Search Results for: music

José Fajardo was a virtuoso flutist, composer, orchestra conductor and music producer

José Antonio Fajardo, in the month of November we refer to one of the greatest musicians that the island of Cuba has given in the last century; we are talking about maestro José Antonio Fajardo Ramos: flutist, composer, orchestra conductor and music producer; one of the great promoters of Cuban music represented in the rhythms of bolero, son, guaracha, mambo, chachachá and pachanga.

José Fajardo was born in Guane, province of Pinar del Río in 1919. He began his musical career as a maraquero in his father Alberto Fajardo’s orchestra, later he took up the flute.

From the age of 16 he was part of several groups such as: Joseíto Fernández, Paulina Álvarez, Melodías del 40, La Romance de René Álvarez, the orchestra of maestro Antonio María Romeu, the orchestra of pianist Luis González Valdés: “Neno” González and the orchestra of Antonio Arcaño, known as Arcaño y sus Maravillas.

After his time in these famous groups, in 1949, Fajardo created his own orchestra called Fajardo y sus Estrellas, with musicians such as: Orlando “Cachaito López”, René Fernández on piano, violinists Ignacio Berroa and Félix Reyna, who was also the composer; percussionist Jesús Esquijarrosa on timbales; Carlos Real on tumbadora and Rolando Valdés on güiro; in the vocal part he initially integrated Joseito Valdés.

In the early fifties, with the boom of chachachá in 1951, things improved a lot and the charangas orchestras began to perform in the best cabarets, aristocratic salons and private parties of high society, such as the Montmatre and Tropicana cabarets.

Fajardo became internationally known in the mid 50’s at the head of his orchestra, Fajardo y sus Estrellas, he was the first charanguero to introduce the cymbals to the timbal and the pioneer in the incorporation of the cowbell and the bongo to the charanga, his group was one of the sensations of the golden age of chachacha and pachanga.

After going into exile in the 1960s, he toured Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, popularizing an eminently Cuban repertoire.

Maestro José Fajardo has been one of the only musicians who have stood out in different periods of Latin music; initially in Cuba, in the 50’s with the arrival of Chachachá, later in the era of Pachanga and Boogaloo, in the sixties in the United States, and he also came to prominence in the golden era of salsa in the seventies and eighties of the last century.

In the seventies, eighties and later, the flute master recorded with Joe Quijano & His Conjunto Cachana, Tico-Alegre All Stars; Ray Barretto and Adalberto Santiago; Johnny Pacheco, Pupi, Javier Y Su Charanga; Jimmy Sabater, Orlando Contreras, Alfredo Valdés Jr, Fania All Stars, Louie Ramirez, Graciela and Mario Bauza, Israel “Cachao” Lopez, with our great Joe Arroyo in the nineties and with Hector Casanova, Mario Muñoz, Andy Gonzalez, Eddie Montalvo, Manny Oquendo, Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Alfredo Rodriguez and Francisco Aguabella.

After a brilliant musical career spanning more than six decades, Maestro José Antonio Fajardo passed away in New York City on December 11, 2001, leaving an enormous legacy to our culture.

José Fajardo fue un virtuoso flautista, compositor, director de orquesta y productor musical

The great musical contribution of this portentous son of Pinar del Rio, has highlighted him as the highest flute of Cuba and Latin America, a true ambassador of Cuban music and salsa in the world; from our beautiful page ‘Los Mejores Salseros del Mundo’ we want to highlight the enormous artistic career of maestro José Antonio Fajardo Ramos as a tribute to his wonderful musical work.

José Antonio Fajardo, uno de los más grandes músicos que ha dado la isla de Cuba

José Fajardo Jr.

You can read: Ángel Bonne He was part of Juan Formell’s Los Van Van Orchestra, and collaborated with the impressive Irakere band of maestro Chucho Valdés

Musical memory and Alzheimer’s

Why musical memory is important

Memory is extremely important for people’s mental health and life in general, but there is no denying that it is even more important for those working in the entertainment industry. This is where the so-called musical memory comes in, which is what we are going to talk about at this time.

Musical memory is so important for musicians and those working in the entertainment industry

Musical memory can be defined as the ability to retain, remember and memorize musical pieces and fragments, so that they can be correctly performed by a musician. Within this concept, there are several types of musical memory today. There will be a type of memory more useful for some than for others, depending on the professional field.

Types of musical memory

There are several classifications of musical memories, so we will try to mention some of the most important ones in this section according to the research we have done. These are some of the most frequently mentioned, but there are many others.

