Latin music!
I have a theory, which you're all free to disprove, that nobody with a pulse can overtly dislike Latin music. You can not particularly care to listen to it on any sort of regular basis, or maybe you like it enough when you come across it but it doesn't occur to you to listen to it by choice, but I can't imagine it's possible to hear this stuff and be like "oh, ick! I hate this shit." You can't; there's too much life in it. Note that this is coming from a guy who's not exactly known as one of the community's more effusive folks. But as I sit here and try to think of times that I've been bored or annoyed by Latin music, I'm really reaching here. I suppose one instance would be listening to a high school jazz lab or something have to play some beginners' chart with a dumbass patronizing name like "El Taco Loco" or something, and the logbumps in the rhythm section can't even be arsed to bang two measly claves together with anything resembling conviction. Okay, so that sucks, but that's not the kind of stuff we're talking about. Oh, and reggaeton is a blight on music, but I think that's more an outgrowth of hip-hop than it is "Latin music," which generally connotes the good stuff like salsa, samba, bossa nova, MPB, and any strains of Latin jazz not listed that came out of Brazil, P.R., Cuba, and their diasporas. Onward to recommendations, RARs, rrrrrrembedded videos, y mas.
Buena Vista Social Club
Friend lent this to me my freshman year of high school and it's been a favorite since. This comes from a Ry Cooder project wherein he sat in with some old Cuban musicians. I'd always just thuoght of this as being "Cuban music" and that's it, but that's a foolish categoriziation for obvious reasons. Apparently this is actually an example of a pre-revolutionary style called "son," which fuses Spanish and AFrican infleucnes, as you'd expect any Cuban music to do, though this is generally made of simpler arrangements, mostly relying on piano, guitar, bass, and percussion. My favorite track here is "Pueblo Nuevo," which manages to form an awesome full-song crescendo without getting crowded or sloppy or otherwise out of hand. Hard to go wrong with this one.
Ray Barretto - Hard Hands
NYC-via-PR salsa music that fuses Latin with American jazz and soul. The titular "hard hands" are what you should develop by playing the living hell out of the congas, which all over this one. Personal aside: congas are fun as hell to play, and so are bongos and timbales, for that matter, because even if you're totally irretrievably lost at a drum set as I certainly am, almost anyone can pull off a pair of drums at least adequately (except, as mentioned, wholly extraneous assholes in rhythm sections of high school bands). Anyway, leadoff title track is a joy, a flurry of drums and catchy horn lines. "Love Beads" is just as good, but it features the piano/bass/horns more than the percussion. "New York Soul" is the best fusion of styles on the album, appropriately, with some lyrics and "Good God!"s that don't really mean anything, but a hell of a beat throughout. Probably one of my favorite Latin albums of all.
Marcos Ariel & Grupo Usina - O Malabarista
This is from the early 1980s, and at times I suppose it falls into the perilous trappings of 1980s jazz with those awful synth-pads beanth sax solos, but for the most part, this is mile-a-minute samba (almost certainly sped up but I want to believe it's not) with lots of electric piano and saxophones, interspersed with calmer atmospheric stuff. I wouldn't call this a seminal recording by any means, but it's a rarity I found and grew to love.
h==p://rapidshare=com/files/99746407/Marcos_Ariel___Grupo_Usina.rar
Jorge Ben - A Tábua de Esmeralda
Remaining in Brazil, this is an example of MPB, or "Brazilian popular music," which, as best I can tell, is a sort of then-sub-mainstream music championed by students and the counterculture that also relies heavily on traditional national music. I suppose this rough comparison makes Jorge Ben sort of a Brazilian Bob Dylan, and this his Blonde on Blonde, a bold psychedelic reimagining of the people's music. Except for "Brother," which is in English, everything is in Portuguese, and almost two years later, I still haven't bothered to look up the translations. I guess it doesn't really matter to me! Here's the albums' best track, "Errare Humanum Est."
Jorge Ben Jor - Errare Humanum Est .wmv
I like the stuff I have and have played, but my collection is neither exhaustive nor comprehensive (though I do have more than four albums, c'mon), so if anyone else would like to step forth with Latin stuff they like, please do!
