Bunch of new Latin releases that look promising (though Descarga does tend to make almost everything sound good)

Hmmmm. Don't know about those but am wondering if I should get NY outfit Los Soneros Del Barrio's new cd "Siguiendo la tradicion" (Rumba Jams) with vet salsa vocalist Frankie Vazquez, and go see and dance to 'em in DC at VIP Friday night. Brit dj and The Beat magazine writer Dave Hucker calls it one of the cds of the year, and the promoter of the gig has raved about the cd and Vazquez's local appearances with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. The show is free, as is Eddie Palmieri's outdoor Appearance Saturday at Taste of DC. Also, have you heard recent Latin efforts by Africando-"Martina" and by Ricardo Lemvo-"Ay Valeria"??? They've gotten good ink as well.

these all sound fine but
the equation of "Latin"
with "salsa": meh.

Sorry for the shorthand...I guess you wouldn't have liked Hispanic either...Like using "black music" it's an easy simplified way of describing something though of course such terms encompasse much wider musical spectrums...

Hucker in the Beat Magazine praises certain salsa and timba discs while noting such styles are seemingly a tad retro in today's Spanish-speaking mainstream music world. As for staying contemporary, my recent viewings of MTV Espanol were pretty disappointing--lots of bland bombastic pop with Spanish lyrics. I need to check out the above instead, whether its part of a cultual mainstream or not.

Are there any other salsa fans on this site?

I wonder how we can make it cool...Or is it just another hanging on purists genre like blues that's not relevant in the Outkast/Dizzee/White Stripes world

Or maybe cause the lyrics are in Spanish ...

Plus the hip blogs aren't interested...

MTV en espanol doesn't care either. They mostly just offer Spanish-language pop that incorporates all of the worst elements of English language western pop--bombastic melodramatic choruses, unfunky synth work...A few good things slip in and then there's the rock en espanol acts that all seem to have listened to the same ska, rap, and rap-rock acts...

oh steve don't go there,
lumping everything in;
that way madness lies

their "ska" is our "rock",
it's a basic element
don't hate on it please

plus it's natural:
cumbia is polka which
is ska's hick cousin

bersuit, cadillacs,
el gran silencio are
three of our BEST BANDS

and if we're slamming
ethnic musicks for their traits
let's try salsa first

Steve, the things I've heard from the last Soneros del Barrio album sound good to me. The best that I've heard from them has been better, imo, than anything on the Spanish Harlem Orchestra CD, which never really took off. I don't like most of the Africando I've heard, aside from the club remix of "Yay Boy," which is great, so I haven't been interested in investigating their newest.

Trying to make things cool is generally hopeless, and likely to simply make matters worse. At any rate, it's primarily dance music, probably moreso now than in the 70's.

I just recently discovered The Beat's coverage of Latin music and it's not bad.

How is White Stripes not playing a "hanging on purist genre," or was that the point?

Haikunym,

I'll post about the Latin music that interests me. Regardless, not all of these CDs are salsa. I wouldn't label the last three that way. People who are fans of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Colombian music aren't necessarily going to care for Mexican music, which is very different, isn't clave based, and hasn't developed any uniquely Mexican genres with African roots (as far as I am aware of). Maybe I should get into the habit of saying "Afro-Latin"? It's a very different tradition. (Granted, there is Mexican salsa, merengue, and cumbia, which all have African roots.)

and if we're slamming
ethnic musicks for their traits
let's try salsa first

What does this mean? "For their traits"?

There's more to writing a haiku than following a 5/7/5 syllable pattern, incidentally.

hey al thanks so much
for the haiku "lesson" but
duh, okay, I know.

as for latin stuff,
my post was not to slam on you, yo. it just seems like "latin" music on ILM has to be cuban or salsa-based for anyone to give a shit about it at all...you go ahead and post about any damn music you want, that's fine, that's not what I was getting at anyway, and some of these records sound great to me.

I'm no musicologist, so I don't really know or care what has "african" roots at all, other than all the music in this hemisphere. and yeah, that includes ranchera, bolero, tex-mex, norteno, and all the other music in s.america, even (and this was steve's point not yours, so I wasn't harshing on you) rock en espanol, which uses the very african ska and reggae beats as basically as salsa uses its claves.

and yeah, I should learn more about cuban-derived musics before I get all anti-snobby about it. just because the latin grammys and the estefan braintrust are helping everyone ignore the s.american stuff I love doesn't mean I should talk shit. cuban musics all sound samey to me, but that might be my fault, not theirs.

sorry for the long post.

