February

El Tresero Moderno San Miguel Perez

Cuba is and will continue to be one of the main cradles of the best artists in Latin America and San Miguel Perez is one of those cases. The producer, composer and singer gave us an exclusive interview to talk about his musical beginnings, his history and what he is currently working on. Don’t miss it!

Tresero San Miguel — This is San Miguel Perez, ”El Tresero Moderno”

San Miguel, El Tresero Moderno

San Miguel is known in his country as ”El Tresero Moderno” (the modern tres player in English) due to the styles he uses when playing. He chose the Cuban tres as his main instrument because it is a very important icon in the music of his country and the one that most represents Cuba internationally,

His first contact with music occurred at the age of 10, when he began studying classical music, but adding the Cuban tres. He followed this same path throughout high school and university until he became part of some Cuban popular music groups such as Los Jóvenes Clásicos del Son and Adalberto Álvarez y Su Son.

Together with the latter group, he released the album ”Respeto Para Los Mayores”, which was very popular at the time. This success led them to collaborate with great orchestras such as Los Van Van, with whom they shared the stage sometimes.

On one occasion, one of the members of Los Van Van took the stage to jam with the guys of Adalberto Alvarez y Su Son, including San Miguel. Seeing the Cuban’s talent and style with the tres, he baptized him with the nickname ”El Tresero Moderno”. This nickname had to do with his playing and the influences that the artist brings to the instrument when making a solo.

San Miguel playing — San Miguel Perez playing the Cuban tres live

Cubadisco

San Miguel was twice awarded with the Cubadisco Award, one in 2011 in the category of Best Tresero and the other in 2013 in the category of Best Traditional Cuban Music. These recognitions were very important for the musician, as the award was the result of a previous contest, which was focused on the work of treseros, singers and pianists from all over Cuba.

The primary objective of this contest was to rescue Cuban music and give new talents a chance to make their art known. Adalberto Álvarez, Frank Fernández, and Mayito de Rivera were part of the contest’s presidency.

Given that San Miguel was one of the winning treseros, the Bis Music label released an album called ”Treseros de Cuba”, material in which the young man was included. This was the album which won the Cubadisco award in 2014.

After receiving both awards, Adalberto Álvarez met up with San Miguel to invite the Cubadisco winner to join his group. He took advantage of the departure of the former tresero in the group to invite him.

Los Angeles

San Miguel’s move to Los Angeles was due to a purely professional issue at first. He went to play with Adalberto Alvarez, Peruvian-American singer Cecilia Noël, her husband Colin Hay from Men At Work and other artists living in the United States. Due to this and other work proposals, he decided to stay in Tampa and, time later, to move to the city of Los Angeles and make it his permanent residence.

It should also be mentioned that many other artists have had to work other jobs outside of music in order to make ends meet, but fortunately this was not the case of San Miguel, who had the opportunity to work only in music and did not need to resort to other activities out of his passion. He has dedicated himself fully to playing, recording and producing music for the past 10 years.

San Miguel won the Cubadisco Award — San Miguel twice won the Cubadisco Award in his native country

Composition, production and singing

Regarding the areas of music in which he has specialized, San Miguel began by explaining that he made a good improvement in composition during the time he played with Los Jóvenes Clásicos del Son. He also learned to make arrangements based on traditional music, something in which the director of the group, Ernesto Reyes Palma, played a very important role.

Regarding production, the artist did not participate much in that area, but he eventually did in the United States. It is in this country that he officially started his career as a soloist, tresero and artist. Three years after arriving in Los Angeles, he produced a first album called ”Un Poquito de Amor” in collaboration with Cecilia Noël and Colin Hay in 2017, which was a great learning experience for him, as he was able to experiment and mix many seemingly disparate rhythms.

Other areas in which San Miguel would like to specialize are sound engineering and remastering, but he is working hard to do so.

Current projects

As for the current projects, he is currently promoting his single ”Besito Bon Bon”, which is the main song of his new album. In fact, San Miguel and his team are planning to give this same name to the whole album. On this occasion, he mixed electronic sounds with traditional Cuban music to give a much more modern rhythm to the traditional genres coming from the island. The album has nine songs, is produced by Jay Carona and contains some collaborations with Cecilia Noël.

