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About Thomas Grond
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European Music and Salsa. Head of the news dept. of the only swiss Music TV. Specialised in European Music and Hardrock.

You are here: Experts > Music/Performing Arts > Music by Category/Genre & Music Instruction > Musical Genres--Folk, Jazz, Sountracks, More > Afro-Cuban music/culture

Musical Genres--Folk, Jazz, Sountracks, More - Afro-Cuban music/culture

Expert: Thomas Grond - 11/10/2006

Question
I'm doing a report on the impact of the trombone on Afro-Cuban music/culture and I dont know where to start. Could you point me in the right direction?

Answer
Dear Erica

All I could find on the fast track is copied in right below. Hope that that will help you for a start. Otherwise just come back a I will try to find more info.

Cheers and good luck
Thomas
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Latin Beat Magazine, Oct, 2002 by Luis Tamargo
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FXV/is_8_12/ai_93700223

Juan Pablo Torres: the Cuban trombone emancipator
Regarded by this writer as the primary heir of the historical Cuban trombone triumvirate comprised of Generoso "El Tojo" Jiménez, Leopoldo "Pucho" Escalante, and the unfairly forgotten professor Antonio Linares, Juan Pablo Torres has become the most influential post-1959 Cuban trombonist, as documented in a commentary offered by Leonardo Acosta about the impact made in Havana by Emiliano Salvador's favorite homebody from Puerto Padre over three decades ago, when he shared the Orquesta de Música Moderna's jazz trombone solos with none other than the mischievous Pucho (also known as "El Cabezón," or Bighead): "Torres' presence was in harmony with the growing prosperity of the trombone in Cuban music, and it could be stated that more front-line trombonists have appeared in this country in the years to follow than in the previous three decades." The following interview with the Miami-based slide emancipator covers numerous subjects, from the trombone's earliest criollo roles to the super-son and J.J. Johnson tribute projects scheduled in the near future ...
LUIS TAMARGO: It appears that the presence of the trombone in Cuban popular music can be traced back to the colonial orquestas típicas.
JUAN PABLO TORRES: The old military bands, with their profusion of brass instruments provided the original flavor for such sonority and gave rise to the orchestras composed of two clarinets, cornet, valve or slide trombone, and ophicleide. This instrumental combination--known as orquesta típica (typical orchestra) or orquesta de viento (brass orchestra) assimilated two violins in order to achieve some harmonic binding and fill the rhythmic plane at the same time, by means of rhythmically repeated double strings. A double bass reinforced the Iow register, as the ophicleide was known to go off into virtuosi flourishes. The güiro lent a criollo sonorousness, and the Cuban timbal or paila offered additional percussion. The orquesta típica emerged and was developed during the 18th century, when it gave rise to the utilization of the trombone in Cuban popular music.
LT: Said instrumental format proliferated even more during the 19th century, when various orquestas típicas were led by native trombonists, including Raimundo Valenzuela, whose original repertoire included zarzuelas (Spanish operettas) and chamber music, as well as contradanzas, danzones, guarachas and rumbas.
JPT: That orchestral repertoire was written and performed by Gabriel Cisneros, Pedro "Perico" Rojas, José Claro Fumero, Jacobo Rubalcaba, and many others, but it is unquestionable that Raimundo Valenzuela was the most renowned trombonist of that era. It was not until the first half of the 20th century, starting with the early recordings of the New Orleans Dixieland bands, that the trombone came into the spotlight. Starting from then, one witnessed the formation of the history of the trombone as an interpreting instrument. The history of the valve trombone in Cuba was developed together with the history of U.S. jazz. The North American big bands, known in Cuba as "orquestas gigantes," employed a trombone section. The U.S. big bands led by Duke Ellington, Count Basle, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey, among others, paved the way for 0rquesta Riverside, Hermanos Castro, Hermanos Palau, etc. Not to mention the famous house bands of the Sans Souci and Tropicana casinos.
LT: In his "Diccionario de jazz latino," Nat Chediak has categorized Pucho Escalante as "el padre del trombón de jazz en Cuba" (the founding father of the jazz trombone in Cuba).
JPT: Pucho Escalante was the one who took the reins during the first half and the early part of the second half of the 20th century as composer, interpreter and orchestral director of Cuban jazz, along with his famous nonet, and he is regarded as a pioneer of said genre. There were other trombonists--Jorge Rojas, Alberto Giral, Onésimo Jiménez, Antonio Linares, Modesto Echarte, etc--who helped to create the trombone section within the realm of Cuba's jazz scene, but Pucho was always the most prominent Cuban jazz trombonist. On the other hand, Benny Moré's big band facilitated the birth of a Cuban form of improvisation personalized by "el trombón majadero" (the mischievous trombone) of Generoso "El Tojo" Jiménez. It was acknowledged when Benny declared: "¡Generoso, que bueno toca usted!" (Generoso, you play so well!)
