September 1st, 2007
A La Cuata Co y Co, Echale Candela, 1926
One of the very first groups to record son in Habana in the 1920s, Sexteto Boloña didn’t have the long career of sextetos Nacional and Habanero (who by the 1930s added trumpets and became septetos), but bandleader and tresero Alfredo Boloña (the tiny guy on the far [...]
June 1st, 2007
Goodbye Argentina, Todd Young and His Rock Band, Here Comes the Music, 1998
My old friend Todd Young and his wife Jen were in town to visit last week. Todd also happens to be an excellent songwriter and performer, so I thought in honor of his visit I’d pull out a track from his album, “Here [...]
July 3rd, 2007
Angel of Sunlight, Illuminations, 1974
The year was 1974. Political turmoil, free-thinking, Eastern philosophy, and hallucinogens had virtually destroyed the boundaries between jazz and rock, latin- or otherwise. United by their devotion to Guru Chinmoy (who they would later discover was only exploiting their celebrity status to build his own following), Carlos Santana and Alice Coltrane [...]