North America

Platfoms to promote salsa

Just as we always promote the artists and musicians who keep alive salsa and Latin genres, we also think it is important to highlight the work of communicators who have taken the task of continuing to spread the traditional Latin music through the resources that technology has made available to us. Such is the case of Charlie Perez and the web page ”Salsa Con Sabor”, which he has been running for several years.

We talked to this talented young man, who has illustrated very well how his work has been throughout these years with the management of ”Salsa Con Sabor”, interesting anecdotes and what he earned from all this process.

Conversation with Charlie Perez from ”Salsa Con Todo”

Salsa Con Sabor was born in 2010. I was always a salsa enthusiast and it runs in the family because my father has always loved tropical music, salsa, guaguancó, son montuno, bolero, among others. I became curious about these topics while naving in the social networks, so I created a Facebook page whose aim was to be a music space to share with salsa fans around the world. By this means, we began to share music, artist biographies, salsa history, salsa ephemeris and many more” were the words spoken by Charlie when asked how this project came about.

He also told us that the page was gaining a popularity that he and his team decided to shape this idea through the creation of a website, a YouTube channel and accounts in the rest of social media. All this led several independent artists to send their musical works to ”Salsa Con Sabor” to be shared and diffused.

Important to note that all members of this great team are professionals nothing linked to the world of music. They are simply people who enjoy Latin genres and want them to stay alive over time.

What do you see in an artist before spreading his or her music?

I like to support all artists, but I don’t deny that I focus a lot on the quality of the work presented. I always check certain aspects such as the cover art, the image and how music was worked, showing whether or not an album will be worth it. We always give the opportunity to all artists to send us their work, but they must have a standard quality” said Charlie on the subject related to unknown artists sending him their albums.

Successes to date

Perez has told us that he feels incredibly grateful for all the doors ”Salsa Con Sabor” has opened for him. He has met many important people in the industry and artists with whom he has developed good friendships, something he really values.

This space has also allowed him to expand to other fields. In the case of Charlie, he is a marketer and always had the desire to start his own business, which added to his knowledge of the music industry and marketing, led him to create his own advertising agency called Tumba Media Productions. The company is dedicated to dissemination activities such as press releases, graphic design, among other things.

Another thing that has been very important for the future career of this young man has been song writing. Composing his own material has earned him contact with great artists such as Venezuelan singer Néstor Pacheco, who motivated him to make music and with whom he has a clase friendship. They even wrote some songs together such as ”Sabor y Guaguancó” and ”Mamá Inés”.

The best experiences with the website

Regarding this point, Charlie replied that his reviews have received many positive messages from the public and many artists. He and his collaborators are very glad that so many people keep an eye on their content and that their platform let them know abut new music in terms of salsa, guaguancó, bolero, son montuno and other associated genres.

We are great popuizers of new music that nobody knows about due to the amount of content you can find, which makes us very happy and be satisfied with our work” says Charlie.

Activity during the pandemic

From the pandemic, we started working on interviews a lot more than before and had to focus on making video content. Video editing tools were very important for us at this stage, since it wasn’t just about doing interviews, but also about downloading them and doing all the corresponding editing to show them to the public in the most professional way possible” says the administrator of ”Salsa Con Sabor” about his experience with the pandemic.

He also told us that there were many artists he interviewed with whom he thought would never connect, which was made possible thanks to the tools that technology offers us today. In that sense, his wife Wilendy Rosario was very important in this entire process, as she was in charge of making contacts and conducting many of these interviews in that frame of time. She is described by her husband as a fundamental part of this project thanks to her communication style and charisma.

Read also: Broadcaster and host of Con Sabor Y Amor Latino Tatiana Mezarina

Who is ”Manny”

Manuel ”Manny” Rivera is the musical director and timbalero of the Son Del Monte Orchestra. We had the great opportunity to have a friendly conversation with him to know in detail his beginnings, career, groups, role as musical director, among other things.

