A few years ago, we had the great honor of interviewing Uruguayan bandleader, director, composer, percussionist, and singer Edgardo Cambón, with whom we talked again about his career anniversary as a musician next month.
Obviously, we wanted to recount the most important and interesting details of his wonderful career, but we could not fail to ask him how he has been the last few years, and that is how we wanted to begin our conversation today.
One of the things he revealed is that he recently released his new album, “For Export,” under the record label Latinbaum Records during a show at a venue known as The Fright, an event in which he enjoy the opportunity to celebrate his 65 years of life in April 2025. There were about 450 people present, with whom an excellent music video was filmed and the previously mentioned CD was released.
At the end of last year, he made about eight radio appearances, one on TV, and another one live in Bogotá, Colombia, which is one of the locations where the producer of Latinbaum Records, arranger, producer, composer, and pianist Israel Tannenbaum, is based. We have also had the opportunity to interview him on other occasions.
He says he is very happy with the five albums he has recorded so far and how active he has been over the past year due to his many promotional trips to places like Puerto Rico.
How has Edgardo Cambón managed to remain relevant after so many decades?
After being performed for nearly 40 years continuously, it is important to know how Edgardo has managed to remain relevant for such a long time, which in his own words, has been possible thanks to the originality of his sound and lyrics. He has never stopped writing original material, but that does not mean he has not dared to experiment with other people’s compositions, as was the case with “Imagine” by John Lennon. The artist created his own salsa version of this classic, which is an extremely risky thing due to how different salsa is from the soft rock we all remember from the original song.
More importantly, he has never been afraid of changes, and that can be seen in all the genres with which he has experimented, except for reggaeton, since he cannot support many aspects of culture that accompanies this type of music and its leading artists.
He made romantic salsa songs when that genre was very fashionable, but he always tried not to be swayed by the thing of the moment, but to seek himself in each style. Something to acknowledge Israel Tannenbaum is to be the first producer to mold him as an artist and give him so much valuable advice such as reducing the duration of a song or how to keep the message with a shorter length of time.
Another big change to which he had to adapt over the years was the fact that his understanding of the local scene could no longer be the same. One of the many things that changed was the appearance of salsa congresses where DJs, who usually played the hottest tracks of the moment, took center stage. This led Edgardo and many other artists to adapt their repertoire and include covers of much better-known songs, as that was what a whole segment of the public demanded most.
Performance at the San Francisco Salsa Festival
One of the festivals he has attended was the 2026 edition of the San Francisco Salsa Festival, organized by John Narvaez and Elizabeth Rojas, who had previously hired him to offer percussion classes. Edgardo & Candela had an extremely successful performance on Thursday, March 26, which was the day of the opening.
The artist took the opportunity to remind us that he has also been performing for years at the San Jose Jazz Festival and the Monterrey Jazz Festival, the first time the organizers hired a Uruguayan bandleader, and he was one of the few to perform salsa that day. In addition, he had the honor of introducing candombe (a traditional Uruguayan rhythm) mixed with salsa and traditional drums.
Top moments of his career
After such a long career, he has logically experienced moments that marked a watershed that forced him to adapt to the new trends. One of those changes was the replacement of the vibraphone (a very delicate instrument) by the trombone, which represented a significant sonic leap, as the musicians had to switch from a percussion instrument played with drumsticks to a brass instrument that runs on air and lip pressure.
With the arrival of Karl Perazzo, he proposed to Edgardo that they start using trombones, and he agreed to when seeing the potential of the instrument. So, that was when the group became a septet, having previously been a small ensemble in which the three percussionists played and sang simultaneously, making the band sound bigger than it really was.
Some time later, Edgardo made a series of trips to Cuba that completely transformed his mind and his way of seeing and playing music, since anyone could not go on stage in that country. It was then that he felt inspired to release his album “Madre Rumba, Padre Son,” in which he gives all credit to what he learned from Cuban music and its greatest exponents. He also took the opportunity to mention some of his other biggest influences, such as the politicized lyrics of Ruben Blades in the 1970s, Los Van Van, Isaac Delgado, and many others.
Another aspect that changed over the course of his career was the way the media, radio specifically, was transforming as the years went by. However, there were always communicators willing to promote his work, such as Chuy Varela, Louis Medina, and Chata Gutiérrez, who supported him at the time despite being a local artist from Uruguay playing salsa in such a competitive environment.
Thanks to all those moments and the support he received, Edgardo managed to meet his biggest dreams such as making great music, continuing to live from music, and achieving international popularity. Although he hopes to continue reaping the fruits, he feels he has already achieved what he set out to do early in his career.
40 Anniversary of Edgardo Cambon’s career
Before telling us of his plans for his 40-year career, he reminded us how he celebrated his 20-year career at Yerba Buena Gardens, where he released his album “20 Años de Sabor.” The event was so successful that he will use the same venue to celebrate his 40th anniversary on August 6 this year. The concert will be completely free, suitable for all ages, and outdoor from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
That day, he will perform the best of his repertoire together with special guests who will make it a very special night, especially for Edgardo and his team.
And Edgardo also wanted to thank International Salsa Magazine, its editor Eduardo Guilarte and me for such a very positive interview on the occasion of celebrating the anniversary of his amazing career. The honor is all us and it is what a first-class artist deserves for leaving our heritage high.
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