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Willie González supports the Spanish Harlem Salsa Museum

The Salsa Museum always seeks to give exposure to the best of our Latin music and on that occasion, we want to talk about one of the most popular representatives of romantic salsa in recent years. We are talking about the amazingly talented Willie Gonzalez, who has recently been on the Johnny Cruz Show, so we think it is pertinent to do a review of his career and the most important details of his brilliant artistic background.

Willie singing live — Willie González singing some of his biggest hits live

Willie’s beginnings in music

Willie’s formal beginnings in music were when he was just a 15-year-old boy with the dream of becoming an acclaimed artist in the future. It was the Orquesta de Chamaco Rivera that gave him his first opportunity in the musical environment by playing the trombone, but this would not be the artistic area in which he would develop later on. What ended up catching his attention were singing and songwriting.

During the 1980s, he was part of some important groups such as Orquesta Saraguey and Conjunto Chaney, in which Willie and Eddie Santiago were the main voices and began to gain great notoriety among the public.

In 1988, he decided it was time for him to become a soloist in the company of the Orquesta Noche Sensual and the support of the Sanatone record label. Romantic salsa was in style at the time, so Willie followed that same line and named his first album ”Willie González, Original y Único”. Thanks to this material, the artist managed to sell more than 100,000 copies, receive Platinum and won other recognitions.

In the coming years, he continued to release albums that was reaching greater success such as ”Willie González, Sin Comparación”, ”Para Ustedes, El Público” and ”Justo A Tiempo”. All of these have left great hits that are still considered romantic salsa classics to this day.

Willie in a videoclip — Willie Gonzalez in his videoclip ”Aunque Lo Intente”

1990s and 2000s

In 1994, the company Musical Productions published two compilation albums with Willie’s greatest hits which he called ”Éxitos de Willie González, Volumen 1” and ”Éxitos de Willie González, Volumen II”. The following year the singer demonstrated his talent as a composer with his album ”Willie González, Hacia Un Nuevo Camino” with songs like ”Quiero Recuperarte” or ”Dame Una Oportunidad”.

Once the year 2000 arrived, he continued adding successes to his career with his next album ”Sensualmente A Mi Estilo” from the hand of a Venezuelan company called Trama Records and includes great songs like ”Sensualmente Loco”, ”Tatuaje Eterno”, ”Amor Audaz”, among others.

About six years later, he released ”Reencuentro”. This musical work receives this name from a reunion between Willie and Eddie Santiago, who was his partner in the group Chaney many years ago. Together they recorded the songs ”Por Esta Mujer” and ”Solamente Ella”.

Years later, Willie recorded live from Colombia, testing his skills as a producer along with talented Diego Galé. He also wrote some of the songs ”Juré” and ”Estoy Contigo”.

In 2017, he continued to work in Colombia and released ”Willie González en vivo desde Manizales”. Such musical work contains songs like ”Pequeñas Cosas”, ”Quiero Morir En Tu Piel” and ”Si Tú Fueras mía”.

In 2020, Willie released his album ”Esencia” and continued with the line of sensuality and romance with which he has become known over the past few years. In the case of ”Esencia”, he counted on the collaboration of talented composers such as Jorge Luis Piloto, Kiko Campos, Jandy Feliz, among others.

Willie and Johnny Cruz — Johnny Cruz next to Willie Gonzalez talking about the Salsa Museum

Support to the Salsa Museum

The Spanish Harlem Salsa Museum has been fortunate to be supported by Willie, who was kindly committed to donate some of his most precious objects to the institution so that salsa fans can appreciate them.

In a video uploaded to the social networks of Johnny Cruz, president of the institution, they both talk about the role the museum has played in salsa and Willie said he was happy and proud to be able to support a place where there is a lot of history and items from such great Latin artists.

Nanette Hernández promotes the bomba and plena in New Jersey

We know that the most of our Latin countries have historically become known for genres such as salsa, merengue, bachata and more recently reggaeton and trap. However, the popularity of the aforementioned genres made us leave aside other more local rhythms that also deserve exposure.

On this occasion, we wanted to talk about the bomba and plena, so we resolved to interview Nanette Hernandez, who is one of its main proponents here in the United States, more specifically in New Jersey.

This is Nanette Hernández, who is a great promoter of the bomba and plena

How Nanette became interested in the bomba and the plena

Nanette began by telling us that her interest in music was born thanks to her parents, who are Puerto Rican and moved to the United States, Pennsylvania, during the 1950s to continue their life in this new country. However, his home was built based on Puerto Rican culture and, of course, that included language and music. Her father had an ensemble that played jibaro music and Nanette grew up watching this, so this musical environment was always very familiar to her.