LT: One should not ignore, of course, the historical mission of Antonio Linares, who trained so many Cuban trombonists of our times.
JPT: The other side of the coin corresponds precisely to Linares, who was featured for a long time as the trombone soloist of Cuba's National Symphonic Orchestra, while performing many trombone solos for Tejedor's conjunto and other popular groups. More than anything else, Linares was destined to educate many of the contemporary Cuban trombonists. Unfortunately, this type of endeavor is hardly ever acknowledged.
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A brief history of the Latin trombone
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FXV/is_n2_v8/ai_20459306
Latin Beat Magazine, March, 1998 by Luis Tamargo

CREOLE TROMBONES AND BRASS DEBATES
Although Cuba has given birth to an endless number of prominent pianists, bassists, flautists, saxophonists, trumpeters, percussionists, and vocalists, the undisputed mecca of Latin music has not produced an equivalent contingent of talented trombonists. In fact, Paquito D'Rivera satirically declared once that Cuba has had "a crop of trombonists almost as poor as the agricultural and industrial index maintained by Castro's regime since 1959." Fortunately, there have been a few exceptions to the rule.
The trombone was already present in the orquestas típicas, the now extinct Cuban orchestras that can be traced back to the end of the 18th century. A trombonist was usually found in every orquesta típica, a format primarily designed to perform contradanzas, danzones, and other ancestral dance forms. In fact, one of the most famous orquestas típicas was founded in 1877 by trombonist Raimundo Valenzuela. The orquestas típicas began to decline in the 1920s, as they were gradually replaced by charangas and so-called jazz bands.
Unlike the traditional charanga, the Cuban orchestras known as "jazz bands" employed trombone players. During the 1940s-1950s, the "jazz band" format became increasingly popular in the island. At the same time, a few native trombonists (Pucho Escalante, Jorge Rojas, Alberto Giral, etc.) began to fuse U.S. jazz and Cuban rhythms.

By the late 1940s, Generoso "Tojo" Jiménez established the big masculine sound that would serve as a basic guideline for future Latin trombonists. From 1953 to 1963, Tojo played a vital part in the development of Benny More's Banda Gigante, which revolutionized the "jazz band" format. Tojo's improvisational flair was illustrated on Moré's classic descarga Qué bueno baila usted, as well as on two other descargas (Trombón Criollo and Controversia de Metales) included in Cachao's landmark album Cachao y su Ritmo Caliente, recorded in 1957 for Panart. Born in Cruces (Las Villas Province) in 1917, Tojo even recorded an album as a leader (Trombón Majadero), which displayed his distinctive and influential trombone solos.
In 1967, Armando Romeu was chosen to lead the Orquesta Cubana de Música Moderna (OCMM), an all-star big band which included a 3-trombone line. The OCMM served as training ground for several distinguished trombonists, such as Juan Pablo Torres and Lázaro González.
Regarded as the most important trombonist that has emerged from Cuba since 1959, Torres formed the instrumental group Algo Nuevo in 1976, and later became renowned as the musical director of Estrellas de Areito. Following the lead of Paquito D'Rivera, Arturo Sandoval and other musical defectors, Torres left Cuba a few years ago. Currently based in Miami and marketed as "J.P. Torres," he has recorded two albums for Tropijazz (Trombone Man and Pepper Trombone), combining a variety of musical forms - son, rumba, blues, straight-ahead jazz, etc.
By the early 1980s, bassist Juan Formell had transformed Los Van Van's charanga format by assimilating a 3-trombone line led by Lázaro González, also known for his participation in Emiliano Salvador's historic album Nueva Visión. Although I cannot attest to the authenticity of his information, I have been told that González is now residing in South Florida, where he has won a major lottery prize, Happy, happy, joy, joy.
Speaking of charanga transformations, it must be clarified that Formell's former employer, timbalero Elio Revé, also added a trombone line to his charanga, which he now describes as a "charangón," a combination of the Spanish word charanga and trombón. After leaving his job as musical director and keyboardist for Revé's charangón, Juan Carlos Alfonso formed Dan Den, a salsa-influenced 4-trombone conjunto, in 1988.
ELLINGTONIAN CARAVANS AND PUERTO RICAN TONGUE-MISTERS
One could trace the Latin trombone's influence in U.S. jazz all the way back to the 1920s, when San Juan-born trombonist Juan Tizol arrived in New York. Tizol played with Duke Ellington for many years, and composed the famous jazz standard Caravan and other Latin-tinged pieces.
Since the 1960s, one has witnessed the emergence of a series of U.S. based, Latin trombonists (mostly of Puerto Rican origin) who have made significant contributions to the development of Latin jazz, as well as to that of tropical dance music.
