Tag Archives: Latin

Hey, summer’s over (although it’s a balmy 73 right now). How do I know? Because we are going to a haunted house tonight, so it must be near Halloween – what, you say it’s a month away? The Halloween season is now as long as Christmas. In fact, once October …

I really love the Brooklyn alt rock/Latino hybrid band Cordero, led by singer Ani Cordero. I reviewed their live show and first record here. If anything, the band’s secod album – Somos Cordero, which delves more deeply still into Latin rhythms and Spanish language songs – is even better than …

New Yorkers get to have all the fun – you get the Sam Bisbee CD release party at the Mercury Lounge tonight, and then you get this: The International Reggae and World Music Awards produced annually by Martin’s Inter-Culture announced today the performance line up, which will include the legendary …

This one really takes me back: I was DJing four night a week in SoCal through most of the ’80s and this collection is an astonishingly accurate representation of the best of club and party dance music from “the decade of excess.” I played every single one of the 17 …

Prior to receiving this outrageously entertaining reissue – recorded in 1958 and ’59 for Contemporary with a raft of Latin jazz specialists including Willie Bobo, Armando Peraza, Mongo Santamaria, and Vince Guaraldi – I had only a vague notion of who Victor Feldman was. British-born Feldman (1934-1987) was a child-prodigy …

As demonstrated at the first Woodstock in ’69, the original Santana band was a killer live unit, fundamentally a soul band that played hardcore African and Latin/Caribbean polyrhythms (Mike Carrabello – conga and percussion, Jose Chepito Areas – timbales, conga, percussion, Mike Shrieve – drums, Coke Escovedo – percussion) for …

Pianist-composer Michel Camilo’s alternately lively (“Cocowalk,” “Blue Bossa”) and elegantly moody (“Two Of a Kind,” “Twilight Glow”) 2-CD set Live at the Blue Note – from my homeys at Cleveland-based Telarc International – deservedly won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz Album. Congrats! After recording for nearly two decades, …

The talking over the music all night long part would get on my nerves, otherwise it’s coolness, amigo: In droves, the young Mexican men crowded around Fausto Salazar at the nightclub, whispering softly in his ear or handing him poetic notes, as cumbia melodies whirled in the air around them. …

In the mad blizzard of news we somehow neglected to mention the passing of jazz flute great Herbie Mann on July 1: Herbie Mann, the versatile jazz flutist who combined a variety of musical styles and deeply influenced trends such as world music and fusion, has died. He was 73. …

Dude was a frisky 95: Compay Segundo, the salty Cuban singer and guitarist who rose to global fame in his 90’s as the eldest of the elder musical statesmen featured on the album and film “Buena Vista Social Club,” died on Sunday at his home in Havana, an official at …