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DIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS Merry Christmas and Happy New Year |
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| DECEMBER 2023 FESTIVALS | ||
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Euroson Latino World Salsa ChampionshipDec 04 / 09 2023 Hotel Grand Oasis Cancún Blvd. Kukulcan Km 16.5-Lt45-47, Zona Hotelera Cancun, Mexico, 77500 |
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Feria de Cali 2023Dec 25 / 30 2023 Parque de Las Banderas Santiago de Cali, Valle del Cauca, Colombia |
Martin Franco is a talented New York’s producer, sound engineer, composer, vocalist, percussionist and saxophonist who has had a big trajectory in music, which he shared with us in a half-hour conversation we had.
The artist of Colombian parents has been kind enough to reveal some of the most important details of his artistic career and the process by which he has managed to become the professional in the music field he is today, so we hope the information revealed here will be liked by those who usually follow our publications.
Something important we did not know about Martín is that, although both his parents are Colombian, they moved to Mexico when he was little and he spent the first eight years of his childhood in that country, before moving to Laredo, Texas.
At his new school in the US, he and his classmates were allowed to choose the instrument they liked most to learn to play it and the boy chose the saxophone, as he thought it was ”the most beautiful” at the time.
When Martin began his training, he discovered that he had a real taste for music and began to see it as a pleasant pastime and not an obligation, which led his mother to buy him his own saxophone and tell him to ”throw forward to music” if that was what he liked.
When he turned 12, the family moved back to New York, where Martin started to take music more seriously and meet people related to the industry. That was when percussion and tropical music also caught his attention, as Texas was packed with Mexican cumbia and other such rhythms.
On the other hand, New York had an immense Puerto Rican community and even his own aunts had married Puerto Ricans. Since this was the dominant community in the city in those years, Martin began hearing the conga, the keyboard, the trombone, the timbales and all the music made by the Fania. It was then when his musical tastes and plans began to change.
When he arrived in New York, Martin was not old enough to start a professional career, so he was engaged to play with friends in the streets, houses, apartments and private parties. However, this time helped him a lot to gain experience and his family was a great support in all this.
Martín, his family and some of his friends used to go to see live Latin artists and orchestras such as Celia Cruz, Héctor Lavoe, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, Mongo Santamaría, among others. This also represented part of his motivation to do salsa in the future, although he also liked American jazz, which features the saxophone, his favorite instrument.
The mix of Latin and American genres resulted in the music that became popular in those years, and the music Martin makes today has much of what he learned back then. It was a mix of Caribbean tropical rhythms, jazz and American funk.
The musician considers that American and Latin rhythms have complimented each other over the years and he always tries to unite them in his performances, just like English and Spanish.
The name ”Mambo Soul Band” is a mixture of ”mambo”, which means ”to greet someone” or ”to communicate” in some African dialects, and ”soul” in English. This resulted in something like ”to communicate from the soul”, a concept that fascinated Martin. At the same time, both are the names for well-known musical genres, the one Latino and the other American.
He selected these genres as the name of his band because they contain what influenced him musically speaking. Latin jazz, soul and funk were the genres on which Martin based his songwriting for the band he was creating and he hired musicians who had experience with these rhythms. And in case they do not master any of them, he teaches them.
According to Martín, guitarists and bassists are the ones who usually have more problems when playing or learning to play these genres, while a percussionist usually has a greater dominion over these areas.
Another variant of the same project also led by Martín is Mambo Soul Jazz, which offers music and songs much more inclined to the American way. Mambo Soul Jazz is more aimed at quiet events where people do not usually dance much and just want background music to enjoy the evening.
The choose of one or the another will vary depending on the public of the day, although the basis of everything is always Latin music.
In the view of Martin based on his experience, one of the most challenging things for him and his musicians is the economic issue. At the level where they are, they do not make big profits from their work, which contrasts to the high cost of living in California.
This situation has led many of the musicians to have parallel jobs that allow them subsistence since it is very difficult to make a living from music. The only alternative is to constantly tour with famous groups, but not everyone is willing to do that, so they prefer to work on other things.
In his particular case, he can afford to live only from music because he is the leader of the orchestra and the one who is in charge of getting contracts and shows for the group.
What we took from the conversation
From the beginning, we have noticed that Martin is a man absolutely passionate about his Latin roots and all that comes with them, especially the musical part. He always stressed that everything he does is for his love of music.