There is a dispute, however, as to the true identify of the bandleader who introduced the trombone line in the 1960's New York Latin scene. It could have been Mon Rivera or Charlie Palmieri, the latter of whom formed a "trombanga" (trombones plus charanga) many moons before Juan Formell hired Lázaro González.
A legendary exponent of bomba and plena, Rivera not only led a 4-trombone line, but also became renowned for his unique trabalengua (tongue-twisting) vocal style, a sort of jibaro scat singing.
PERFECTING LA PERFECTA
Ironically, the subsequent emergence of numerous New York trombone conjuntos was motivated by the efforts of a J.J. Johnson-influenced, non-Hispanic trombonist named Barry Rodgers, who became the partial catalyst of Eddie Palmieri's innovations with La Perfecta. He was the most popular trombonist and arranger in Latin music of the sixties and the seventies prior to the emergence of salsa music. Rodgers mas devoted to Afro-Cuban music to the point of mastering the tres, a Cuban 9-string guitar. Palmieri's former timbalero, Manny Oquendo, recalls that "Barry wasn't a natural musician... He would sing coro like a Latino; he didn't hear music like an americano." By replacing the conjunto"s traditional trumpet line with trombones, La Perfecta added a powerful and endearing voice to its music.
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http://www.scaruffi.com/history/latin.html

Latin America has produced a variety of genres born at the crossroads of European folk music, African music and native traditions. While not as popular as the popular music of the USA (also born out of the integration of European music and African music), Latin American genres shares the same characters that made it a universal koine'.
Tango
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
During the "belle epoque" (1890s), the working class of the "Boca" of Buenos Aires (Argentina) invented a new rhythm, the tango. Tan-go was the name given to the drums of the African slaves, and the music was influenced by both the Cuban habanera and the local milonga. The choreography originally devised in the brothels to mimick the obscene and violent relationship between the prostitute, her pimp and a male rival eventually turned into a dance and a style of music of a pessimistic mood, permeated by a fatalistic sense of an unavoidable destiny, a music of sorrow enhanced by the melancholy sound of the bandoneon. When lyrics were added, they drew from "lunfardo", the lingo of the underworld (the term originally meant "thief"). Tango was embraced enthusiastically in Europe and landed in the USA in the 1910s. The Viennese waltz and the Polka had been the first dances to employ the close contact between a male and a female. The tango pushed the envelope in an even more erotic direction. One of the earliest hits of tango was pianist Enrique Saborido's Yo Soy La Morocha (1906). By that time, tango had already established itself as a major genre among young Argentinians. Roberto Firpo is credited as having set the standard in 1913 for all future tango orchestras: the rhythm set by syncopated piano figures, the melodies carried by bandoneon and violin. Firpo's Alma de Bohemio (1914) and Gerardo Hernan Matos Rodriguez's La Cumparsita (1916) were among the early international hits. Bandoneon player Osvaldo Fresedo and violin player Julio de Caro were among the instrumental stars and composers of the 1920s. From his debut with Mi Noche Triste (1917), the song that introduced lyrics into the tango, to his untimely death in 1935, Carlos Gardel was the most charismatic vocalist, the master of erotic abandon. The tango craze took New York by storm during World War I. Rudolph Valentino created an international sensation in a steamy scene of his film "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (1921). But tango became a more intellectual affair during the 1930s, when literate songwriters created more poetic lyrics. Representative musicians of the decade are pianist Osvaldo Pugliese (Recuerdo) and violinist Elvino Vardaro. Bandoneon player Anibal Troilo ruled the 1940s. Tango then became a dogma that allowed very little freedom. It was only in the 1960s that someone dared question the dogma.
Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla (1921) mixed tango with classical music to compose works for bandoneon and orchestra, pieces for bandoneon octets and quintets a tango opera, a tango oratorio, etc.
Son
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
See The 20th century.
Cuba was the starting point for many of the Latin dances. At the beginning of the 20th century, Cuba's main music was the "son", a fusion of Spanish popular music and the African rhythm rumba (first mentioned in 1928 and probably related to the Santeria religion). Traditionally played with tres (guitar), contrabass, bongos and claves (wooden sticks that set the circular rhythm) the son of Cuba was popularized by the likes of Ignacio Pineiro, who had an hit with Echale Salsita (1929), and Miguel Matamores. The danzon, first documented by Miguel Failde Perez's Las Alturas de Simpson (1879), was a descendant of the French "contredanse" or contradanza, and in Cuba's 1920s the danzon became a version of the son for the upper classes, performed by "charangas" (flute and violin orchestras, in which the violin provided the main riff while the flute improvised). Charangas of the golden age include: Orquesta Neno Gonzalez (1926), Orquesta Belisario Lopez (1928), Orquesta de Cheo Belen Puig (1934), Orquesta Aragon (1939), Orquesta America (1942). In the 1930s, Spanish-Cuban bandleader Xavier Cugat (who formed the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra in 1935) was for Latin music what the Beatles were for rock music: his orchestra created the commercial version of Latin music (largely devoid of artistic value but hugely popular) for the western masses. Also during the 1930s, the dance academia of Pierre and Doris Lavelle popularized Latin dancing in Britain (it was Pierre Lavelle who codified the moves of the rumba in 1955 and the moves of the samba in 1956). In the 1940s, Arsenio Rodriguez, a virtuoso of the tres (Cuban guitar), set the standard for the Cuban conjunto (adding congas, piano and trumpets to the traditional guitar-based sexteto) and thus spearheaded a kind of son based on the piano and the congas. For example, Rene' Alvarez, Arsenio's former singer, formed Conjunto Los Astros in 1948, with multiple trumpets and piano.