”Alma Del Barrio” celebrates 50 years of operation

The United States has a great number of Latin music radio programs that always sought to promote the best of Latin talent through their frequencies and one of them is ”Alma Del Barrio” of the well-known radio station KXLU, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

Against all odds, ”Alma Del Barrio” celebrates five decades on the air after all the effort of its hosts and the team involved in such a noble and necessary feat. We say ”against all odds” because it is not common that projects submitted by university students did not used to last long and ended up being replaced by programs of the same style.

In addition to the above, decades-long programs usually have a single host and comfortable time slots each week. However, ”Alma Del Barrio” was the exception to this rule and, today, continues to prove that limits can be overcome.

Founders of Alma Del Barrio — Founders of ”Alma Del Barrio” Steve Lopez, Enrique ”Kiki” Soto, Gustavo Aragon, Eddie Lopez, and Hector ”La Voz” Resendez

Beginnings of ”Alma Del Barrio”

After so long, ”Alma Del Barrio” has remained up to date and continues to keep people’s taste.

Its main founders were Enrique ”Kiki” Soto and the late Raúl Villa, who at the time were two young students with many ideas and eager to achieve interesting things. The program was aired for the first time in 1973. A few years later, Hector Resendez, a freshman in college, contacted Enrique and Raul in order to write an article about this new radio show, but it would not be long before he joined the main founders in the project they were developing.

Three years later, in 1976, student at Loyola Marymount University Eddie Lopez joined the program on the third anniversary of ”Alma Del Barrio”, show in which he would spend the next 46 years bringing the best Afro-Cuban music to the audience every Sunday between 2pm and 6pm.

On a number of occasions, Resendez said that ”Alma Del Barrio” was not created to be hosted by great famous personalities, but by dynamic young people who wanted to be part of a small team that was just starting operations.

At the beginning, the new hosts only had one hour of broadcast time to show what they were made of, but at the same time, they did their best to get more airtime and have more presenters in the program. They wanted to include a not very popular genre on the station at that time, which was salsa, something totally innovative for the station.

In those years, salsa was understood as that set of genres coming from Afro-Cuban music and the novice hosts thought it would be a fine attraction to the Latino communities of Los Angeles. That set of genres came from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia and the Dominican Republic. This is when record labels and music promoters renamed these rhythms as ”salsa” in order to make it easier for programs and hosts to identify the music.

Eddie Lopez in Alma Del Barrio — Eddie Lopez working on the radio station

‘’Alma Del Barrio”’ programming

The traditional programming of most of the stations consisted of jazz, rock and classical music, but then salsa was incorporated thanks to the increasing popularity that this genre was gaining.

One thing Resendez said is that one of the most famous rock groups was Santana, so the announcer and the rest of his cabinmates were surprised that the musicians of the band knew so much about Afro-Cuban music in terms of percussion. Let us remember that the popular song ”Oye Como Va” was written by ”El Rey De Los Timbales” Tito Puente a decade and a half before the band recorded it.

This union of rock and salsa was what gave the hosts the confidence to use trendy Anglo-Saxon genres as a means to promote Latin music.

On top of that, the guys were clear that jazz fans would be receptive to Latin jazz, since great jazz musicians like Dizzy Gallespie hired Cuban percussionists in their orchestras. If on other stations, this music was successful, ”Alma Del Barrio” was no exception. Fortunately, they were not wrong.

Current logo of ”Alma Del Barrio”

Last years of “Alma Del Barrio’’

During the last years of ”Alma Del Barrio”, the program team has made great efforts to join and create links with the community, whether it would be through sponsorships, advertisements, public services, donation campaigns, among other things.

Through all this community service they offered, they also made their own work known and many listeners began to enjoy this great team’s talent while listening to good music and varied programming.

The program has also been and is part of great annual and historical festivals such as the Salsa Fest. This day is always reserved for the audience to share with the new and old hosts of ”Alma Del Barrio” and many of the station staff, who always spread their enthusiasm to those present with their good energy.

”Alma Del Barrio” and its hosts have brought joy to their followers, but there have also been some sad moments. One of them was the death of DJ Eddie Lopez in January 2023, leaving a great void in the station and the hearts of those who faithfully followed his career through the KXLU circuits during the last decades.

Alfredo De La Fe, is responsible for transforming the violin for Latin Music

Latin America/ Colombia/ Cali

Alfredo de la Fe is a Cuban-American violinist based in New York, who also lives in Colombia.

He is responsible for transforming the violin into a sound much more suitable for Salsa and Latin music, as well as having manufactured and patented his own violin. De la Fe began studying the violin at the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory in Havana in 1962.

Two years later, he receives a scholarship to enter the Warsaw Conservatory, in Poland.