It is our pleasure to have the opportunity to talk with this great exponent of Latin and Afro-Caribbean music and we offer him our best wishes for success from now on.
Latin talent can be found where you might least expect it and, this time we found it in the city of Montreal, Canada, a place that is cultivating an increasingly large and vigorous Latin music scene. On this occasion, we were thrilled to be able to talk to Giany-Frantz Huyghues-Despointes, who is the leader and founder of the orchestra Lengaïa Salsa Brava.
Lengaïa Salsa Brava is a 12-member salsa orchestra that was created in 2012 by Giany, who was also a trombonist and had some experience in the world of music before daring to create his own group.
The effort of all its members has enabled them to collaborate with great performers of the genre and win important awards such as the Canada Latin Awards in the category of ”Salsa Group of the Year” in a row in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Lengaïa Salsa Brava has also performed approximately 30 concerts a year since its foundation and has participated in important festivals such as Toronto Salsa Festival, Festival Nuit Blanche de Montreal, Nuits d’Afrique, among others. The group was greatly helped by the fact that its members come from different countries such as French Guyana, Cuba, Colombia, Peru, Quebec, Spain and Venezuela.
This interesting journey shows us how hard this group has worked to achieve a place within the industry and all the potential they have to achieve much more than what was obtained. Today, Giany, its founder, shares a little more about himself and his orchestra Lengaïa Salsa Brava.
Although the trombone is the instrument for which Giany is known, he started playing the trumpet from 10 years of age, which is when he began his interest in this branch of the art.
An important point is that in French Guyana, the country where Giany was born, salsa is not a predominant genre, since the most played by the French Guyanese is the mazurka, which is very similar to the Haitian compas. In the case of Giany’s family, they listened to a bit of everything, including salsa.
A turning point for the artist was watching Celia Cruz singing on tv one day. The musician had never heard the Cuban singer before and it was an incredible experience for him, as her deep voice, colorful outfit and wig caught his attention at the time.
Because of her deep voice, he thought she was a man, but his mother explained to him who Celia was and, months later, took him to a concert to see her live. That performance of ”La Guarachera de Cuba” marked him so much that he would begin to lean towards music in the future. Today, he says that Celia is a spiritual mother to him, as she was his great inspiration.
Along with being a fan of the Cuban singer, he wanted to learn to play instruments and initially opted for the piano and the guitar, but that changed when his Spanish teacher at school gave him a trumpet and he discovered that he really liked to play it.
Some time later, he graduated from the national school of music in his country and, by the time he turned 18, Giany noticed that his musical skills excelled more with the trombone than the trumpet. This is how he decided to choose the trombone as his main instrument and so it has been to the present time.
He started playing classical music with that instrument but soon discovered that he wanted to return to the genre that captivated him when he was just a child, so he dared to create a group in France, where he studied aviation. The thing is that he went to live in Canada six months later and had to abandon the plans he had at that time.
Giany arrived in Canada with the vision to create another group in his new country of residence, but he did not know any musicians yet, so he moved into action and started placing ads on social networks and other virtual means to communicate with artists who were interested in joining his project.
The results were amazing and there were many musicians who contacted Giany because of their interest in the concept proposed by him. With this group, he started assembling the orchestra in order to give form to what Lengaïa Salsa Brava is today. The orchestra has six years with the same staff and format it presents to the public today.
As for the large number of nationalities living in the orchestra, Giany has said that all ”are part of a big family” hinting that national origins have not been a problem for the smooth development of the group. In addition to that, the salsa brava is a genre widely known worldwide, so the members of the orchestra knew in advance what they were getting into.
To what we must add that these guys work or have worked in other salsa brava orchestras, so they were pretty much steeped in everything related to this beautiful music.
Giany says it is very easy to work with his musicians because they always know how to perfectly interpret what he wants.
When Giany was looking for a name for the group, he wanted something different and not very Latin sounding. He also wanted people to ask what the name meant, so we have fallen into the trap.
The musician explained that he wanted something that refers to how explosive, energetic and aggressive his music is, so he chose the name inspired by a Tanzanian volcano called Ol Doinyo Lengaï that spews black lava. ”When you see a volcano exploding, you imagine something explosive and aggressive at the time. That’s what we want to reflect with our music”. Also, the fact that its lava is black is something different from other volcanoes, as is the group’s orchestration and technique,
Giany wanted to emphasize that all the members of Lengaïa Salsa Brava have other jobs and work activities outside the orchestra. In his particular case, he works as a commercial pilot, but in his spare time, he devotes himself as much as he can to his great passion which is music.