Cuba's mambo, "invented" (or, better, imported from Congo) by bassist Israel "Cachao" Lopez and by his brother pianist Orestes of the Antonio Arcano's Orquesta Radiofonica with El Danzon Mambo (1937), fused rumba rhythms with big-band jazz, and was epitomized by Damazo Perez Prado's Mambo Jumbo (1948). Basically, the mambo was a danzon for the working class. The chachacha was a midtempo mambo figure that, after the 1953 recording of Enrique Jorrin's La Enganadora (1948) and especially Perez Prado's Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White (1955), became a genre of its own, still performed by charangas (unlike the mambo, that was performed by smaller combos). The mambo became a USA craze in 1954.
"Salseros" were the conjunto groups (brass-driven dance bands) of the 1940s that played a bit of everything. The most celebrated Cuban vocalist of the era was Beny More, from Yiri Yiri Bom (1946) to Maracaibo Oriental (1954).
A fusion of Cuban music and jazz music (or "cubop") became popular after World War II, influencing some of the most important jazz musicians (e.g., Dizzy Gillespie). Puerto Rico pianist Noro Morales was the main practitioner of the quintet for piano and percussion (Bim Bam Bum, 1942; Oye Negra). Frank "Machito" Grillo's Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite (1950) was typical of the genre.
The foundations of post-war Latin music were laid by this generation. Cuban pianist Jose Curbelo played with Cugat and raised Ernesto "Tito" Puente, Ray Barretto and Pablo "Tito" Rodriguez, who raised Eddie Palmieri. American singer Frank "Machito" Grillo played with Cugat and Norales, and then raised Puente.
Trinidad's calypso, first documented by an instrumental recorded in 1912 by by George "Lovey" Bailey's orchestra, was another Latin dance to reach beyond Latin America. Calypso was originally sung in French, but the first recorded calypso song, Julian Whiterose's Iron Duke in the Land (1914), was already in English. Starting with the "Railway Douglas Tent" of Port-of-Spain in 1921, calypso was originally performed in "tents" (temporary dancehalls) during the period before carnival: the term stuck, and came to denote any club playing calypso. Most calypso records are still released just before or during carnival season. Hubert "Roaring Lion" Charles (who also called himself Rafael de Leon) was perhaps the first star, producing the standards Send Your Children to The Orphan's Home (1927), Marry An Ugly Woman (1934), Three Cheers For The Red, White and Blue (1936), Netty Netty (1937) Mary Anne (1945). Other classics of the early era were Raymond "Attila The Hun" Quevedo's West Indian Federation (1933), Women Will Rule the World (1935) and Calypso Behind The Wall, later covered by Belafonte as Jump In The Line, Frederick "Wilmoth Houdini" Hendricks' War Declaration (1934) and He Had It Coming (1939), covered by Louis Jordan as Stone Cold Dead in the Market (1946), Neville "Growling Tiger" Marcano's Money is King (1935), Norman "King Radio" Span's Matilda (1938), Rupert "Lord Invader" Grant's Don't Stop the Carnival (1939) and Rum and Coca Cola (1944), Aldwyn "Lord Kitchener" Roberts' Tie Tongue Mopsy (1946), Irvin Burgie's Day O and Island in the Sun, both covered by Belafonte. They all had to travel to New York in order to record their songs. During the 1940s, Trinidad's musicians developed the concept of the steel band, which dramatically changed the sound of calypso. A 1946 concert in New York, "Calypso at Midnight", organized by Alan Lomax, and Sam Manning's revue Caribbean Carnival (1947), the first calypso show on Broadway, helped establish the genre. But it was in the 1950s that calypso became a "craze" in the USA, thanks mainly to Harry Belafonte's Calypso (1956), one of the first albums to sell over one million copies, that contained Banana Boat Song (1956). Back in Trinidad, Francisco "Mighty Sparrow" Slinger released the first calypso album, Calypso Carnival (1958). Other Trinidad hits of the 1950s included Carlton "Lord Blakie" Joseph's Steelband Clash (1954), Slinger "Mighty Sparrow" Francisco's Jean and Dinah (1956), Fitzroy "Lord Melody" Alexander's Mama Look A Boo Boo (1956). Mighty Sparrow (Ten To One Is Murder, 1960; Dan Is The Man, 1963; Melda, 1966) and, to some extent, Lord Kitchener (The Road, 1963; Rainorama, 1973) continued to dominate during the 1960s. Songs by new artists included Mervyn "Mighty Sniper" Hodge's Portrait of Trinidad (1965) and McCartha "Calypso Rose" Lewis' Fire In Your Wire (1967), the first major hit by a female calypso artist.
