Learning Latin

SHAKIRA, "SALE EL SOL"

2010-10-23T08:59:00.000-07:00

The new Shakira album, Sale el Sol, arrived in today's mail, and having nothing better to do, I listened to it. It's being marketed as her return to her Latin roots after last year's Euro-style dance-club disc She Wolf, which didn't do nearly as well as expected. Most of the songs on this one are sung in Spanish, but if you think that's gonna inspire Shakira to greater heights of vocal passion than she's mustered in the past half-dozen years or so, forget it.

The opening title track is limp rock, with a fuzzy electric guitar riff (by who knows who—the producers and guest vocalists are all credited, but none of the instrumentalists are, demonstrating convincingly that this is a pop album and not a rock record). The second track, "Loca," is electronic merengue, but it feels like it's playing at half-speed. Up next is an even more watery acoustic-guitar-and-piano ballad, "Ante de las Seis," and that's followed by another electronic, beat-driven number, "Gordita."

This is the first remotely interesting song on the album, because it features a guest spot by Residente de Calle 13, and he's jabbing at Shakira, speaking for (I'd bet) a sizable portion of Latin rock fans when he says that he liked her better before she moved to Miami and dyed her hair:

Shaki tú estás bien bonita aunque también me gustaba cuando estabas más gordita
Con el pelito negrito y la cara redondita
Así medio roquerita

Shakira tries to keep up, turning the song into a half-dirty (for pop) duo, but it's got nothing on Residente's back-and-forth with Mala Rodríguez on "Mala Suerta con el 13," from Calle 13's own Residente o Visitante CD. And the album's momentum sags a bit after that.

"Addicted to You" is an English-language song that seems about 90 seconds long; "Lo Que Más" is another boring ballad; and "Mariposas" is a Spanish-language take on the girl-and-her-piano almost-rock songs VH1 plays all morning.

"Rabiosa" is one of three songs that appear in two versions on Sale el Sol. This first one is another electro-merengue track, like "Loca" featuring El Cata, but this one's slightly faster and it could have been pretty good if Shakira's attempts at sexy moaning didn't sound like she was waking up from a siesta.

"Devocíon" is a postpunk track driven by throbbing bass and atmospheric keyboards straight from the Cure's Disintegration, and her vocals are probably the best on the whole record. This is the best song on the whole disc; for pure passion, I'd put it right up there with "Timor," the last track on Oral Fixation, Vol. 2, and the last track of hers that really surprised me (in a good way).

"Islands" is in English, all distorted keyboards and New Wave pulse; it's not bad, but I can't see it being a hit, 'cause it doesn't have much of a chorus.

"Tu Boca," which frankly I was expecting to be another drippy ballad, is actually another postpunk rocker, with tons of bass and a melody that reminds me of Natalia Lafourcade's second album (credited to her band Natalia y la Forquetina), Casa. Shakira even heads into Natalia's upper-register vocal territory on a few lines. This song and "Devocíon" are the two keepers.

The last song on the album proper is "Waka Waka (Esto Es Africa)," and I have nothing to say about that.

The bonus tracks are a remix of "Loca" featuring formerly-overrated, now-forgotten UK "grime" rapper Dizzee Rascal; a remix of "Rabiosa" featuring Pitbull; and an English-language version of "Waka Waka." None of them are particularly good. I used to like Pitbull a lot, but he'll appear on just any damn thing these days, and he always sounds the same. He hasn't been at full strength since his second album, El Mariel.

This is a short album (without the three bonus tracks, it'd be less than 40 minutes long) and not a particularly good one. Two genuine keepers ("Devocíon," "Tu Boca") and one mildly diverting novelty ("Gordita") out of 15 is not nearly enough to make Sale el Sol worth your money.