In 1965, he soloed compositions by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

A scholarship at Juilliard opened new doors for him. De la Fe began his professional career, at the age of twelve, when he switched from classical music to Salsa, and accepted an invitation to join charanga legend José Fajardo’s Orchestra.

In 1972, he joined the Eddie Palmieri orchestra. He was a member of the group for a very short period, temporarily moving to San Francisco, where he met Santana. Returning to New York, De la Fe joined Típica ’73 in 1977. Two years later, he released his debut solo album, Alfredo.

In 1980, De la Fe signed with the Fania All-Stars, and produced thirty-two albums for Fania Records. His second solo album, Charanga ’80, was released in the same year.

In 1981, De la Fe became musical director of Tito Puente’s Latin Percussion Jazz Ensemble.

The following year, he confirmed his solo career, signing with Taboga, for whom he recorded the album Triunfo. He settled in Colombia in 1983, and signed with Philips; As a result of this, he released three albums: Made in Colombia, Dancing in the Tropics and Alfredo de la Fe Vallenato, at the end of the 80s.

In 1989, De la Fe signed with Discos Fuentes. Although he was one of the members of the Fania All-Stars for 1995, De la Fe continued his solo career.

He signed with Sony Music in 1997. Two years later, he toured with his own orchestra, appearing at festivals in Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Belgium, and reuniting with Eddie Palmieri and his orchestra for a European tour.

In 2002, after several years in Europe, Alfredo moved back to New York and visited the US with his New York band, led by pianist Israel Tanenbaum.

Other musicians including bassist Máximo Rodríguez, percussionists Tony Escapa and Johnny Pequeño Rivero, and autistic Andrea Brachfeld.

Discography Solo albums

1979 : “Alfredo”
1980 : “Alfredo de la Fe y la charanga 1980”
1981 : “Para África con amor”
1982 : “Triunfo”
1984 : “Made in Colombia”
1985 : “Alfredo de la Fe Vallenato”
1990 : “Salsa”
1990 : “Los violines de Alfredo de la Fe”
1992: “Los violines de Alfredo de la Fe vol. 2: Sentir de Cuba”.
1993 : “Con toda la salsa Alfredo de la Fe”
1995 : “La salsa de los dioses”
2000 : “Latitudes”
2006 : “Alfredo de la Fe y Fruko (La Llave de Oro)”

Alfredo De La Fe - Photo — Alfredo De La Fe – Photo

Session Artist and Collaborations:

- 1973 : “The Sun de música latina” por Eddie Palmieri & Amigos Con Lalo Rodríguez
- 1976 : “De ti depende” por Héctor Lavoe
- 1977 : “Selecciones clásicas” por José Fajardo
- 1977 : “El Baquine de Angelitos Negros” por Willie Colón
- 1978 : “Comedia” por Héctor Lavoe
- 1979 : “Típica 73 en Cuba – Intercambio cultural” por Típica 73

1979 : ” Necesito tú” por Sylvester
1980 : “Charangueando con la Típica 73” por Típica 73
1980 : “Señor Charanga” por José Fajardo
1982 : “Encima Broadway” por Tito Puento
1997 : “Bravo” por Fania Todo-Estrellas
2001 : “Diferente” por José Alberto (El Canario)

Enjoy Salsa in the East Coast

USA / New York / New York

Johnny Cruz: Everything will be very busy on the East Coast during the month of February. So be attentive Salseros!

Johnny Cruz, President of Spanish Harlem Salsa Gallery Museum invites us to follow all activities programmed in the place “Donde las leyendas nunca mueren”

Johnny Cruz from New York — Johnny Cruz is the president of Spanish Harlem Salsa Gallery

1708 Lexington ave New York N.Y. 10029 spahasalsagallery.com Open free to the public all Thursdays & Fridays from 4 to 7 pm and Saturdays from 1 to 8 pm.

Also, The Johnny Cruz Show, the #1 Salsa Show on television on all 5 Boroughs of New York on CH67.
Saturdays from 3:30 to 4:30 pm

Stay tuned:
Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram E-mail [email protected].

They are going to by talking on one of the best congueros of NY and the World: Eddie Montalvo.

Johnny Cruz will talk about Salsa from its capital: New York en El Barrio.

Cruz is owner of Cruz Music Inc with Recording Studios in N.Y. & featuring some of the Greatest Singer in the business and the best Musicians in the world.

Contact:
• Johnny Cruz: 917-747-8505 [email protected].

