Search Results for: rhythm

Alfrid Valdez “The King of Steel Band”

Latin America / Venezuela / Sucre

Alfrid Valdez is a Venezuelan singer who was born in Guiria, Sucre State-Venezuela, and since he was very young he showed a great interest and taste for Afro-Antillean, tropical and Caribbean music, especially the Steel Band, calypso and soca genres. even getting to play all the instruments of the “Steel Band”, always in the hands of his father, the popular “Guapango”.

Alfrid Valdez "The King of Steel Band" — Alfrid Valdez “The King of Steel Band”

Already established in the city of Guayana, in 1990 he began his musical career as executor of the first Steel Band piano in musical groups that cultivated and spread the aforementioned rhythms; and as time passed he gained more experience, excelling in Soca and Calypso which were the main rhythms of “Alfrid y su banda Acero”.

During his day he presented his new record production in the salsa genre, entitled “Salvemos El Amor” which was born from his 2nd salsa work; His first production was made in 2004, presenting himself as “Alfrid El Salsero De Oriente”, with his songs “Sin tu Amor”, “Hasta arrival at the Sea” and “Stay by my side”, which were recognized by the International Organization ” Cacique de Oro” as “Salsa Revelation Singer of the Year”. And with his record work he toured his country (Venezuela) together with several artists in the celebration of the 25 years of artistic career of Salsero Manuel Guerra, creator of the famous group “Salserin”.

Photo - Alfrid Valdez — Photo – Alfrid Valdez

In this new production there are 10 songs of which Alfrid expresses his lyrics and arrangements in 3 songs: “Salvemos el Amor”, “Traicionera” and “Amor en la menor”, in addition to making some tributes to the great singers of the decade of the 80s such as the Great Héctor Lavoe and Ismael Rivera, Alfrid is currently in Lima – Peru where he will launch this salsa material with the support of the record company Col-Discos and the media of that country.

One of the salsa songs to be released soon to its public is “Dudas” that will be launched in Lima, Peru for all of Latin America, if you want to listen you can listen through https://soundcloud.com/pana music/alfrid-el-rey -del-steel-band-doubts

For more information:

Email: [email protected]
Facebook: alfrid.valdez
Instagram: alfridvaldez
Twitter: AlfridValdez
Phones: +58 414-8695554 +58 414-8925467

Steps Dance Studio Inc.

North America / Canada /  Toronto

Steps Dance Studio

Steps offers a complete curriculum of Salsa, Bachata, Hustle and Latin Dance for all skill levels. Working from a comprehensive dance syllabus designed by Jennifer Aucoin and refined by 20 years of Salsa teaching experience, their professionally trained instructors are patient, dedicated and passionate about their craft. Want you to leave your class and the dancefloor feeling great. The program is designed to allow students to begin anytime! Start any week, even absolute beginners. And come as often as your schedule allows. Steps Dance Studio has classes every night and on weekends, and most levels are offered twice a week or more.

Located just a few minutes walk from Bloor & Wellesley subway stations. 819 Yonge St. 3rd floor. Toronto, ON M4W 2G9 SE corner of Yonge St. & Davenport, north of Bloor St.

Meet Jennifer Aucoin, Founder, Executive Director and Instructor.

A full-time salsa instructor, choreographer and event organizer. She is co-artistic director for Steps Dance Company & co-founder of the Women’s Salsa Retreat. As a trained adjudicator, Jennifer has judged competitions in Puerto Rico, Ecuador, New York, Las Vegas, Orlando, Miami, Detroit, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. She has also represented Canada on the judging panel for the World Salsa Championships televised on ESPN.

She is on the judging panel for the prestigious Global Salsa Championships at the World Salsa Summit. Jennifer was also the first instructor in Canada to be certified to teach Latin Hustle by the IHDA. Jennifer is the founder and organizer of the annual Canada Salsa & Bachata Congress, an international salsa festival that takes place in Toronto every October.

This 4-day extravaganza, now in its thirteenth year, is the largest salsa event in Canada and features nightly performances by over 60 dance companies from all over the world and daily salsa workshops given by worldrenowned instructors. The Canadian Salsa Championships, part of the Canada Salsa & Bachata Congress weekend, is the largest and most widely recognized Salsa & Bachata competition in Canada.