LOS SAICOS

2010-07-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

Los Saicos
¡Demolición!: The Complete Recordings
Munster Records
Los Saicos (pronounced "psychos") were a raucous garage band from Lima, Peru who released six 45s between 1965 and 1966. "Demolición," the title track from this compilation of their entire recorded output, was their cult hit, their "Psychotic Reaction," their "96 Tears." It's been covered by Café Tacvba, among other groups, in the years since, and in South America it's a classic. Los Saicos were astonishingly aggressive and primitive, even by the standards of garage rock; this stuff belongs next to the output of modern-day labels like Estrus more than it would have fit in on a Nuggets compilation. They recorded love songs ("Ana," "Te Amo"), but their rave-ups, with bordering-on-hostile titles like "Intensamente," "Fugitivo de Alcatraz," and "Salvaje," will really thrill listeners. The guitars sound like nothing so much as fountains of sparks, the drums have a tribal post-surf throb, and the vocals are positively unhinged, going beyond even the limits probed by Gerry Roslie of the Sonics. Even when they were crooning promises of love, they sounded like gang members. These guys were a punk rock band, even if nobody outside Lima knew it at the time, and the 12 tracks on this compilation will make the hair on any rock & roll fan's neck, arms, and other body parts stand on end.

[From All Music Guide.]

JUAN GABRIEL

2010-06-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

I wrote this review for All Music Guide, but they didn't publish it, so here it is.

JUAN GABRIEL
Juan Gabriel
Fonovisa

Juan Gabriel’s 2010 album, his first since 2003’s Inocente de Ti, couldn’t be more different from that record. Where Inocente was an attempt to modernize his classically gooey pop-balladeer style with alt-rock guitars and radio-ready pop songwriting, Juan Gabriel (as its cover art, with Gabriel perching a sombrero on the back of his head like he’s afraid it’ll muss his hair, should indicate) is a shockingly traditional album almost entirely composed of mariachi songs—trumpets and surging strings are all over this thing. There are some weird touches, of course; on “Por Que Me Haces Llorar?” the string arrangements are more Roy Orbison than Vicente Fernández, and the echo effect on Gabriel’s voice at the end of each chorus is distracting in a sort of awesome way. There’s even a song called “Mariachi,” and it’s as over-the-top as everything else here. Gabriel never sleepwalks through a song—he sells every note, which is exactly what a sobbingly dramatic style like mariachi demands. This is a terrific record slathered in Juan Gabriel’s trademark passion and vocal mastery.

LA GRAN SEÑORA

2010-06-27T17:27:00.001-07:00

Jenni Rivera flirts with pop crossovers but remains true to regional Mexican music.

Jenni Rivera is one of the most popular singers, male or female, in regional Mexican music. She's carved out a unique niche for herself by specializing in banda, a genre dominated by all-male ensembles like Banda el Recodo or Banda Machos.

She frequently branches out into norteño and even pop, but the horn-heavy sound (trumpets, trombones, clarinets and tuba) provides the primary platform for her full yet often surprisingly intimate and even conversational voice.

Even by the standards of a floridly emotional genre built on lyrical storytelling, Rivera's albums have a strikingly personal feel; 2007's Mi Vida Loca, a commercial and artistic breakthrough, featured lyrics based on her own life, delving into single motherhood, bad relationships, a brutal divorce and more.

"I do touch subjects that other artists aren't prepared to do, or maybe they don't feel it because they haven't been through it," says Rivera by phone from her California home.

"I don't have a problem singing about women's survival, about how to get ahead in life, about being a single mother, about domestic violence, and basically it's because I have gone through things like that; it's because it's a reality," she adds. "It's not just me that went through that — there's a lot of my fans that may be going through those situations as well."

Of course, Rivera doesn't write all her own lyrics. Like most regional Mexican artists (and English-language pop and country acts, for that matter), she records a lot of material submitted to her management and label by professional songwriters. It's extremely important to her that every song she chooses must contain that core of genuine feeling and experience, though.

"It's not just about singing these days," she explains. "People need to believe what they hear, they need to believe what they see onstage, and I like to transmit a feeling or a situation, an experience, to my public. Maybe not necessarily something that I may be going through, but somebody listening may be going through that and can feel familiar and identify themselves with the song.

"It's mainly songs that could happen, songs that have happened to certain people."

That kind of honesty extends beyond the words Rivera sings. It encompasses all aspects of her public persona, right down to the way she dresses on her album covers. On early discs like Que Me Entierren con La Banda or Se Las Voy a Dar a Otro, she wore the half-buttoned shirts and cowboy hats required of female performers in regional Mexican music, but eventually she pushed back and decided to portray herself as she truly was: Not the daughter of a rancher from northern Mexico, but the U.S.-born, college-educated daughter of immigrants, living in Long Beach.