The Spanish Harlem Salsa Gallery

Is a cultural institution committed to providing residents of East Harlem and surrounding communities with structured, scholarly, cultural programming, information, resources, and learning initiatives. As inclusive and diverse as the salsa music represented within these walls, the Gallery provides a community-friendly, accessible, and arts education-centered space.

“Donde las leyendas nunca mueren”

As a strategic community partner, they provide a cultural resource for the surrounding museums and institutions on Museum Mile as well as the many community based organizations serving East Harlem, The Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens and other regions, as well as tourists visiting New York, that have expressed interest in knowing the roots of Salsa. Undeserved communities such as seniors, teens, homeless, mentally challenged, LGBTQ, and others will find the Gallery a sanctuary of cultural history and a repository for information on salsa music and its artists.

By Johnny Cruz, Correspondent, New York, New York

“Rodolfo Silva and his Orchestra”

Latin America - Caracas - Venezuela

Rodolfo Silva“The revelation of the Salsa Romantica”

“He’s here to stay and conquer the industry with his new single… just for you!

The Revelation of Romantic Salsa Rodolfo Silva releases his second single “SÓLO PARA TI”. The versatile Venezuelan Musician, Trombonist, Singer and Producer with an extensive 25-year professional career brings us Salsa Romantica with a lot of flavor, as well as the Hard sauce with great elegance.

“SÓLO PARA TI”, is a happy and wonderful Vallenato by the late Colombian singer-songwriter Rafael Orozco, successfully recorded in 1991 by the Binomio de Oro and with masterful arrangements by Maestro Mauricio Silva, which shows us the musical and vocal talent of Rodolfo Silva. , who resumes his role as a singer with which he began in music at the age of only 4 years.

Rodolfo Silva, is considered today as the new revelation of Salsa Romantica in Venezuela. He started in salsa at the age of 16 as a singer of the Junior Band. He belonged for 7 years as a trombonist and backup singer of Mauricio Silva and his Orchestra.

Then, for 11 years, he assumed responsibility as musical director and first trombone of the Los Satélites de Venezuela Orchestra, with whom he had the pleasure of accompanying a large number of national and international artists, including Puerto Rican singer-songwriter Pedro Arroyo (of whom was its musical director and first trombone for 10 years) and Puerto Rican singers Tony Vega and Papo Rivera.

In 2005 he participated as composer and trombonist in the song RECUERDOS with Pajarito Vola Show La Gaita and in 2015 as guest trombonist in the Mega Production “Legado de la Salsa Venezolana”, produced, mixed and mastered in Miami by the outstanding musician, arranger and producer Mauricio Silva, where he had the high responsibility of recording the three trombones in the song TE

I WILL DO HAPPY, success of Silva y Guerra and his Orchestra.

In August 2016, after a long career as a conductor and trombonist, his artistic life takes on the challenge of launching himself as a soloist and begins recording at Masilpro Estudios (Miami – Florida) and Estudios Keyhstar (Caracas Venezuela), his first production. record company called “LLEGÓ EL MOMENTO”, by well-known and important musical arrangers and producers such as Mauricio Silva, Bernardino “Benny” Pacheco, Arturo Reyes and songs by renowned composers such as Pedro Arroyo, Rafael Orozco, Ruddy Pérez, Jhon Semeco (nominated for a Latin Grammy), among others, achieving an excellent production, with romantic themes where the following stand out: IT’S YOU, ONLY FOR YOU, AFTER YOU WHAT?, IF I COULD, among others.

The songs ERES TÚ, SÓLO PARA TI and AFTER YOU WHAT?, were selected in Mexico City, by the record company Producciones La Doble E, and included in the El Titán de la Salsa record compilations.

Today he presents us with “SÓLO PARA TI”, the second promotional cut of his record production “LLEGÓ EL MOMENTO”, a song authored by the late Colombian singer-songwriter Rafael Orozco and arranged by maestro Mauricio Silva, which plays insistently on important radio stations in the country, such as Radiorama Stereo 103.3 FM and Fiesta 106.5 FM in Caracas and Urbana 94.3 FM; Hot Stereo 105.9 FM; Whirlwind 102.5 FM; Radio X 94.7 FM; Máxima 95.7 FM in Guarenas – Guatire.

THIS SAUCE REVELATION IS HERE… TO STAY!!!

CONTACTS Johanna De SilvaManager (+58) 412-7001233 (+58) 414-3668111

@rodolfosilva_music [email protected]