In Cuba in 1955, Los Papines fused the violin-based music of charangas and the trumpet-based music of conjuntos Eduardo Davidson's La Pachanga (1959), recorded by Orquesta Sublime, introduced Cuba to a Colombian dance (which was confusingly called "charanga" in the USA). But, as Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba (1959), the epicenter of Latin music moved to other islands and then south. Charanga and pachanga became brief fads in the USA, while the "son" left Cuba and migrated to Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico had its own tradition of "bomba" and "plena", to which percussionist Rafael Cortijo, leader of a conjunto since 1954, had added trumpets and saxophones (El Bombon De Elena). His conjunto and his husky vocalist Ismael Rivera (El Nazareno, Quitate de la Via Perico), notorious for the improvised call-and-response vocals of the "sonero" tradition, harked back to the African roots of Caribbean music without any distinction between styles. Both vocally and rhythmically they created a "sauce" of Caribbean music. El Gran Combo, formed by pianist Rafael Ithier, continued Cortijo's mission in a lighter vein, with La Muerte (1962) and Ojos Chinos (1964).
In the 1960s, the bomba-son hybrid reached the Puertorican colony in New York. Here, the son adopted the format of the big band, as in Jimmy Sabater's Salsa y Bembe (1962) and vibraphonist Cal Tjader's Salsa del Alma (1964).
The Cuban expatriates that relocated in New York contributed greatly to the assimilation of the genre in the American culture: vocalist Celia Cruz (Burundanaga, 1956; Yerbero Moderno, 1956), flutist Jose-Antonio Fajardo (La Charanga), jazzy congueros Candido Camero and Ramon "Mongo" Santamaria (Mazacote, 1958; Afro Blue, 1959; Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man, 1963), violinist Felix "Pupi" Legarreta, who fused charanga and jazz on Salsa Nova (1962). Santamaria, who arrived in New York in 1950, paid tribute to his Cuban roots on Yambu (1958) and Mongo (1959), that were performed with other Latin percussionists.
The evolution of son continued in New York via Dominican flutist Johnny Pacheco, leader of the quintessential charanga (featuring singer Pete "El Conde" Rodriguez) but also the leader of the "Africanization" of the charanga (arrangements limited to trumpets, piano and percussion), New York's pianist Charlie Palmieri, who formed in 1959 the influential charanga Duboney (four violins and Pacheco on flute), New York's pianist Eddie Palmieri, who in 1962 pioneered "trombanga", a sound based on two trombones and a flute (in alternative to the charanga sound), New York's percussionist Ernesto "Tito" Puente (Oye Como Va, 1962), New York's drummer Ray Barretto, who experimented with rhythm'n'blues and jazz, Puertorican bongo player Roberto Roena (Mi Desengano, 1976). They all crossed over into jazz and rhythm'n'blues. Notable albums include Puente's Dance Mania (1958), Pablo "Tito" Rodriguez's West Side Beat (1961), Bobby Valentin's Ritmo Pa Goza (1966), Eddie Palmieri's Lo Que Traigo Es Sabroso (1964) and Superimposition (1969), Barretto's Acid (1967) and The Message (1972), Cortijo's Maquina de Tiempo (1974). Latin New York also secreted the boogaloo, a fusion of black soul music and the Cuban mambo, as in Eddie Palmieri's Ay Qye Rico (1968). New York-born Willie Colon, originally a trombonist, was the first major Puertorican star, his orchestra and his singer Hector Lavoe capable of albums such as El Malo (1967) and El Bueno, El Malo y El Feo (1975), besides the classics Che Che Cole (1969) and Gitana (1984).
A key event in 1967 was the meeting between Puertorican vocalist Ismael Miranda (then still a teenager) and the orchestra of New York's pianist Larry Harlow, best documented on Abran Paso (1970). They revitalized the CUban sound for the audience of rock music.
Salsa
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
See Re-Alignment.