"Wearing a cowboy hat got too hot, it made my head sweat," she recalls with a laugh. "So I said, 'I can't do this, I gotta be myself.' I love baseball caps. There was a time when I put my hair in braids. And I figured I can't go out there and fake to be something I'm not. People like to see genuine, authentic people. And they're already hearing me as an authentic woman, so I might as well give them that image that I already have."

Rivera's mix of modernity and respect for tradition has been another hallmark of her career. In 2003, she recorded Homenaje a las Grandes, an album of songs made famous by other female vocalists, including Rocio Dúrcal, Lola Beltrán...and Diana Ross.

Like many children of Mexican immigrants, Rivera grew up listening to English-language pop, from oldies to hip-hop, as well as traditional and modern Mexican music. On various albums, she's recorded banda versions of the Supremes' "Where Did Our Love Go," Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and Rosie & the Originals' "Angel Baby," all songs with appeal to Latinos and non-Latinos alike. On her latest album, La Gran Señora, she tackles Freddy Fender's "Before the Next Teardrop Falls."

Naturally, given her bilingualism and her stature within the Latin music industry, the question of recording entirely in English has come up, but Rivera isn't particularly interested in effectively starting her career over in pursuit of Anglo listeners. She'd be more inclined to do pop arrangements of the type of songs she's banda-ized in the past; in her words, "an oldies album, something like what Queen Latifah did, remakes of oldies that maybe you can listen to on the [West Coast DJ] Art Laboe radio show."

Currently, Rivera's got one foot firmly planted in each world. La Gran Señora, her 2009 release, is a departure from her core banda style. Other than the two versions (one Tex-Mex country, one acoustic) of "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," it's a traditional mariachi album.

The project, she says, was "always in my heart, and I wanted to do it someday. Even though I was raised in the United States, my parents are 100 percent traditional Mexicans, and this is the music they taught me to listen to."

In support of the record, she'll be playing Houston with her full 15-piece banda and a ten-member mariachi group, doing two sets featuring traditional material, the new songs and her many hits. And later this year, she'll be touring as part of Lilith Fair, one of only a handful of Latin acts on the all-female bill, and the only one not playing pop or R&B-based music.

Rivera plans on making an indelible impression on the tour's largely white, suburban audience, most of whom are unlikely to have ever heard of her. She'll be performing her English-language repertoire while backed by an all-female mariachi band.

"What I'm gonna do is do songs I've recorded, but now it's gonna be mariachi and it's gonna be live," she says excitedly. "And then I'll be doing some traditional stuff like 'Puro Amor' or 'Cielito Lindo' or something like that, something the crowd will be able to relate to and remember.

"We've all heard those songs, whether you're Mexican or not, so people will be able to relate to that," Rivera concludes. "I'm gonna be trying to entertain the public in a Mexican way, basically."

[From the Houston Press.]

COPYRIGHT IS COPYRIGHT, EVEN IN AFRICA

2010-06-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

(I've been thinking about re-launching this blog; might as well do it with this piece, which I posted at my primary blog a week or so ago.)

Very interesting article here about various pillagings of African music for Western pop hits down the decades, including Michael Jackson's incorporation, in "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," of the chorus from Manu Dibango's "Soul Makossa"; Rihanna's re-use of the same chorus, after asking permission...from Michael Jackson; the song that became The Tokens' "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"; James Brown's turning a Cameroonian song into "Hustle!!!"; and more.

The example of Timbaland and Missy Elliott stealing a riff is particularly interesting, because this YouTube video demonstrates just how blatantly Timbaland has jacked multiple Bollywood and Middle Eastern songs over the years. The guy's a straight-up kleptomaniac.

And of course the contemporary news hook is that Shakira's done the same thing, pillaging a Cameroonian song called "Zangalewa," originally recorded by a group called the Golden Sounds, for her horrible World Cup theme song "Waka Waka."

Here's a link to the Shakira atrocity (which isn't embeddable, apparently)...and here's the Golden Sounds' original...