As she grew up, Nanette also became very interested in dancing and discovered that she really liked salsa when she was just a teenager. She remembers listening to Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco, El Combo de Puerto Rico and many of the most popular groups and musicians of the time, who also inspired her to keep dancing. She felt that she was encouraged just by dancing, so she continued to do so over the years, but not professionally.

After marrying Juan Cartagena and seeing that she and her husband shared a taste for Latin music, they began to frequent places where Puerto Rican music groups performed. That is how they were in a show of the dance and drum ensemble ”Los Pleneros de la 21”. They were so fascinated by what they saw and heard that both Nanette and Juan began to study the plena and bomba because they wanted to know everything about these rhythms. Their interest was such that they were even in contact and consistently et with the Cepeda family, which is a cultural institution with many years of experience in everything to do with the bomba and plena.

She also mentions that Roberto Cepeda, part of the aforementioned family, was very important in her decision to devote herself to promoting the bomba and plena and feels that he saw something in her that even herself was not able to see, so she decided to search for expert teachers in these genres to become more professional in the dancing and instrumental part in order to be able to teach them to others.

Differences between the bomba and plena

When we asked Nanette about the differences between the bomba and plena, she made it very clear that people often think that they are almost the same, but they are not. They are extremely different and have many differences from each other.

In the case of the bomba, it has re than 400 years of existence and originated in Africa. The genre arrived in America along with the slaves who were brought to the New Continent and the new inhabitants of these lands brought their improvised instruments with them such as the so-called ”barrels”, which have a great resemblance to drums. They are often accompanied by maracas.

In the case of the plena, this rhythm uses the pandero, the güiro and other smaller hand instruments with which they make a completely different sound from the bomba. To complement what Nanette told us, we can also say that the plena is believed to originate in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and its lyrics are very focused on comedy, activism and denunciation. In addition, it is also seen as a very peculiar mix between African and European music.

Another difference between the bomba and plena is that, in the bomba, it is the dancer who leads and guides the musicians, while in plena the opposite happens. These genres are very different from each other, but that does not change the fact that both complement each other perfectly well in any show or class.

Nanette next to her husband Juan Cartagena, Segunda Quimbamba's founder — Nanette next to her husband Juan Cartagena, Segunda Quimbamba’s founder

How Segunda Quimbamba came about

Segunda Quimbamba is a project initiated in 1989 by Juan Cartagena, Nanette’s husband, which was born as a result of the couple’s interest in promoting two of the most important ancestral rhythms from Puerto Rico and preserving the most important musical traditions on the Island of Enchantent, such as the ”parrandas”. A few years later, they began introducing the bomba and plena until they became the center of the project.

In 1997, Nanette and Juan founded the Segunda Quimbamba Folkloric Center, which is a non-profit arts organization that seeks to promote the bomba and plena in New Jersey and the rest of the United States so that those interested can learn more about Puerto Rican music and culture in general. The organization also seeks to offer music and dance workshops at solidarity prices and even for free at times.

Nanette and Juan have been invited to participate in numerous events and have been recognized for the role they have played in promoting Latin music, especially that of Puerto Rico. For example, in 2023, The New Jersey State Council of The Arts recognized the couple with the New Jersey Heritage Fellowship Award in honor of what they have accomplished with this wonderful and ambitious musical project.

Thank you Rafael for all you have done for Salsa. Without you many of us would not be salseros

On August 29, 1926, Rafael Ithier was born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. Brilliant and talented pianist, composer, arranger, producer and founding director of the University of Salsa “El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico”.

Former member of Cortijo y su Combo. Don Rafael Ithier is by his own merit an authentic living legend of salsa worldwide.

The Korean War was imminent. The young Puerto Rican soldier Rafael Ithier, in the service of the U.S. Army, feared being sent to the battlefield. Music was his thing.

He had been a pianist in several ensembles in his native San Juan before his military service.

His mission at that time (1950) was to organize an orchestra to liven up the parties at the military base.

But the group did not progress because the soldier with the soul of a musician did not hurry the coupling of the incipient band.

He wanted to buy time. “Sorry, sergeant, the band is not ready to perform,” Ithier would say every time he was called upon. In the end, his cunning saved him from war. Several of those musicians would later form the Borinqueña Mambo Boys band. From then on, Ithier would earn his living at the piano.

With that same astuteness, and after six glorious years and a painful separation from Combo de Cortijo, one of the most successful groups in West Indian music, this self-taught musician founded El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico.