I have a theory, which you're all free to disprove, that nobody with a pulse can overtly dislike Latin music. You can not particularly care to listen to it on any sort of regular basis, or maybe you like it enough when you come across it but it doesn't occur to you to listen to it by choice, but I can't imagine it's possible to hear this stuff and be like "oh, ick! I hate this shit." You can't; there's too much life in it. Note that this is coming from a guy who's not exactly known as one of the community's more effusive folks. But as I sit here and try to think of times that I've been bored or annoyed by Latin music, I'm really reaching here. I suppose one instance would be listening to a high school jazz lab or something have to play some beginners' chart with a dumbass patronizing name like "El Taco Loco" or something, and the logbumps in the rhythm section can't even be arsed to bang two measly claves together with anything resembling conviction. Okay, so that sucks, but that's not the kind of stuff we're talking about. Oh, and reggaeton is a blight on music, but I think that's more an outgrowth of hip-hop than it is "Latin music," which generally connotes the good stuff like salsa, samba, bossa nova, MPB, and any strains of Latin jazz not listed that came out of Brazil, P.R., Cuba, and their diasporas. Onward to recommendations, RARs, rrrrrrembedded videos, y mas.
Buena Vista Social Club
Friend lent this to me my freshman year of high school and it's been a favorite since. This comes from a Ry Cooder project wherein he sat in with some old Cuban musicians. I'd always just thuoght of this as being "Cuban music" and that's it, but that's a foolish categoriziation for obvious reasons. Apparently this is actually an example of a pre-revolutionary style called "son," which fuses Spanish and AFrican infleucnes, as you'd expect any Cuban music to do, though this is generally made of simpler arrangements, mostly relying on piano, guitar, bass, and percussion. My favorite track here is "Pueblo Nuevo," which manages to form an awesome full-song crescendo without getting crowded or sloppy or otherwise out of hand. Hard to go wrong with this one.
Ray Barretto - Hard Hands
NYC-via-PR salsa music that fuses Latin with American jazz and soul. The titular "hard hands" are what you should develop by playing the living hell out of the congas, which all over this one. Personal aside: congas are fun as hell to play, and so are bongos and timbales, for that matter, because even if you're totally irretrievably lost at a drum set as I certainly am, almost anyone can pull off a pair of drums at least adequately (except, as mentioned, wholly extraneous assholes in rhythm sections of high school bands). Anyway, leadoff title track is a joy, a flurry of drums and catchy horn lines. "Love Beads" is just as good, but it features the piano/bass/horns more than the percussion. "New York Soul" is the best fusion of styles on the album, appropriately, with some lyrics and "Good God!"s that don't really mean anything, but a hell of a beat throughout. Probably one of my favorite Latin albums of all.
Marcos Ariel & Grupo Usina - O Malabarista
This is from the early 1980s, and at times I suppose it falls into the perilous trappings of 1980s jazz with those awful synth-pads beanth sax solos, but for the most part, this is mile-a-minute samba (almost certainly sped up but I want to believe it's not) with lots of electric piano and saxophones, interspersed with calmer atmospheric stuff. I wouldn't call this a seminal recording by any means, but it's a rarity I found and grew to love.
h==p://rapidshare=com/files/99746407/Marcos_Ariel___Grupo_Usina.rar
Jorge Ben - A Tábua de Esmeralda
Remaining in Brazil, this is an example of MPB, or "Brazilian popular music," which, as best I can tell, is a sort of then-sub-mainstream music championed by students and the counterculture that also relies heavily on traditional national music. I suppose this rough comparison makes Jorge Ben sort of a Brazilian Bob Dylan, and this his Blonde on Blonde, a bold psychedelic reimagining of the people's music. Except for "Brother," which is in English, everything is in Portuguese, and almost two years later, I still haven't bothered to look up the translations. I guess it doesn't really matter to me! Here's the albums' best track, "Errare Humanum Est."
Jorge Ben Jor - Errare Humanum Est .wmv
I like the stuff I have and have played, but my collection is neither exhaustive nor comprehensive (though I do have more than four albums, c'mon), so if anyone else would like to step forth with Latin stuff they like, please do!
