Tag Archives: Latin

With every one of these Caribbean music festivals I announce (Jam Cruise 3 in January, Bermuda going on RGHT NOW, Turks and Caicos, Caymans) I get one step closer to signing up myself – only money, time, and young children are holding me back, that’s all. The latest to be …

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. …