Haikunym, I really thought you were talking about my use of "Latin" in the thread title.

it just seems like "latin" music on ILM has to be cuban or salsa-based for anyone to give a shit about it at all

Really? I don't get that impression. I start most of the salsa threads around here. I guess it's true though that recently deceased high-profile figures like Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Compay Segundo, Mongo Santamaria, etc. get a fair amount of attention. But it seems like I see a lot more of the mainstream ILM (my ILM stereotyping never dies, it just gets cranked out for rhetorical purposes, as needed) posters mentioning El Gran Silencio, for example, than any new Cuban music or current salsa bands. Anyway, I think most critics writing about rock/hip-hop/electronica are more likely to feel at home with El Gran Silencio than with salsa. El Gran Silencio could conceivably turn up on Chuck Eddy's end of the year best of list, but what are the chances of that happening with any salsa or timba? (You never can be completely sure with Chuck, but I'd say that there is a pattern of his going for Latin American music that has a fair amount of continuity with rock.)

If anything I think that any type of Latin music that draws on hip-hop, reggae/dancehall, ragga, and electronica is going to fare much better in the current Anglo- pop climate than salsa! I just think it's funny to hear someone complaining about Afro-Cuban/salsa being dominant (even if only on ILM), while hip-hop continues to penetrate to places that probably haven't even been reached yet by Christian evangelists.

I'm no musicologist, but any connection between "ranchera, tex-mex, norteno" and African rhythms is very tenuous, based on what I've heard about it, and what little I've heard of it. I think it's pretty commonly agreed that cumbia has African roots, and it certainly felt that way when I took a workship in folkloric cumbia dance, but I've also read that Mexican cumbia tends to be further removed from the African strands in that music than Colombian cumbia is.

I hear what you are saying about ska/reggae and rock music, but I meant that I don't know of any genres (certainly none that have become popular) that developed in Mexico, out of a meeting of African elements brought directly to Mexico by African slaves, with European and indigenous cultural elements. (Fixating on Mexico because I know that at least two of the bands you mentioned are from there. I think I know that, anyway.) Also, again though I'm no musicologist, my understanding is that a larger portion of African rhythmic tradition was preserved in Latin America than in North America, so I don't think rock or even (non-Latin, no workshops with Olatunji) jazz are as closely connected to African approaches as most Afro-Latin forms of music.

And the point is not that being derived from Africa is some sort of a trump card, but that there are good musical reasons why someone could be interested in Afro-Cuban/Afro-Boricua (it may be a misnomer, but it flows better than Afro-Puerto Rican) and Afro-Colombian music, while not being interested in regional Mexican forms. But then I guess you would agree with that, since your tastes run in the opposite direction. They are different enough from each other that there's no reason to assume that the audience for one bunch of genres is going to overlap significantly with the audience for another bunch of them.

(I thought bolero was originally Cuban, but maybe that's wrong.)

Could we change the name of this board to I Love Mambo?

I'm a little bored today, incidentally.

Sorry about that. But Let me second your above statement about non-salsa based sounds getting more play here, while also mentioning to Haikunym that I didn't mean to hate on all rock n espanol--just some of the most conventional by-the-numbers stuff I've been seeing and hearing. I like some songs from Rabanes who seem fairly conventional and need to check out El Gran Silencio more closely. I like lots of different Mexican artists--though mostly of the more roots traditional variety.

Haikunym, interesting you should just mention cumbia and its relation to ska and polka as I just saw the Laredo, Texas formed-Austin-based mostly all Mexican-American Grupo Fantasma do a nice set of mostly all cumbia(although the singing was just ok). They told me afterwards that they're into old-school Colombian cumbia as well as cumbia they've heard in a few surviving dive bars across the borders which they say are attended largely by dancers and hookers.

The White Stripes have become popular by taking blues, albeit secondhand filtered through garage and Led Zep, into popularity--yea, I'm not sure if that's how I'd like to see salsa or cumbia reach more folks(or maybe that would be ok...I'm not sure)...

al and steve: much love
this is good, discourse is good,
you are both good guys*

*as far as I know
by the way, the other two
groups are argentine