...which, unbelievably, is now on YouTube credited to Shakira.

And here's a compare 'n' contrast video that includes yet a third version, by another Latin group (just so you know I'm not merely picking on Shakira here).

PART 9: ISMAEL RIVERA

2007-04-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Aaaaaannd we're back. I know I haven't posted a new entry in awhile, but...well, I've been busy with jazz (got an obit for Andrew Hill running in the Village Voice I think next week) and metal (interviewed French doom metal band Monarch for Metal Maniacs magazine) and other, non-Fania Latin discs, too. I got three amazing compilations in the mail recently: New York Latin Hustle!, a typically great 2CD set on Soul Jazz; ¡Gozalo!: Bugalu Tropical Vol. 1, a terrific pile-up of rare Peruvian tracks mixing bugalu, jazz, psychedelic rock and more, all from the late ’60s, on Vampisoul; and Colombia!, a compilation of tracks from that country’s Discos Fuentes label, on Soundways. (The relentless deployment of exclamation marks in all these album titles might seem silly, unless you’ve actually heard the records.) Plus putting together one more issue of Global Rhythm...But anyway, I finally had some time to return to this project this morning, on a leisurely walk around town, and based on advice from someone who knows way more about salsa than me, I picked this album off the pile.

Ismael Rivera's got a great voice. He kind of makes me think he could be Tego Calderón's uncle or something; they've got similar vocal timbre and share a thick Puerto Rican accent, though Rivera's about 1000x more comprehensible than Tego - I can pick out whole lines of lyrics on this album, whereas El Subestimado is pretty much a brick wall of macho mumbling. The band on this record is tight, without seeming tense or jumpy. The relatively small horn section (one trumpet, one trombone, one saxophone) doesn't have the gleaming blare of some of the other records I've been listening to, offering more of a jazzy, blurry warmth, without sacrificing the punch that salsa depends on. The guy playing the tres is really good, too; not as jagged as the guy I called out earlier on the Celia Cruz et al. disc, but still cutting right through the group sound with that weird barbed-wire jangle that only that instrument seems to produce. (Avant-jazz guitarist Joe Morris should get himself one of those; he could do amazing things with that sound, I bet.) Anyway, this album is the sound of a guy completely at peace with himself and his style. He doesn't seem like a performer - you never hear him sweating, or striving to convince you, the listener, of something he's not convinced of himself. He's got a kind of...proletarian mixture of gruffness and placid joy to his voice that's really captivating. He's not going over the top, but he's not talk-singing either. I guess I'd compare him to a saxophonist like Hank Mobley, a guy who was regarded in his time as kind of middle-of-the-road and even decried as bland by folks who wanted more fire 'n' fury from jazz, but whose work stands up incredibly well 40 or even 50 years later. I could listen to Hank Mobley all day, and this album makes me feel the same way about Ismael Rivera.

PART 8: ADALBERTO, CHEO, LA LUPE AGAIN

2007-04-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

I'm way behind on posts and don't have time to go into a whole lot of detail, so I'm gonna bang out the three albums I listened to last week in quick capsule-review style. Here we go!

Adalberto Santiago's got a big voice that almost reminds me of a mariachi singer. Adalberto is a good, mostly upbeat album (except for "Luces de Nueva York") with some great, bright trumpet work by I don't know who. The only song I actively hate is "Las Puertas de Mi Casa." Checking Amazon, I see he's got an album called Adalberto Santiago Featuring Popeye El Marino, which cracks me up. I might have to try and get a copy of that one.

Cheo Feliciano's Cheo is even better. His voice kinda reminds me of Ruben Blades', but with more gravitas to it, and the slower songs, some of which bust out some almost-flamenco guitar, are the real keepers. Great timbales here, especially on the jazzy opening cut, "Ancaona," where they're paired against the vibes. Highlights: "Pa' Que Afinquen," "Mi Triste Problema," "Poema de Otoño." Very cool.