Time in the Yambú Orchestra

After apologizing for his deficits in the Spanish language, he continued by thanking us for the opportunity to tell his story and describe his time in the Yambú Orchestra, which was the first group in which he could start developing his talents in the 70’s. ”what we wanted to do at that time was make a mix between jazz with typical music because the pianist, who was of African descent, was who wrote the music with musical director and bassist Ramón Rodríguez”. It is presumed that the pianist focused a lot on these genres because of his roots, but his colleagues were fine with it.

Although he loved jazz, Manuel began to notice that it was not very danceable for the audience, which is what caused him to become interested in charanga, a genre that was already very famous in New York City in those years. That’s how he decided to immerse himself in this set of rhythms because he liked to see people go to the dance floor and enjoy themselves.

He also liked Yambú’s style a lot, but felt he had to take a more accurate path for what he was feeling at the time.

Similarities of Son Del Monte with other jazz big bands and members

I was a bongo player, but I started playing timbales because they are widely used in charanga. What I was looking for was to do a similar thing to what Eddie Palmieri did with La Perfecta, who used trombones and a flute mixed with timbales to achieve a charanga sound” said Rivera on this subject. He also added that ”I also wanted to avoid monotony of charanga so I also started using trombones, violin and a flute. This is what I have baptized as chajunto, a mixture of charanga with the characteristics of an ensemble (conjunto in Spanish) ”.

He also pointed out that New York does not have an orchestra like his because he did not want to do the same thing that all groups of this kind do, but something different and novel. ”Son Del Monte is charanga with something more for the people, not only violin and flutes,” said the artist. ”I have three singers with three different styles and they are Puerto Rican Luis Ayala, Colombian Armando Son Giménez and Puerto Rican-Dominican Luisito Soto Junior,” he added.

The Son Del Monte Orchestra also features from the talent of flutist Mauricio Smith Junior, violinist Erick Salazar, trombonist Juanga Lakunza, trombonist Charlie García, bassist Bert Castro, conguero Joe González, pianist Andy Colón, among others. This is the group that has stuck by his side for more than six years in spite of the storms and they always perform together.

Opinion on the academic training of musicians

Rivera was one of the best students at Harbor’s Conservatory of Music in Manhattan, New York and he thinks that institution had done so mucho good for folk music because of all the talent that graduated there. After studying there, he began to read percussion music and learned to play batá, tumbadora, Colombian rumba, guaguancó, yambú, and so on.

The musician stresses the importance of studying, as this knowledge helps to understand the clave, the moment to start playing an instrument, the chime, the reading of music, discipline and many more. Before this, Manuel played led by the spirit and sensations, but his teachers at the conservatory taught him to have the technical tools necessary for being even more professional.

What is more important, experience or studies?

”Definitely experience. I have seen many great artists learn to read music without going to a conservatory and a great example of that is Roberto Roena, who did not need that learning to be who he was. However, that is something that not everyone can do” said Manuel. I can also mention the case of Tito Rodriguez who was not a musician guided by the lyrics, but he knew very well what he wanted. These are some of the many examples of privileged artists who only needed accumulated experience to achieve wonders with their work”.

However, this does not mean studies are not important, as they can teach things that can be useful later on and under some circumstances.

Covid-19

”The pandemic did not let us do anything on stage. The guys went to the studio from time to time or we met virtually, as we do now. It was so sad because there are many venues that have failed to open their doors again. Since the pandemic started, we have not seen as much activity in New York as it used to be before” expressed the artist sadly.

Also of concern to the musical director of the Son Del Monte Orchestra is that this situation has put many musicians out of work, at least in the industry. Active musical groups have very few members in the vast majority of the cases, contrary to his and the orchestra he conducts. He hopes that it will improve with time.

Read also: Founder of the Son Latino de Orlando Orchestra Carlos Rodríguez

Interview with Angel Rumba

Angel Manuel Ramos Sanchez, better known as Angel Rumba, is a New York singer of Puerto Rican descent with whom we had the great opportunity to talk about several issues of importance such as the beginning of his career with Pancho Bongó Y Su Orquesta, his debut as a soloist, the meaning behind his lyrics, among other things. It is a pleasure for us to have talked with this Latin talent and to bring the story to all our readers of International Salsa Magazine.