He called several of the best musicians of the defunct Combo and two very young singers: Andy Montañez and Pellín Rodríguez.

May 26, 1962 marks the birth date of the orchestra, which today has become a living legend of the genre, with 48 years in the salsa music scene and 57 recordings.

Since its first presentation at the Rock and Roll saloon in Bayamón (Puerto Rico), the Gran Combo revolutionized West Indian music with an innovative clave rhythm for that time, which was aimed at the dancer’s ear.

The jocular lyrics of their songs with Andy Montañez’s and Pellín Rodríguez’s strong voices made an immediate impact.

In addition, the band’s fresh image and colorful choreography soon gave the band its own identity, at a time when orchestras were proliferating.

For its founder, “fidelity to an original style, but at the same time adaptation to musical evolution and group discipline have allowed us to get to where we are today,” says the 84-year-old bandleader. With this formula they survived the difficult times of the industry, the genre and the passing of the years and fashions.

Thank you Rafael for all you have done for Salsa. Without you many of us would not be salseros

One of the difficult moments that Ithier remembers was when the two flagship voices of the group left in the seventies. According to the musician, “many decreed the death of the Gran Combo”.But once again, the director’s wisdom came to the fore when he found two voices that matched the band’s style.

The arrival of the new singers (Jerry Rivas and Charlie Aponte) reflected Ithier’s knowledge and leadership in managing his orchestra. When Rivas, white and blond, was introduced to replace the stellar Andy Montañez, the other musicians, most of them dark-haired, looked at him with suspicion. Ithier, with his traditional good humor, responded: “You can rest assured, he’s a black man painted white”.

On the cusp of success today few remember the vicissitudes to consolidate, after the disintegration of Cortijo y su Combo (due to indiscipline of the musicians, among them Ismael Rivera), from where the base of musicians of the Gran Combo came from. Ithier recalls how they were branded as “traitors” by the public and the musical milieu.

“Several times we were hired in clubs and when we arrived to play and they saw us, they closed the doors. Those were difficult times, we didn’t even have a place to rehearse”. The orchestra was on the verge of disappearing, says its director, who, disillusioned, locked himself in his house, determined to give up music.

Rafael Ithier received Honorary Doctorate Degree

“The musicians came looking for me and after begging me to conduct for a while, I returned. The truth is that with so many problems I thought the group would last one or two years at most and look where we are now,” confesses Ithier.

But the constancy, the iron but friendly discipline and the virtuosity of the 14 members of the group paid off. In 2005 alone, they performed in 137 shows around the world.

Los Mulatos del Sabor, La Bandera Musical de Puerto Rico or La Universidad de la Salsa, nicknames by which the legendary group is known, are now in their 48th year.

The successful musical life of El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico is linked in every musical note to the style andpersonality of its director and founder Rafael Ithier. This pianist describes himself as a self-taught musician who never attended a conservatory.

His musical school was the street and his discipline to learn from the musicians of his time. Ithier, born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, in 1926, has proven throughout his 63-year career to be a visionary of Latin music. In the 1960s, when he founded the group, he cemented his own style based on the rhythms that dominated the music scene of the time, such as bogaloo, jala-jala, bomba and plena. As for him, he was always a classical pianist.

In the seventies he understood the new direction that West Indian music was taking, already known as salsa, and he adapted to the changes.

He introduced the trombone to the brass section to give it a modern sound. Thirty years later, when the romantic salsa trend emerged, the Gran Combo knew how to stay current and worked in this line, without losing its style, but even so, the critics came.

“Music evolves like everything else and we adapt to the changes. Many orthodox of the genre do not accept it and criticized us, but for this reason many orchestras disappeared”. However, Ithier is one of the defenders of classic salsa and a critic of the so-called salsa monga (romantic), today in decline due to the resurgence of salsa dura.

“Those little guys missed the formula. They didn’t know what the clave was and they took away all the flavor of our music, they all did the same thing and that scared the dancer away. They even said that the clave was a delay in the music”.

In Latin music industry and genre circles, his influence is more than recognized.

It was Ithier who Gilberto Santa Rosa sought out for advice and support to become a soloist after having played with orchestras such as Willie Rosario’s. At present, Rafael Ithier continues in the direction of the Gran Combo and has no plans to retire, although he has not sat at the piano for three years due to hearing loss, according to himself, “due to an illness poorly cared for by not stopping traveling with the orchestra.”