Finally, I'm back to obsessing over La Lupe again. Reina de la Canción Latina might be even heavier/more berserk/more world-crushingly awesome than La Lupe Es La Reina. She's in damn-near-unhinged territory from almost the first notes of "Amor Gitano," and the strings and horns back her up in full blare. She sounds like some dude might get stabbed to death in his sleep. What's weird is that in some ways this album is more tasteful and subdued than the other one - there's only two psychobilly-speed salsa numbers on it (four or five upbeat tracks in toto, but only two where the rhythm section sounds like their friggin' arms are gonna fly off, they're playing so fast), and a lot of big brass-'n'-orchestra ballads, and there's no Santeria track this time out. But then it all goes out the window with the berserk bilingual version of "Fever," which is, like, indescribable. Again, her accent makes Charo sound like Jane Seymour, but somehow this time it works better. It's official - I could listen to La Lupe all day long, and I'm definitely gonna seek out more of her stuff.

PART 7: WILLIE COLON

2007-04-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

Willie Colón's El Malo kinda reminds me of the Joe Bataan disc I reviewed last week, except with fewer sappy love ballads - none, to be exact. It's a short (30:11), eight-song album with a couple of instrumentals and a couple of songs in English. (Actually, "Willie Baby" is half in English, half in Spanish.) The vocals are by Hector Lavoe, and he's as good as he's reputed to have been. Though he doesn't sound a damn thing like Marc Anthony, so it's no wonder that friggin' biopic, El Cantante, got disappeared. Does anybody know what happened to it? Is it out on DVD? Is it supposed to hit theaters, like, ever? Anyway, this is not a "pure" salsa record; it's got some bugalu tracks and other stuff like that, one of which, "Willie Whopper," would be my favorite track on the album if the (English) lyrics weren't so dumb. It's got some great organ, and handclaps. I like handclaps. My absolute favorite track on El Malo is the title cut, which has tons of energy from Lavoe and terrific, almost distorted trombone blowing from Colón. I also really dig the piano on "Skinny Papa." Every track on this album has something to recommend it; I love the florid backing/chorus vocals on "Chonqui," plus it's got an almost free-jazz piano breakdown (as in, it sounds like the keys are gonna break off the instrument if it goes on much longer). Then there's a pause, and the whole band comes back in, with Colón blasting air into and out of his trombone like he's got a small rodent trapped in the bell or something. "Chonqui" is probably the dramatic high point of the album. The closing track, "Quimbombo," is (just) another high-speed, high-energy workout to finish things off, with the whole band playing at the top of their abilities. There's no reason in the world not to own this album. I'm very glad I do.

PART 6: CHARLIE PALMIERI

2007-04-09T11:52:00.001-07:00

Well, we've hit our first stumbling block. Charlie Palmieri's El Gigante del Teclado is the first in this series of albums to leave no impression on me whatsoever. I'm not saying it's a bad record (he can certainly play, as "Sedante de Rhumba" makes very clear), but there's nothing unique or particularly interesting about it, to my ear. The seven songs all sort of blend together - except for "Que Se Vaya," which busts out the heavy reverb and finds Palmieri switching from piano to organ - in a way that makes me think of cruise-ship music. The album cover has that same effect - there's Charlie's big grinnin' head, and okay, but is there any larger significance to this record beyond innocuous, temporary listener pleasure? Sure, there are plenty of circumstances under which that's enough and more, but not for me, not right now. Most of the records I heard last week had, if not "hidden depths" per se, at least the impact of revelation. Maybe it's because the novelty of listening to salsa and related musics has worn off and only now am I starting to consider these discs on their own merits, but I don't think so. There was a lot of good stuff last week. This one is pretty good, but it's nowhere near as world-shaking (my world, anyway) as La Lupe Es La Reina was, or Siembra, or even Recordando El Ayer for that matter. Tomorrow, I'm gonna hedge my bets and go with something I feel confident will slap my head around - Willie Colón's El Malo. (BTW, I dug through the Colón section of my local CD store this weekend, and just about every album I saw was working that silly musician-as-gangster/trombone-as-Tommy-gun thing. I can see that being cool for one record, but there were at least a half dozen, it seemed to me, and they were probably all recorded within a three-year span. I'm just sayin' - get a new gimmick.)