In 1973 the North-American son was renamed "salsa" for a tv special (by Izzy Sanabria of Fania Records, the equivalent of Motown for Latin music). In Puerto Rico salsa is also known as "guaguanco", a term that originally referred to a kind of rumba dance. Larry Harlow's orchestra rediscovered the fusion of charanga violins and conjunto trumpets (with the addition of electric instruments) on his milestone recording Salsa (1974) with vocalist Junior Gonzalez. The 1976 concert "Salsa" organized in New York by the label Fania launched the fad nation-wide. In the 1970s, the main centers for salsa were New York, Miami, and Colombia.
Ruben Blades, who had become Willie Colon's main composer after El Cazangero (1975), contaminated salsa with rock'n'roll and political issues on Siembra (1978), that contains Pedro Navaja and became the best-selling salsa album of all times.
In Venezuela, Angel Canales coined a jazzy trombone-driven kind of salsa on Angel Canales And Sabor (1976), while Cuban-born Roberto Torres was the defender of the tradition, and in New York veterans of Eddie Palmieri's orchestra formed Libre to play a more aggressive and jazzy kind of salsa, documented on Con Salsa Con Ritmo (1976).
The "voice" of salsa was Hector Lavoe', Colon's vocalist, whose best album was Comedia (1978), featuring the anthemic El Cantante, written by Blades and arranged by Colon.
The new sound of salsa owed to people like ubiquitous Puertorican trumpeter Luis "Perico" Ortiz and producer Louie Ramirez, whose album A Different Shade Of Black (1976) is credited with crossing over to pop music.
Other notable salsa hits of the 1970s were: Jose "Cheo" Feliciano's El Raton (1964), the first big hit of salsa when revived in 1974, Celia Cruz's Quimbara (1974), Enrique "Papo" Lucas' Acere Ko (1975), Eddie Palmieri's Vamonos Pal Monte (1976), Lloraras (1975), by Venezuelan combo Dimension Latina, featuring vocalist Oscar D'Leon, who later formed Salsa Mayor. But salsa was becoming a very vague term, as New York's group Tipica 73 proved on albums such as La Candela (1975), which is really a mixture of Latin dance rhythms.
New York's singer Henry Fiol used a traditional Cuban conjunto, Saoco, to sing the urban songs of Siempre Sere Guajiro (1976).
In the 1970s, a new dance was added to the Latin recipe: the Dominican Republic's merengue, yet another by-product of the Cuban habanera. The origins of the meringue actually go back centuries (it was already mentioned in writings of 1875), and the style can be said to have existed since at least the 1930s, and popularized by Angel Viloria in the 1950s. Wilfrido Vargas, whose El Barbarazo (1978) was considered a watershed event, Johnny Ventura, Cuco Valoy, Jossie Esteban, July Mateo, Francisco Ulloa were among the trend-setters of the 1980s.
During the 1960s, Trinidad coined a mixture of calypso and soul ("soul-calypso") that during the 1970s targeted the discos. Its was pioneered by Garfield "Lord Shorty" Blackman's Soul Calypso Music (1973), Winston "Mighty Shadow" Bailey' Bass Man (1974), Cecil "Maestro" Hume's Savage (1976), and Aldwyn "Lord Kitchener" Roberts ' Sugar Bum Bum (1978), the first world-wide hit of soca. Winston "Mighty Shadow" Bailey's If I Coulda I Woulda I Shoulda (1979) and Austin "Blue Boy" Lyons's Soca In The Shaolin Temple (1981) solidified the genre's appeal to disco-goers.
Calypso itself was torn between the revolutionary pressure coming from David Rudder, whose The Hammer (1986) was influenced by pop and soul, and the conservative attitude of Leroy "Black Stalin" Calliste, whose Caribbean Man (1979) harked back to the classics.
Colombia's Grupo Niche, led by guiro player Jairo Varela, played big-band multi-vocal salsa on Querer Es Poder (1981).
Samba
TM, ®, Copyright © 2003 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Brazil's colonial history is unique in that the dominant white class showed some tolerance for the black slave class and the native pagans. The latter's traditions range from the African-derived voodoo (or, better, Candomble religion) of Bahia to Rio's Macumba religion. Unlike Mexico and Peru, where the original cultures were erased by the Spanish colonizers, Brazil retained them and simply recycled them into the general "saudade" (melancholy existentialism) of the Portuguese conquerors. The fundamental dichotomy of Brazilian music is between Bahia and Rio. Bahia is the Brazilian equivalent of New Orleans: a melting pop where African traditions mixed with local and European concepts. Rio is both the capital of the aristocracy, where European culture was imported, and the underworld of the slums, where poor (black and white) immigrants from the rest of Brazil (including Bahia) lived in miserable conditions.
