Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Ray Barretto, ‘Que Viva La Música’ – Photograph: Courtesy of Craft Recordings Latino

Craft Latino has introduced a post-Fiftieth anniversary reissue of Ray Barretto’s basic salsa album, Que Viva La Música. A landmark title within the influential bandleader and conguero’s prolific catalog, Que Viva La Música options such favorites as “Cocinando,” “La Pelota,” and the title monitor–all carried out by Barretto’s legendary unique band (together with Adalberto Santiago and Orestes Vilató).

Out there for pre-order now, the long-out-of-print album was minimize from the unique grasp tapes (AAA) by Kevin Grey at Cohearent Audio and returns to vinyl for the primary time in a long time on Might 26. The LP is pressed on 180-gram vinyl and housed in a basic tip-on jacket, replicating Izzy Sanabria’s gorgeous cowl artwork.

Conguero and bandleader Ray Barretto (1929–2006) was one of many foremost names in Latin jazz, boogaloo, and Afro-Cuban rhythms. A pioneering salsa artist, who additionally stored one foot planted firmly in jazz, the versatile musician remained within the highlight for greater than 5 a long time. Born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican mother and father and raised within the Bronx, Barretto grew up admiring each the swing of Depend Basie and Duke Ellington, in addition to the rhythms of Arsenio Rodríguez and Machito Grillo.

By the tip of the 50s, he was a member of Tito Puente’s legendary band and had change into the go-to conga participant within the New York Metropolis jazz scene. Over the subsequent decade, he would seem as a sideman on albums by greats like Wes Montgomery, Cal Tjader, Kenny Burrell, and Dizzy Gillespie, whereas having fun with success as a bandleader (his 1963 hit, “El Watusi,” made him a global sensation).

Thought of by many Afro-Cuban music students to be a spotlight of Barretto’s prolific profession–in addition to a touchstone of 70s salsa music, Que Viva La Música discovered the bandleader reaching a brand new apex. In liner notes for an earlier CD version of the album, music journalist Ernesto Lechner wrote that the artist’s, “transition from the early charanga and Latin soul excursions of the 60s to the hard-edged salsa sound of the ’70s had been efficiently accomplished. Barretto had raised the temperature of his music as excessive because it might presumably get. The beats, the swing, and the depth of his musical manifesto was merely reckless. His band, too, had achieved a whole communion of musical souls…”

Pre-order the vinyl version of Que Viva La Música.

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