PART 5: LA LUPE

2007-04-06T10:01:00.001-07:00

Today's selection is La Lupe's La Lupe Es La Reina. And damn right she is. Lupe's voice is ferocious; she's like a Spanish-language Shirley Bassey - in fact, the first two songs on this album, "Puro Teatro" and "Sueño," begin with string-and-horn fanfares that sound straight copped from "Goldfinger" and/or the James Bond theme. Total mid-'60s spy-jazz orchestration, and that roar over the top. "La Lupe" is the wrong name for her; she should be called "La Leona" (the Lioness). She looks kinda like Eartha Kitt in the cover photo, and she totally tears into every song on this album. The only ones I don't like are the final two. "That's The Way It's Gonna Be" finds her singing in English, a huge mistake because her accent is cartoonishly thick, and there's no way she can sell the meaning of the lyrics when you can't stop snickering at her pronunciation. And "Guaguanco Bembe" abandons the orchestral, smooth-but-furious production of the rest of the album for some straight Afro-Cuban drumming 'n' chanting. This was a very personal thing for her, I guess, because she was apparently a big believer in Santería (at least, until converting to evangelical Christianity late in life) and wanted that to be reflected in the album, but it's a bad way to end the disc. Anyway, I really like this kind of super-strong female vocal, or any female singer who presents a tough front, whether that's matched by vocal histrionics or not. Joan Jett, Angela Gossow from Arch Enemy, Bebe, Shirley Bassey, India, Amy Winehouse, female flamenco singers, whatever...don't gimme no wispy singer-songwriters, gimme an ass-kicking chick who'll shout you through the wall. I got one other album by La Lupe in this box of Fania discs (La Reina de Canción Latina), and if it's as good as this one, I'm gonna buy a bunch more when this project winds down. She rules.

PART 4: CELIA, JOHNNY, JUSTO & PAPO

2007-04-06T10:00:00.001-07:00

Celia, Johnny, Justo & Papo: Recordando El Ayer. Now this is what I was talking about w/r/t salsa vocals in the first post in this series. Celia Cruz had one of the biggest voices in all of music, and on this album she absolutely blows the walls down, accompanied by male vocalist Justo Betancourt (one of whose albums I'll get to sometime soon, I guess; it's in the pile). It's an insanely bright and upbeat album from the first blaring horn notes of "Besito de Coco" on. Betancourt sings with almost as much force as Cruz sometimes, but other times his voice is kinda nasal and subdued, which I don't really dig. But the percussion and horns are absolutely relentless, and even more interestingly, there's some great guitar on this album. On "Se Que Tu," the guy sounds like he's playing a plywood box strung with piano wire; my fingertips started to hurt in sympathy pangs the way he was whacking away at the thing about the 2 1/2 minute mark. If you don't like salsa, this is exactly the kind of album you would absolutely not want your downstairs or upstairs neighbor to own, because it's big, brash, and pretty much demands to be played at top volume. A couple of years ago, this kind of thing could have inspired me to fits of homicidal rage (because I almost certainly would have encountered it booming through the walls and/or floor, rather than through my own iPod headphones), but now that I've decided to dive in head-first, I'm really digging it. And wow, that album cover!

PART 3: JOE BATAAN

2007-04-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I listened to Joe Bataan's Riot. Like "Pedro Navaja," from Siembra, it opens with tape of sirens and other city sounds, but that's where the similarities end. This album's from the late '60s, but it actually sounds a few years older than that to me. It's more like a soul record with somebody playing timbales; there are only three songs in Spanish, out of nine, and they're doing versions of songs like "For Your Love," "What Good Is A Castle" and "Daddy's Coming Home" that are straight off some Fifties street corner. In fact, that's the impression that sticks with me most strongly about this album - not how Latin it is, but how New York it is (not like those two are exactly mutually exclusive, but you see what I mean).