In the last decades of the 19th century, the orchestras of Rio de Janeiro (basically, woodwinds and horns, with the clarinet as the soloist) that performed European dance music (such as waltzes and polkas) were called "choro". Joaquim Antonio da Silva Calado, the band-leader of Choro Carioca, revolutionized the style by emphasizing virtuoso playing and improvisation, and by introducing the cavaquinho and the violao (a seven-string guitar). After him, the choro orchestras preferred the flute as the soloist, the violao as the bass, and cavaquinho as the rhythm. The great composers of choro were Chiquinha Gonzaga (a female and a pianist) and Ernesto Nazareth. But the choro ensembles abhored the African percussion instruments.
The first appearance of the word "samba" dates from 1838. The "samba" was originally a dance of African origins, the mesemba, which came from Bahia and was probably related to the Candomble rituals. It wed a Brazilian dance, the "maxixe", which was an evolution of the habanera (a European dance craze created by Maurice Mouvet in 1912 on the basis of the Cuban habanera) and of the polka, and soon became a musical genre in its own. The samba was probably invented by African-Brazilians in the working-class slums of Rio de Janeiro. The rhythm of the samba was designed as as to fulfill three roles: to sing, to dance and to parade (at the carnival). The first record to be advertised as "samba" was a song by a black musician, Ernesto "Donga" dos Santos: Pelo Telefone (1916). Manuel "Duque" Diniz, a white Brazilian who had opened a maxixe academy in Paris, spread the samba dance craze to Europe in 1921, when he invited Os Oito Batutas, a black choro ensemble led by flutist and composer Pixinguinha ("the Bach of choro") which included Donga on guitar, on a tour to Paris. The combo brought the samba to Paris, but also brought something back to Brazil: trumpet, trombone, saxophone and banjo were added to the line-up, and the sound became more "Americanized", adapting to the sound of big-band jazz. Pixinguinha's Carinhoso (1928) was emblematic of the new style. A young white musician from the Rio middle class, Noel Rosa, became famous with the samba song Com que Roupa? (1930) and started a less "African" and more song-oriented form of samba. Vincent Youmans' film Flying Down to Rio (1933) popularized the samba dance in the USA. The first samba school was founded in 1928 in Rio, and samba schools proliferated in the 1930s. Samba was the generic name of the music employing a kind of rhythm, but there were different kinds of samba. Perhaps the most adventurous and extreme was the batucada. "Batucada" is both the name for a large samba percussion group, for a samba jam session, and for an intensely polyrhythmic style of drumming. A batucada can be played by ensembles with hundreds of percussionists. In Bahia, bloco afro and afoxe (two mainly percussive styles) combined to form samba-reggae. The choro was not dead: in fact, composers of the 1940s such as Benedito "Canhoto" Lacerda created most of the choro repertory.
Bossanova
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The next major stylistic revolution took place in the 1950s: when white young middle-class intellectuals merged a gentler, slower form of the samba with jazz music, and shifted the lead to the guitar, bossanova was born. Thus, it was a music of the bourgeoisie, not of the working class. Indeed, bossanova songs left behind the underworld of samba, where people struggled to make a living, and shifted to the world of beaches, romance and lazy bohemian life. And, in fact, bossanova soon became a favorite style of easy-listening and lounge music.
Antonio Carlos ("Tom") Jobim began a collaboration with Vin¡cius de Moraes when he scored the soundtrack for the other's play, Orfeu da Conceicao (1956), which included his first standard, Se Todos Fossem Iguais a Voce. After Jobim composed the classic Desafinado (1957), the two released Cancao do Amor Demais (1958), featuring Eliseth Cardoso on vocals and Joao Gilberto on guitar, which contained Jobim's Chega de Saudade, the song that established bossanova in Brazil. Jobim and Morais also wrote Garota de Ipanema (1962), which turned bossanova into a world-wide phenomenon.
The jazz world of the USA welcomed the Brazilian style on Jazz Samba (1962), a collaboration between guitarist Charlie Byrd and saxophonist Stan Getz.
Other notable protagonists of bossanova were Luiz Bonfa` (Manha de Carnaval, 1958), Jorge Ben (Mais Que Nada, 1963), Sergio Mendes (the most shameless perpetrator of Brazilian easy-listening).
Far more original was the synthesis offered by black guitarist Djalma "Bola Sete" DeAndrade (3), who blended samba, jazz, American folk music and European classical music in the effortless improvisations of The Solo Guitar (1965), Ocean (1972), Shambhala Moon (1982).
Tropicalia
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If bossanova was the reactionary sound of the decade, "tropicalismo" was the idealistic movement of the 1960s in Brazil. It introduced foreign elements into Brazilian music (both jazz and rock) and it replaced the traditional instruments with modern instruments such as the electric guitar. The birth date of tropicalismo was the 1967 festival of the Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB): Caetano Veloso's Alegria Alegria and Gilberto Gil's Domingo no Parque defied the conventions of Brazilian music and were interpreted as a challenge to the dictatorship of Tropicalismo soon spread to poetry, the visual arts, theater and cinema, and, in turn, musical tropicalismo absorbed elements from the other arts. Veloso's and Gil's album Tropicalia ou Panis et Circensis (1968) became a dividing line in Brazilian culture. The three queens of Brazilian pop music were also influential in publicizing the new generation of songwriters: Gal Costa (a sort of Brazilian hippy), Maria Bethania (a sort of Brazilian androgynous husky Edith Piaf) and Elis Regina (perhaps the most gifted).