Source: Alejandro-Gonzalez Teodoro (Dr Ted Alejandro Jr)

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International Salsa Magazine presents the Dj, Jeferson Flores, triumphing in Europe

Currently, they are known through the abbreviation “Dj” or the term “deejay” respectively, and in previous times, they were called “disc jockey”, to those people, which select and mix recorded music and thus be heard by a certain audience, thus issuing its sound in locations such as: discos, mini clubs, clubs, dances, events, concerts, bars, restaurants and rumbas, demonstrating their versatility, knowledge and bringing joy to their followers, listeners and dancers.

In this issue of International Salsa Magazine, we present a Venezuelan musician, selector or dj, who is currently triumphing outside our borders and extolling the name of our country.

We refer to Jeferson Flores, born in Caracas in 1992, and from a very young age he was inclined to music, because his father, also worked as a professional dj of salsa music rhythm and this somehow influenced Flores to learn the trade and legacy acquired thanks to his father.

Beginning with only 15 years of age to musicalize, using in first place the formats of compact discs “cds” and “cuatromil quinientos”, in the Caracas saraos known as “Picoteros” and in the remembered “Minitecas”, and in second place demonstrates his skill in the “plates”, when using the formats of discs in acetates or vinyl, selecting salsa for the dancer and he also commented us that with the passing of the years and until the present time, he stands out and characterizes himself for being a professional salsa dj; he stands out and is characterized for being a “dj crossover”, that is to say, what it means in the Spanish language, dedicated to “mix” with the use of “controllers” his excellent musical repertoire. International Trajectory.

The performance abroad of our guest of this month in International Salsa Magazine, has been quite extensive and successful, beginning to work in Colombia, where he worked as a “resident dj” for five years in a prestigious nightclub in Bogota, then began his period, musicalizing in Ecuador, Poland, Germany and is currently based and makes professional life in Barcelona, Spain, being described by specialists as one of the “Dj Crossover” more complete and versatile, placing Latin music in their dances. And as a result of his excellent performance in the Iberian country, he was the winner last year of the “Latino de Oro” award, in the categories: Salsa Dj and Dj Crossover, respectively, and by the way, in this year’s edition 2024, he has been nominated again in both categories for this award, considered one of the most important of the music in the European continent.

As for his most recent performances as a “musical selector”, last Saturday, June 28, he was mixing salsa at a location in the city of Marbella, Spain, in an event called “Venezuelan Night”, and next Saturday, July 6, he travels to Madrid to make the rumberos of the “mother country” enjoy, integrating the line-up of the Dj show, the “Fiesta Blanca”, alternating in this opportunity with the musicalizers: Reni Herrera, Ditxon Mercado, Dj Argenis and Dj “El Negrito Caliente”.

Finally – he told us – Jeferson that his work in Spain has been very well liked and he is one of the most requested Djs in the rumbas every weekend. His social networks and contacts are, instagram: jefersonfloresoficial2, facebook: Yeferson Flores, Tik tok: @jefersonflores457, Youtube: jefferson flores.

Email: [email protected], Booking: +34691292564. From International Salsa Magazine in Palo Alto, CA www.salsagoogle.com, we wish Dj Jeferson Flores, the best of success and continue to succeed in Europe for the pride of Venezuelans, always putting good salsa for the dancer …! Until next time and let’s keep on salsaing. Dj. Augusto Felibertt and Carlos Alberto Colmenárez Oropeza.

The first DJ was British radio engineer Ron Diggins.

Contrary to what many may imagine, it was not a bohemian musician in a garage or some friends in a ghetto. The first DJ was British radio engineer Ron Diggins, who in 1949 invented the Diggola, which today is considered the first “mixing desk” in the history of music. The home-built Diggola had two turntables, lights, microphones, amplifier, speakers and was built on a wooden coffin (yes, coffin) base.

With his Diggola at the ready, and like a good DJ, he loaded his equipment into a van and began playing records at the hundreds of UK events where he was hired, causing the crowd to go wild. “I didn’t invent anything, I just put the same things to a different use,” he commented in the magazines of the time, never imagining that his creation would be the beginning of a revolution in music, where DJ’s and beatmakers would take beats to every corner of the planet.

Ron Diggins, throughout his life, played records in more than 20 thousand parties, retiring only in 1995, after 46 years of career in front of the decks. Passionate about music, he passed away in 2011 at the age of 91, leaving an eternal legacy.

In 2020 it will be 25 years since Diggins retired from the dancefloors. And we commemorate it with music, without a minute of silence, because a life with silence is the last thing the first DJ in history wanted.

Article written by @comte_con_eme, member of the Urban Roosters Army.

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ISM / August 2024

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