At first, I thought the sort-of title track "It's A Good Feeling (Riot)" was gonna be more politically engaged; Bataan starts off talking about how "everybody's doin' it, they're doin' it in Vietnam too" and like that, but then it becomes a straight positive-thinking track, talking about how there's always somebody there to make you feel good no matter how bad things get, and blah de blah de blah. I was looking forward to some kind of ironic pro-rioting anthem, talking about how good it feels to break shit, but no such luck. Anyway, this album reminds me of a bunch of songs I've heard before (and I'm not talking about the original recordings of some of the tunes covered), but I can't remember exactly which ones. What it really reminds me of most, though, is some soul singer from the Lee Marvin movie Point Blank. There's this amazing scene where Marvin goes into a club while this guy is performing, goes backstage, gets jumped by some other thug, and just whips the living shit out of the guy. It's an absolutely savage beating, one of my favorite movie fight scenes of all time, and the director, John Boorman, keeps cutting back to the singer, who's just screaming and howling like he's possessed or something. And I feel like some of the songs on Riot, especially the Spanish-language ones like "Muñeca" or "Mambo de Bataan," could have worked just as well in that context. At the same time, there's a lot of energy even in the sappy romantic songs like "My Cloud" and "Daddy's Coming Home," and the raw feel of it is pure New York. Another winner - three for three so far. Me likey the musica Latina.

PART 2: EDDIE PALMIERI/CAL TJADER

2007-04-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I listened to Bamboleate, a collaboration between pianist Eddie Palmieri and vibes player Cal Tjader. It's almost entirely instrumental, except for a couple of tracks with vocals on the choruses (the title track, which also opens the disc, and "Mi Montuno"). It's pretty short; eight songs in just over 33 minutes, and frankly I could easily have listened to another half hour of this stuff. Good thing there's a companion volume, El Sonido Nuevo, released on Verve with Tjader's name first (as opposed to this one, which gives Palmieri top billing). I haven't heard that, but I'm definitely gonna check it out based on what I've got here. I think my favorite track is "Resemblance," which is a modal jazz tune somewhere between Dave Brubeck and Coltrane's original studio recording of "My Favorite Things." Most of the album is horn-free, or limits them to accents, keeping the piano and vibes the dominant voices, which I like, though there's some excellent trombone work on a couple of tracks, particularly "Samba do Suenho" and the album closer, "Come An' Get It," which is a hard-swinging, funky tune almost like something off a mid-60s Lee Morgan album. Nice. I'm definitely gonna be keeping this album in my iPod after this little period of self-education is over.

PART 1: WILLIE COLON/RUBEN BLADES

2007-04-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

So I've decided to spend the entire month of April digging into the aforementioned huge pile of salsa, bugalu and Latin jazz CDs I got from Fania Records - one disc per day. I'm sure you're even more excited to know that I'll be posting my rambling, uninformed impressions right here, for your reading displeasure! Let's begin with the first album I listened to, while waiting in line at the post office on Monday morning: Siembra, by Willie Colón and Rubén Blades.

Siembra doesn't start out like a salsa album, or at least not like what I was expecting one to sound like. It begins with a thick funk bassline, with big swooping strings, some percussion, "woo-woo" background vocals...it's a straight funk song until about the 30- or 45-second mark. Then it gets full-on salsa, the rhythm changing as Colón's trombone starts shadowing Blades' vocals. My Spanish (which I'm working on at present) isn't nearly good enough to follow what he's on about, but the song's called "Plástico," and he's talking about a woman, so I'm assuming she's some sort of woman with plastic values who enjoys materialism more than spirituality, or whatever. I'm not a huge fan of Blades' vocals; at least based on this evidence, his range is kinda narrow, and he sounds like he's just telling a story rather than really singing out. I mean, he's a better singer than I am, in English or Spanish or any language, but he doesn't have the wall-toppling vocal power I was kind of expecting from a salsa record. He's more of a wry commentator than a belter.

Anyway, the second song, "Buscando Guayaba," is mellower, with some great piano. One of the things that kept me from listening to salsa for years was the piano sound - I just couldn't tolerate it. I was too into out-jazz piano (Cecil Taylor, Matt Shipp, Dave Burrell, and Bobby Few in particular) and the way those guys pounded the keys made the more lilting Latin sound annoying to me. On the other hand, I really love the bright horn sound in Latin music. When I briefly attempted the trumpet, that was what I really wanted to achieve - that blaring, brassy sound mariachi and salsa trumpeters all seemed to have. Back to "Buscando Guayaba" - it doesn't stay mellow, it gets going pretty strong, especially around the four-minute mark, when Colón and the other trombone player start roaring, one in each speaker.