So far, Giany and the other members of the orchestra are unable to live solely on music, but they do their best to keep the group together and are there to fulfill Lengaïa Salsa Brava whenever necessary.
Although the orchestra has been a second employment option, it is undeniable that this is their great vocation and the engine that moves his life, so there will always be space for it.
Talent can come from the most amazing and unexpected origins and more when we are talking about music, a branch of art from which always emerges people with a lot of potential who can completely break our schemes. This leads us to introduce the topic of a group of four young musicians and singers who joined their skills despite their apparent differences. They are the musical group Ladama.
Ladama is an alternative Latin music band composed of four members of different nationalities: Venezuelan Maria Fernanda Gonzalez, Brazilian Lara Klaus, Colombian Daniela Serna and American Sara Lucas.
Three of the four members of the group spoke exclusively with International Salsa Magazine and this report will show some of the topics covered during this pleasant conversation.
The conversation was started by Lara and Dani, who explained a bit about the rise and concept of the band. The group was created in 2014 while the girls were doing an artistic residency known as OneBeat, which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. They were selected to represent their respective countries, which led them to socialize with each other and discover the great chemistry between them because of the language and genres they played.
Since OneBeat was an initiative towards cultural exchange between artists and offered the necessary technical equipment to record music, they took full advantage of this space to get to know each other’s styles and see what they could do together.
Once the month-long residency was over, each went their way, but they kept in touch via Skype a year after having met. The motivation to create a project that would encompass a musical band and teaching classes to minority communities remains intact.
They wanted to create an initiative in which community, creativity, social impact and cultural exchange would be the fundamental pillars of Ladama. It was always clear that they not only wanted to make music, but also do something that would positively impact upon society and they think they have succeeded so far.
As for the name Ladama, it is simply a combination of the first two letters of the names of each one: ”la” comes from Lara, ”da” comes from Dani and ”ma” comes from María Fernanda. At the same time, ”La dama” in Spanish means ”The lady”, which also refers to the fact that it is an all-women group.
We were very impressed by the fact that all Ladama members came from different countries, so we wanted to know how this impacted the group. Lara answered that the only thing they needed was the desire to play together and move this initiative forward, which means that the origin of each one was not a problem to found the group.
Just like every other band, each one had her own ideas and they discussed them together to know which one to choose or not.
Their major test was given during the Rec-Beat Festival in Brazil. They arrived only a few days before the event, so they could barely rehearse and set up the repertoire. Despite the haste, they feel that everything went very fluidly, as they spent time meeting with each other and writing some songs for an occasion like this.
Given that Lara, Dani and Maria Fernanda come from Latin and tropical countries, there are certain rhythms that sound so much alike, which they took advantage of to unify them and create completely new rhythms that sound good at the same time. Lara also pointed out that these mixes are in constant change and they always try not to get stuck in the same styles.
In addition to that, Ladama has left traditional music behind a little bit and has focused on alternative music and other genres such as pop, soul and R&B.
Dani addressed the topic of genres by saying that they do not follow a plan in which they have something specific to play or mix. Any of their songs can go from Dominican merengue and Colombian cumbia to trap and reggaeton without any problems. They do not like to limit themselves and always seek to reach all audiences.
Playing on Tiny Desk (a series of live concerts organized by the radio program All Songs Considered in the United States) is always a prestige for any artist or group that performs on that platform, which is inviting Latin singers more frequently every time.
The girls were at a festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they had the opportunity to meet the curator of Tiny Desk, who would invite Ladama to record their session in Washington D.C. shortly thereafter.
Lara considers that this was a great opportunity to spread their work due to the large number of people who always tune in to Tiny Desk, in addition to the many artists they knew after their appearance on the platform.
For her part, María Fernanda commented that, on that same occasion, they took the opportunity to bring instruments from their own countries so that the Tiny Desk audience could get to know them. She also stressed that this session will be an important audiovisual document for history that will serve as an inspiration for other musicians in the future.
It was a great achievement after all that hard work.
The members of Ladama have also been focusing on music classes for the community at large, mostly in schools and universities. In their four countries, they have given workshops of all kinds related to music in the languages they speak, which are, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
the artist emphasized that they always try to do this type of activities together in the very countries where they offer live performances. They have total freedom to do things separately, but they prefer to carry out these activities supporting each other.