Mental memory: mental memory is the one that a musician should use in order to be aware of written music while reading it. This is how this symbol set can be perceived as a concept or idea that including understanding of a number of aspects such as rhythm, melody, harmony, among others.
Auditory memory: this type of memory is what allows musicians to retain memories in the form of sound and helps them to know for certain if a sound is in tune or out of tune.
Muscle memory: this part of the musical memory is the one that fixes motor and tactile sensations in the brain. It is thanks to it that musicians can play each and every one of their notes without having to think about all of them at the same time.
Visual memory: while it is true that a musician does not need to see to be able to play an instrument, it can greatly help to enrich the memory. Vision is important when knowing the hand and finger positions in the instruments and the memorization of sheet music.
Emotional memory: emotions are extremely important at the time of remembering things, especially if they are very important to us. Many serious studies have shown that human emotions play a fundamental role in the preservation of memories. In the case of a musician, the more emotional he/she is while playing an instrument, the easier it will be for his/her brain to remember the actions and have the necessary thoughts to proceed.

Relationship of musical memory with Alzheimer’s

Music is stored in the frontal lobe

Contrary to what many may think, Alzheimer’s does not take away 100% of the sufferer’s memories, and a perfect example of that is music. We all know how devastating this terrible disease is for the brain, especially for everything to do with memory, but for some reason, a huge percentage of those affected keep their musical memories, even in the worst stages of this disease. This is because music is stored in brain areas different from other memories.

According to studies conducted in some of the patients, there isevidence that music is stored in a network in the frontal lobe, which has come to be called the disco of human beings. It is in this part of the brain that auditory memory, including songs, is managed. The unusual thing is that Alzheimer’s greatly affects this area, so it is very curious that these memories remain intact despite the damage suffered.

What some researchers in the field have done is to monitor which brain areas are activated when listening to songs. Once these areas are identified, they proceed to find out if they are atrophied, pr on the contrary, if they resist the disease in a better way.

There are many patients who do not even know their own names, but they remember the songs that caused them intense emotions. This is because the brain experiences listening to music in a different way from remembering and memorizing it. Both processes are carried out by this organ of the body in a totally different way, and science is shedding more light on this important subject every day.

The brain experiences listening to music in a different way from remembering and memorizing it

The most fundamental aspects of musical memory are processed in brain areas linked to semantic, episodic and autobiographical aspects. However, medical and scientific professionals are still very prodent in relation to this subject, because it is not easy to find so many test subjects to conduct studies of this type, so all this is still not enough to draw definitive conclusions.

Music as part of potential treatments for Alzheimer’s

Yet there is still much to investigate on all of that, research has become known that music can be highly beneficial to Alzheimer’s patients. Even if music is not the cure they so desperately need, they can benefit a lot at the emotional and behavioral level. It can help reduce stress, agitation, depression and anxiety.

It can also help relatives relax and connect with their loved ones at levels they have never imagined. In such cases, it is recommended to find the music preferred by the patient, establish patterns with it, encourage hand or foot movements, sing along and pay close attention to patient’s reaction.

It is from there that the medical team attending each case can determine which the best alternative for each case, since each one is different.

Perspectives of our senses in being an excellent Dj. and or Musicalizer

It is known as Disc Jockey (also known with the abbreviation of DJ, and its Anglo-Saxon pronunciation of Deejay) or disyóquey to “the person who selects and mixes recorded music of his own or of other composers and artists, to be listened to by an audience”.

Musicalizador: is that person who can extract a periodic and varied list of an equis amount of songs of proven success loaded in the storage system.

Many people and/or dancers express the controversy of the musicalizadores and Dj’s. Of the rumbas salseras of all the times nowadays that call it of (Salsa Guateque and Baúl).

With respect to the content or musical selection that they place or propose each one to give to understand to the public rumbero dancer.

Today there are many musicalizers and above all self-appointed “Dj`s” and they use to call themselves from one day to another and what they do not know that to reach this art they must study and know the art of basic music such as harmonies, theory and solfeggio, to be more complex.

First, one thing is to be a Dj and another musicalizer, both have to know music, but the Dj is responsible for making the mix of one over the other in couplings of the song without distorting the original revolutions or Bpm that makes you feel the harmony of both in one. Making the dancers flow and make the place feel good and cool.

The Djs and musicalizers have a difficult task to bring the creativity and the magic to put to dance to their public some traditional and others demanding to be able to over carry a rumba or danceable night.

This work has been difficult, but also easy to have an ear to select a song with a good sense of lyrics and above all with a harmonious and contagious arrangement that gives pleasure at the time of dancing. Making of them the work of how and when to place the melody to make the hook between the public/dancer.