The third track, "Pedro Navaja," is another story-song, this time with a very New York feel. It's got police sirens and street dialogue and sound effects in the background, like Stevie Wonder's "Living For The City," but the first verse is all Blades singing over soft hand percussion. The piece builds gradually, until by the end the whole band has come in and they're really ripping it up like a Latinsploitation movie soundtrack. Track four, though, is really weird and experimental. Remember what I was just saying about the piano? Well, forget it. "Maria Lionza" starts with these huge clanging piano chords like Cecil himself slamming the lid on his own fingers. This track's got a stomping rhythm, with guys in the back going "Huh!" really loud like angry dwarves in a coal mine, and the whole track is soaked in reverb - it's really weird and ominous-sounding, which is all the more baffling considering that as far as I can tell the lyrics are straight love stuff. But, of course, I could be totally wrong. The next two tracks, "Ojos" and "Dime," are probably the straightest ones on the whole record. They're enjoyable enough, rhythmically propulsive and all that, with nice work by the whole band, but they don't stand out like the weird-ass shit that's come before. They're just a lead-in to the title track, which ends the disc. It's another big soundtracky song full of strings and drama, with Blades claiming he's the conscience of Latinos or something as it gets started, and an all-male background chorus that takes a lot of the vocal weight. Still, this is probably Blades' best vocal on the whole record. At the end, he and Colón start talking a little bit, thanking the other for being on the record, and then it all ends abruptly, with one last blast of the trombone.

This is a pretty killin' record, much weirder and less orthodox than I'd expected a sort of big-names summit conference album to be. I don't know how it's gonna wind up coloring my impressions of all the other stuff.

THE BEGINNING

2007-04-06T09:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know jack about salsa. It's one of the big gaps in my musical self-education; I think I've probably heard more polka songs than salsa songs. But that's about to change, in a big way. I just got a serious hookup, courtesy of the PR firm that handles Emusica's reissues of the Fania Records catalog: a box containing 27 of said reissues, and three 2CD compilations by names even I recognize as huge in the genre. Here's what landed in my lap (almost literally) today:

Ray Barretto, Aqui Se Puede
Ray Barretto, Irresistible
Ray Barretto, Que Viva La Musica (2CD compilation)
Joe Battan, Riot
Justo Betancourt, Pa Bravo Yo
Willie Colón, El Malo
Willie Colón, Lo Mato
Willie Colón, The Player (2CD compilation)
Willie Colón & Ruben Blades, Siembra
Celia Cruz & Tito Puente, Homenaje A Beny Moré
Celia, Johnny, Justo & Papo, Recordando El Ayer
Fania All-Stars, Live At The Cheetah Vol. 1
Cheo Feliciano, Cheo
Cheo Feliciano, Estampas
Hector Lavoe, Comedia
La Lupe, Es La Reina
La Lupe, Reina De La Cancion Latina
Johnny Pacheco, Pacheco Y Su Charanga
Johnny Pacheco, El Maestro (2CD compilation)
Charlie Palmieri, El Gigante Del Teclado
Eddie Palmieri, Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Palmieri/Cal Tjader, Bamboleate
Tito Puente & His Orchestra, Ce' Magnifique
Ricardo Ray & Bobby Cruz, Aguzate
Ismael Rivera, De Todas Maneras Rosas
Pete "El Conde" Rodriguez, El Rey
Roberto Roena, Roberto Roena Y Su Apollo Sound 6
Adalberto Santiago, Adalberto
Sonora Ponceña, Future

So far, all I've listened to is the Willie Colón disc (another copy of which arrived, all by itself, a few days ago), but it's pretty great. I remember being vaguely annoyed by salsa's piano sound some years ago, which led me to shrug off the genre. But now it doesn't bother me, for some reason. And the horns have a gleam that blows me away, no pun intended. So I'm actually really looking forward to checking all this stuff out, even if it takes me the rest of spring and summer. (And the Fania folks say they're going to keep sending more reissues, as they release them! It's a never-ending stream of salsa for me, it seems, at least for the near future.)