His beginnings

Ramos Sanchez was born in New York City in the 1980s, when there was a well-established salsa movement in New York City and the United States in general. Evidently, little Angel could not be left out of this trend, especially if we take into account that through his veins ran Latin blood.

In addition, his father was a singer, musician and guitarist, so he always listened to salsa, merengue, bolero and other genres at home. It was at the age of seven when he started playing güiro, bongo and conga due to the curiosity generated by his father’s work, who spent a lot of time teaching his son to play as many instruments as possible.

In 1992 when Angel was 12 years old, he started playing with an orchestra called Projecto 3 in the city of Allentown, which represented his first opportunity to be on stage and show his face to an audience waiting to see what he could offer. It could be said that this was the beginning of what would become his life’s work.

Moving to California and Pennsylvania

Given that Angel’s father was a truck driver, the family had to move around a lot until 2003, the year in which he moved to Puerto Rico and lived there for three years. In 2006, he moved permanently to Pennsylvania, where he has been living until today.

Release as a solo artist

When asked about his release as a solo artist, Angel stated that ”my beginnings were with merengue, but salsa always fascinated me because I really liked soneros such as Ismael Rivera, Gilberto Santa Rosa, El Canario and many more. I saw them improvising on stage and I always wanted to do the same.”

In 2014, he was given the chance to belong to the group Pancho Bongó Y Su Orquesta, which he was a member of for more than seven years until he wanted to make his own project in 2020. He felt he had the experience and took all the necessary stages to get to that point. In addition to that, being subject to command of a musical director greatly limits the creativity of the artists and the New Yorker singer no longer felt comfortable with what he was doing at that time.

The singer is also a composer and was not allowed to play his own music with the orchestra, which also led him to seek new horizons and, in turn, record his first solo track.

While acknowledging that this was no easy decision, he says that he has no regrets about it and all that he has been given from then until now has been a blessing for him and his family.

Obstacles during his solo career

On this subject, he confessed that many of his orchestra fellows were not happy with his decision to leave the group and he even felt that certain figures tried to put obstacles in his way so that he would not succeed in the way he wanted to. This is one of the reasons why he prefers not to show so much about his work and future projects to the public to avoid problems.

”Mi sentimiento En Rumba”

The process of making this album was not easy, since the artist had to knock on many doors until making contact with Rafael Lozano, who arranged the first song ”Sin Un Amor”. This was a cover of a song by Los Panchos, so we can say that it is a tribute to the group in a totally different genre.

We went looking for musicians from several countries to work with u among whom was Angel Guzman, who plays trombone, baritone, saxophone, trumpet and many more. He also told us about sound engineer José Guerrero, who makes the mixing and mastering of the songs.

The album includes six songs composed by Angel himself and three that were adapted such as ”Perfidia” in a bolero version as a gift for fans of musical trios.

In total, the whole project has two merengues, two boleros and the rest are salsa songs.

Salsa in a market dominated by trap and reggaeton

”Every genre has its audience and every artist has his fans” was what the singer answered when asked about the challenges facing a salsa singer in these times. With this, he shows that it does not bother him in the least that there are more popular genres than salsa and that every artist could have a strong fan base without this meaning involving damage to another one. He says that he will continue to create music with his favorite rhythms in spite of passing trends.

One thing he did emphasize is that there should be more artists who focus on writing and creating original music instead of doing so many covers. A lot of creativity is needed.

The importance of continuing to promote romantic love in the lyrics

The salsa exponent says that it is very important that music continues to promote romantic love and bring positive messages because unfortunately there are many genres focused on negative stuff such as disrespect for women, drugs, violence and much more. The salsa singer seeks to make his contribution to creating a better society in these hard times.

”The lyrics of the songs have always influenced society because their meanings anchor in the minds and the message endures” said Angel about this issue.

Read also: Are we really what we listen to?