His efforts are part of a decades-long Bogotá-based nation-building mission to mine the music of the coastal region, pioneered by artists like Ivan Benavidez, a former Carlos Vivez band member. is. Richard Blair, a Bogota-based musician and British expatriate who founded the group Sidestepper. and Bomba Estereo, recently premiered by keyboardist and programmer Simon Mejia.El Duendeis a short documentary about an African family who make marimbas and live on Colombia’s Pacific coast.
“Meridian Brothers and El Grupo Renacimiento” has the stripped down aesthetic that is the essence of salsa itself. This is just as punk was born in his 1980s, with the glitzy big-band Palladium his genre of uptown urban born after the decline and collapse of his mambo era. The awakening of epic British progressive arena rock. Alvarez focuses most of his attention on Dubby’s echoing psychedelic electric guitar and tiny keyboards, complemented by a synchronized rhythm section of timbales and congas. You’ll hear hints of West African high life and souks from the Congo, a hybrid of Cuban rumba.
With the skunking guitar at the center of the riff, Alvarez’s lyrics are about police brutality (“La Policía”), the purity of roots salsa (“Poema del Salsero Resentido”), and concerns about nuclear weapons (“Bomba Atómica”). I am commenting. “Descarga Profética” imagines Bogotá’s salsa her jam as an ancient Greek algorithm with African influences, riffing on the dizzying 1930s Cuban classic “El Manisero.”
In the mockumentary, Artemio Morelia reveals that while his bandmates’ interests ranged from vallenato to Italian ballads, the ’60s Venezuelan group Federico Is Combo (“lego la salsa, one of the first to mention the term in 1967).He also worked with Ray Perez, legendary Afro-Puerto Rican bandleader Rafael Cortijo, and most importantly Brooklyn’s lebron brothersevolved from early experiments with the English Cuban-derived boogaloo and gained momentum in 1969 with “Salsa y Control”, a group central to the creation of salsa, which saw little commercial success.
“I empathize with the rejection that the LeBron Brothers experienced at the time,” Alvarez said. “I was drawn not only to the way they played and how aggressive they were, but also how slow and introverted they were.”