Although they offer classes to anyone who is interested, Latino children are a very important group for Ladama, as many of them often have some problems of identity and adaptation to the United States. When they arrive at school in this country, they often disguise or even hide their Latino roots in order to fit in with their peers, so these classes are an opportunity for them to reconnect with that identity they begin to leave behind.
These workshops and classes also serve as additional income for the group, as they can not only support themselves through tours and festivals. These educational activities are another way to diversify their earnings and have more stable inflows of money.
Recorded in New York at Electric Lady Studios, the album was released by Coco Records on Wednesday, September 18, 1974.
The album featured vocals by Lalo Rodríguez, who was only 16 years old at the time.
It includes: ‘Nada De Ti’, ‘Deseo Salvaje’, ‘Una Rosa Española’, ‘Nunca Contigo’, ‘Un Día Bonito’, ‘Mi Cumbia’.
Eddie Palmieri
The sun of Latin music
MP, 1990. MP-3109 CD
Recorded in 1975
The Sun of Latin Music was a controversial album. It was too far from the easy formula of the middle salsa boom – what César Miguel Rondón calls the “mtancerization of salsa”.
“Ahead of its time” was one of the comments; “a piece like Un día bonito, had to be mutilated” with a 6-minute piano intro just to be able to play it on the radio; a danzón (Una rosa española) with lyrics by the Beatles; a cumbia that is not very Colombian, despite the name (Mi cumbia) and the chorus that says “very Colombian…”.
Nevertheless, this album represents the strength of the spirit of salsa: the encounter between the harshness of the street and the majesty of the most sophisticated musical sound.
One of the best albums of Caribbean music ever released.
Palmieri was always in search of something new. The Sun Of Latin Music is the culmination of a phase that began with an earlier album, Sentido (1974).
Ronnie Cuber and Mario Rivera were chosen as the first saxophonists in a Palmieri orchestra.
For many it is Palmieri’s best album, the most experimental and universal. One that borders on academic music, but without forgetting the dancer.
With spices like the violin of Alfredo de la Fe, who contributes his creativity everywhere, the tuba, the penetrating power of the brass, the overwhelming percussion.
Thus, Una rosa española is a modern danzón that later becomes a montuno that revives the joyful Palmerian game with the dignified uproar of trumpets, saxophones and trombones.
But the most amazing thing about this 1974 album is the 14:20-minute track Un día bonito, arranged by Barry Rogers, which would keep even the most trained dancers busy. But Palmieri wasn’t just thinking about leg sets or dance floors.
The piece begins with a long piano interlude, the same structure he used in the track Adoración from the album Sentido, which would mark a new musical phase in his career.
It was more than experimental, it had some electro-acoustic music; no one had ever had the audacity to do that on a salsa album. Palmieri made the leap, he could do it, it sounded more like Stravinsky or Milhaud than Puente or Fania.
Suddenly, back in the piece, the orchestra bursts in, harder and heavier than ever, wishing the city of Los Angeles a beautiful day and San Francisco a “warm greeting,” and it is certain that Keruack and Borrough heard the call.
Eddie Palmieri
The sun of Latin music
Produced by Harvey Averne
Eddie Palmieri: piano
Lalo Rodríguez: vocals
Vitín Paz: trumpet
Virgil Jones: trumpet
Barry Rogers: trombone, tenor tuba
José Rodrigues: trombone
Ronnie Cuber: Baritone Saxophone, Flute
Mario Rivera: Baritone Saxophone, Flute
Alfredo de la Fe: Violin
Eddie Guagua Rivera: Bass
Tommy Chuckie Lopez, Jr.: Bongo
Eladio Pérez: conga
Nicky Marrero: timbales, percussion
Peter Gordon: French Horn
Tony Price: Tuba
Jimmy Sabater: Chorus
Willie Torres: Chorus
Tommy López Sr.: conga
Tracks: Nada de ti; Deseo salvaje; Una rosa española; Nunca contigo; Un día bonito; Mi cumbia
Arrangements by René Hernández and Barry Rogers
One of the most valuable pieces in the exhibition “Rhythm and Power: Salsa in New York”, which will be presented until next November at the Museum of the City of the Big Apple, is the first Grammy in the history of Latin music, awarded in 1976 to Eddie Palmieri for his album “Sun of Latin Music”.
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Also Read: Salsa and its detractors “Caiga quien Caiga”