The public rumbero, dancer…It is hard to understand that going out one night and feeling the atmosphere with something musical that not only you like, but also your partner or whoever you ask to dance likes the theme. Remember that not only the song makes the night enjoyable, but also the sound of the song and the people around you.

On the other hand, there is the audience that is not even a dancer. Many have the bad sense to bother with a drink in hand, dance alone, even take pictures and record the musicians and / or DJs. They get in the way of those who really want to enjoy the dance floor.

The criticisms are constructive to be better for the next dance, remember that there is a lot of music from the older music stirring memories of the public. As well as the newest, given that the music is modern and evolving.

With this I do not mean that all are bad, on the contrary there are good musicians and DJs par excellence that I follow for many years. But there is a large group that is coming out in this that lacks some of the conditions mentioned above.

For DJ’s

If you are going to play a number, play the original. The musicians, composers, arrangers and dancers will thank you for it.
Music with instrument downloads are UNCOMFORTABLE FOR DANCING. Know how to choose which solos are danceable. Give swing to the dancer.
Don’t cut the end of the music, or mix it up. It takes away the happy moment of that final punch.
Just because it’s fast doesn’t mean it’s danceable; listen and see how people enjoy the different tempos in the music.
Hey…the guajira, the son montuno, the chachacha…whatever you call it, it’s part of the genre. Why do you have to ask for it and they look at you funny? Out of every three to four salsas, a chacha goes down very well.

Salsa En La Web also promotes Latin music around the world

Salsa En La Web

As our dear readers know, International Salsa Magazine is dedicated to promoting Latin music artists, especially those who sing salsa, but we also believe that it is of extremely importance to promote platforms that, like us, seek to spread this wonderful and colorful music everywhere.

Salsa En La Web is a salsa community on the internet, so there are members from all over the world. This site is devoted to promoting and spreading everything related to salsa and Latin music so that the new generations get to know the musical idols of their parents and grandparents. They also want this musical genre to keep growing and never go out.

DJ Danny Salsa, director and programmer of Salsa En La Web

Interview

Today, we talked to the administrators of the website Salsa En La Web, which is devoted to promoting salsa worldwide, and our questions were as follows:

Who are we talking to? Please provide your name, occupation and direct or indirect relashionship with salsa.

You’re talking to DANNY SALSA, director and programmer of SALSAENLAWEB. I am also a chemist and DJ by profession. – Collector of romantic salsa.

According to what I read on your Facebook page, you have spread salsa culture at the global level for 11 years. How did everything start?

In 2011 we started sharing music on a blog where we spread LP, CD, ARTISTS, GROUPS, ORCHESTRAS. After that, we also shared gatherings of collectors and salsa events in Bogota.

To date, we have not failed to spread salsa culture that through this beautiful music, we want to make a better culture.

DJ Danny Salsa loves salsa and wants to promote it

What has motivated you to create a website of this style? Why are salsa and Latin music so important to you?

First of all, the taste for salsa music started from I was 13 years. From a very young age, I had contact with computers after school. In my spare time, I created my first blog and, after knowing the world of the internet, I created this website of salsa.

Salsa has brought me great friends, moments, live artists since I programme salsa at bars. I saw the happiness dancing and sharing after entering the world of collecting your albums for your own taste brings.

What part of the world is the largest part of your audience from?

Colombia is our biggest audience with listeners who always listen to our programming at any time of the day and from any time of the day and from any part of the planet where there is an Internet connection.

According to the map on your website, many members of your audience are in Europe and the southern United States. Where are you located? Are you in different countries?

The website is free on the platform www.salsaenlaweb.com.co and from the APP without any cost, listeners in these countries can listen to us from these countries send us their good comments and this motivates us to programme the best salsa music through our . We are in Bogota, Colombia but we have listeners all over the world.

In addition to salsa, what other musical genres do you promote?

We don’t do dissemination of other genres because we are select in salsa.

What goals have you set in the long run?

We want to be the salsa website of reference for its good content in the whole world and have great sponsors that allow us to keep working in favor of salsa.

Logo of Salsa En La Web

Home

The Tambor, Tumbadora or Conga is a percussion instrument of great importance in Latin music

The drum, tumbadora or conga as a soloist instrument in Cuban music or jazz bands, had as its first figure Chano Pozo, who, upon receiving the invitation of Mario Bauza and Dizzy Gillespie to participate in his big band, turned the world of jazz upside down.

This explosive union resulted in compositions such as Manteca or Tin Tin Deo.

They also created the roots of what is known today as Latin Jazz, which was originally called Afro Cuban Jazz “Cubop”.

