig more into that Rolling Stone 2023 list .

The one salsa album on it by Grupo Niche is a good one

Listened to Tainy album Data. It’s instrumental programmed music . Doesn’t wow me, it’s ok

Ha. Dumb me....Data is out both as an instrumental version and one with vocals. Near the end of the one with vocals is Bad Bunny rapping over 80s synths on one cut. This is a little more interesting to me.

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/best-music-latin-spanish-artists-2023/

Kiko el Crazy y more

Ned S8blette showed the "Omara" film doc tonight that has just been at movie festivals. It's a doc on Cuban singer Omara Portuondo, who came to fame for many via her role in the Buena Vista Social Club. After the screening on Vimeo, Ned had a Q&A with filmmaker Hugo Perez. A knowledgeable interesting guy. Great doc w/ archival footage, plus recent tour footage of her in NY, NJ, Cuba, Mexico City, South Korea . I didn't know she was the daughter of a white Cuban mother and a black Cuban father. Her mother got excommunicated from her well-to-do White family in 1927 for marrying her Dad. Dad was a baseball player and sang at home with Mom and the kids.

Perez has been a consultant on the off-broadway Buena Vista Social Club onstage theatrical musical show in NYC (despite admitting he didn't love the album or tour-- he felt the big large band's playing overwhelmed Omara's singing). He says it may get on Broadway next fall.

RIP Afro-Colombian champeta & cumbia singer accordionist Lisandro Meza who did an awesome take on Fela's song Shakara called "Shacalao"

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

https://www.time.com/6548823/best-latin-songs-albums-2023/

Time Magazine critic lists fave Latin pop, dance, and rock

Listened to Mon Laferte again -- like some but not all. She has a range of influences which is good.

Also listened again to Rosalia & ex-fiance Rauw Alejandro ep .

Yeah, I kind of feel the same about Mon Laferte, but what I do like, I really like.

Just saw elsewhere 2 best of 2023 references to Piconema: East African Hits on the Colombian Coast . I haven’t heard it yet and haven’t seen references to it elsewhere here on ILM

It's 2024, time for a new thread

Rolling Afro-Latin Music 2024: Reggaeton, Dembow, Latin Pop, Salsa,Bachata, Bomba, Latin Jazz, Merengue, Urbano and more Latinx