On his own, Gilberto Gil concocted a pop-samba-jazz-rock fusion on Expresso 2222 (1972).
Caetano Veloso (3), the most literate and daring of the tropicalista, expanded the horizons of Brazilian music by turning it into a highly personal experience. Caetano Veloso (1969) and Transa (1972) introduced an austere, vulnerable and introverted voice who was not afraid to experiment with the sound of the anglosaxon music of the (psychedelic) era. Muito (1978), the lush, eclectic albums Estrangeiro (1989) and Livro (1998) were experimental works that continued to upgrade Veloso's stylistic hybrid.
The other great poet of the movement, Milton Nascimento (2), coined a hybrid style that combined elements of pop, samba and jazz with progressive-rock arrangements, thus achieving the abstract soundpainting art of Clube Da Esquina (1972) and Milagre Dos Peixes (1973).
Classically trained, Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti (guitar, flute, piano), who had already composed the song O Sonho (1968) for a 100-piece orchestra, fused European classical music, jazz-rock, bossanova and Brazilian choro folk music on albums such as Sonho 70 (1970), inspired by the movie soundtracks of the 1960s, Academia De Dancas (1974), with strings, and especially the suite Dance Das Cabecas (november 1976) for guitar, piano, flute (all played by Gismonti) and percussion (Nana Vasconcelos). basically bossanova's version of free-jazz improvisation, Sol Do Meio Dia (november 1977), another venture with Vasconcelos into the Brazilian jungle, and Solo (november 1978), a set of melancholy solos on different instruments, notably the 21-minute Selva Amazonica for guitar. Despite turning towards new-age music in the 1980s, Gismonti continued to produce profound pieces of music, increasingly classical sounding, such as Danca Dos Escravos (november 1988), another concept album, this time for guitar only, Natura Festa Do Interior, off Musica de Sobrevivencia (april 1993), Mestiso and Caboclo for a Brazilian trio, off Zig Zag (april 1995). Classical compositions included: Musica de Sobrevivencia (composed in 1990) for orchestra, the five-movement cantica Cabinda (composed in 1992) for orchestra, Strawa no sertao (composed in 1991) for chamber orchestra.
Brazilian psychedelic-rock was gloriously represented by Os Mutantes (1).
The 1990s
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The carnival music lambada, best represented by Luiz Caldas, became famous world-wide thanks to Kaoma's Lambada (1989).
Boukman Eksperyans popularized both carnival and voodoo music of Haiti on albums such as Vodou Adjae (1991), Kalfou Danjare (1992) and Liberte' (1995).
The most famous Brazilian vocalist, Marisa Monte, was hardly worthy of her predecessors. Her albums Mais (1991) and Memorias Cronicas e Declaracoes de Amor (2000) were simply collections of Brazilian classics watered down for the international audience.
Vinicius Cantuaria, influenced by the American new wave, offered a personal synthesis of "Tropicalia", mellow jazz and soul music on Sol Na Cara (1997) and Tucuma (1999).
Notable albums of salsa include Marc Anthony's Todo A Su Tiempo (1995). In the USA, Cuban-born Gloria Estefan sang salsa for the discos in the Miami Sound Machine, culminating with Primitive Love (1985) and Let It Loose (1988). The sensation of the decade was Tejano vocalist Selena (Quintanilla), whose album Ven Conmigo (1990) adapted Latin rhythms to the format of the pop ballad. She began to cross over to pop with Amor Prohibido (1994), that contains Techno cumbia.
Rock'n'roll was never popular in South America. Mexico's Iconoclasta was the main prog-rock band of the continent, starting with Iconoclasta (1983), progressing to the suite Reminiscencias De Un Mundo Sin Futuro, off Reminiscencias (1985), and to the EP Suite Mexicana (1987).
Sepultura (12) and its offshoot Soulfly turned Brazil's heavy-metal scene into one of the most influential.
A young singer from Colombia, Shakira Mebarak, became the best-sold Latin artist of all times first with Donde Estan los Ladrones? (1998) and then with Laundry Service (2001), that sold more than ten million copies worldwide, both characterized by a sprightly fusion of Latin, Arab and rock music, as well as by her guttural singing. The stylistic melange progressed from the relatively earthly Whenever Wherever (2001) to La Tortura (2005) to the sophisticated rhythmic collage of Hips Don't Lie (2006).

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