After the surprising death of Chano Pozo, figures such as Cándido Camero, Carlos “Patato” Valdés, Mongo Santamaría, Armando Peraza, Tata Guines and Ray Barretto emerged who gave development and personality to the conga drum as a solo instrument.

It should be noted that Ray Barretto was born in New York and is of Puerto Rican descent.

He would be the first important figure in the world of conga drumming not born in Cuba. As a teenager, Barretto took care of his siblings in the evenings while his mother worked and spent hours listening to the radio.

There he was influenced by jazz and, in addition, his mother listened to Cuban and Puerto Rican music at home. This is how he formed his taste and love for music.

Mario Bauzá

He was a saxophonist in Justo Azpiazu’s orchestra and trumpet player in the Machín Quartet. Later, he joined Chick Webb’s orchestra as principal trumpet. In 1933 he was named director of the orchestra, and remained as such until 1937. Between 1937 and 1939 he played with the orchestras of Don Redman and Fletcher Henderson. And in 1938 he joined Cab Calloway’s band.

We can also affirm that Mario Bauzá is the musical godfather of two great jazz legends: Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. Because it was Bauzá who made Calloway meet the then young trumpeter John Birks Gillespie, and Chick Webb incorporated Ella Fitzgerald into his band.

Chano Pozo

Luciano Pozo González, better known as Chano Pozo was born in Havana Cuba on January 7, 1915 and died in New York, December 3, 1948, was a Cuban percussionist, half brother of trumpeter Félix Chapolín.

Percussion instruments are instruments that produce sound when struck, shaken or percussed in some way.

This percussion can be done with drumsticks, with metal bars, with the hands, with keyboards or by striking two bodies against each other. This wide variety of possibilities allows for a wide range of sounds and types of instruments.

He shined shoes and sold newspapers, played music in many places and even danced in the well-known Havana comparsa of “Los Dandy”.

He belonged to the Abakuá Secret Society, which explains the perfect mastery he had of the drums of the rite. He had the habit of playing sacred rhythms on his congas, as well as singing Abakuá and Yoruba songs.

He worked in the public transmissions of the radio station Cadena Azul, together with figures of the stature of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, being with Dizzy when he popularized the well-known theme of “Manteca”.

Dizzy Gillespie

He was born on October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina.

Son of a bricklayer and occasional musician who treated him very badly.

The young Gillespie hit on everyone: “I was a devil, a strong devil”.

At the age of fourteen, he began playing the trombone, but soon switched to the trumpet, which he was already playing proficiently when his family moved to Philadelphia in 1935. There he got his first important contract with Frank Fairfax’s orchestra.

His life changed as he transformed from a thug in his youth to a true citizen of the world, supporting social causes such as racial integration.

Ray Barretto

Of Puerto Rican parents from Aguadilla, Raymundo Barretto Pagan was born on April 29, 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. He spent his childhood and youth in the Bronx and Spanish Harlem.

He grew up with his mother Dolores Pagan and his siblings Cecilia and Ricardo.

As a child, when he was only 10 years old, he listened to Arsenio Rodríguez, Machito, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Los Panchos, Pedro Flores, Daniel Santos and Miguelito Valdez.

At the age of 17, in 1946, he joined the U.S. Army.

In Germany he discovered his taste for music represented in Bebop, listening to the songs “Shaw Nuff” by Charlie Parker with Dizzy Gillespie and “Manteca” by Dizzy Gillespie with the Cuban Chano Pozo, who became his source of inspiration. It was at that time that he became thoroughly acquainted with jazz.

“The word percussion comes from the Latin percussio, a variation of the word percussus, which refers to the action of striking, shaking or vibrating something repeatedly.”

Percussion instruments have a great importance in music because, within a group of instruments, their usual function is to mark the rhythm of the piece. This means that they are often seen as the heartbeat of a musical composition.

Because of their primary role in creating and maintaining the rhythm of a piece, percussion instruments often work in conjunction with bass instruments, including the double bass or electric bass.

There are a large number of percussion instruments that can be classified according to different criteria. In this article you can find the most important classifications used today.

Many of these instruments are simple and rudimentary. It is due to their simplicity that percussion instruments are the oldest in the history of mankind.

The evolution of technology and music gradually allowed the development of more complex instruments, among which are wind instruments and stringed instruments.

Sources:

https://www.instrumentosdepercusion.com/

http://clasica.latinastereo.com/Salsero-del-mes/Mario-Bauza

http://old.latinastereo.com/html/genteLatina/salseroMes/RayBarretto/cronologia.shtm