Classes offered in Steps Dance Studio

Salsa

Salsa Level 1: No previous dance (or salsa) experience required. Start this class at any time. Each class starts with an explanation and review of the basic Salsa step and the timing and rhythm of Salsa music, followed by a new beginner level turn.
Salsa Level 2: Geared to those who are comfortable with the basic Salsa step, basic right and left turns and Cross Body Lead. Build on Level 1 material and learn new turns and combinations, add footwork (i.e. Salsa shines) and reinforce your timing and partnering skills. Learn proper posture, frame, weight transfer and connection.
Salsa Level 3: Cross body lead patterns, traveling turns, back breaks, checks and different hand hold variations will be linked into fun turn pattern combinations. Start developing a flow of motion between the moves that will make you feel good and look good on the dancefloor.
Salsa Level 4: This course will focus on high intermediate level turns and turn pattern combinations, how to maintain balance and connection with your partner while incorporating directional changes & intricate moves, improving musicality, how to remember shines and turn patterns and use them in different combinations, tips on how to be a better leader and follower, adding styling to your dancing – in short, how to be a more complete dancer!
Salsa Level 5: This course focuses on taking your dancing to the next level. Advanced level turn patterns, technique and skill development. Execute double spins, multiple turns and variations, intricate choreography, advanced level syncopations and sexy styling. Adapt and combine your moves to suit the level of your partner.

Bachata

Bachata Level 1: Bachata is a seductive and flirtatious dance that originated in the Dominican Republic and is played in all Salsa nightclubs. Learn the basic Bachata footwork and how to lead and follow some fun and simple Bachata turns and turn pattern combinations.
Bachata Level 2: Learn new turns and turn pattern combinations while focusing on the correct connection, tension and movement of Bachata dancing. Learn body isolation exercises and drills to help make this dance look smooth and sexy.
Bachata Level 3: Learn more intricate and complex Bachata turn pattern combinations. Learn how to execute syncopated Dominican style footwork. Learn body isolation exercises and drills to help you to incorporate the sensuous Bachata body movement needed to make this dance look effortless.
Bachata Level 4: Learn more intricate and sexy Bachata turn patterns. Add syncopated Dominican style footwork into your partner dancing. Learn how to incorporate the sensuous Bachata body movement needed to make this dance look effortless. Refine your leading & following technique in order to build a connection with each dance partner. And much more… For more information about schedules, classes, lessons, workshops and contacts, visit

https://www.stepsdance studio.com/

Latin America – October 2017

Ignacio Piñero Septeto Nacional has played an important role in Cuba’s music for more than seven decades

Founded by Havana-born bassist and vocalist Ignacio Piñero in 1927, the Septeto Nacional De Ignacio Piñero has played an important role in Cuba’s music for more than seven decades.

Fundado por el bajista y vocalista nacido en La Habana Ignacio Piñero en 1927

Pioneers of son, a rhythmic blend of African and Cuban music that evolved into salsa, mambo and Latin jazz, the group was the first son band to incorporate the trumpet as the main instrument.

Ignacio Piñero’s Septeto Nacional gained worldwide recognition with its performance at the 1928 Universal Exposition in Seville, and was reportedly the first group to mention “Salsa” in a song “Echale Salsita” recorded in 1933. The song composed by Piñero, was adapted by George Gershwin for the opening theme of his “Cuban Overture”.

Since Piñero’s death in 1968, after 41 years at the helm of the band, the Septeto Nacional De Ignacio Piñero has been led by a series of leaders.

Guitarist and composer Rafael Ortiz, who took over after Piñero’s death, bequeathed the position to vocalist Carlos Embale in 1982.

After leaving the group due to illness in 1998 Embale’s leadership was inherited by guitarist Richard Aymee Castro. True to their original musical roots, Ignacio Piñero’s Septeto Nacional continues to offer a danceable blend of montano, merengue, bolero, rumba and cha cha cha. Craig Harris.

Ignacio Piñero was one of the Pioneers of Son Cubano

In 1906 he already knew and had assimilated the different toques of the African cabildos that existed in the neighborhood of Pueblo Nuevo, which he later incorporated into some of his creations.

He began his artistic career with the group claves and guaguancó El Timbre de Oro, later he directed Los Roncos de Pueblo Nuevo, in which he developed as a decimist and director, at the same time he took his first steps as a composer.

From this stage are: Cuando tú, tu desengaño veas, Dónde estabas anoche, El Edén de Los Roncos, Mañana te espero, niña. Later he joined the group Renacimiento de Pueblo Nuevo.

To the folkloric values that Piñeiro cultivated in these groups, he contributed a wider melodic-harmonic development and a greater depth and poetic flight.

In 1926 he was one of the founders, together with María Teresa Vera, of the Sexteto Occidente, with which he made his first tour to the United States in order to record an album with this group.

In 1927 he founded the Sexteto Nacional, formed by Ignacio Piñeiro, director and double bass; Alberto Villalón, guitar; Francisco González Solares, tres; Abelardo Barroso, lead vocals; Juan de la Cruz, tenor; Bienvenido León, baritone and maracas, and José Manuel Carrera Incharte (El Chino), bongo; that same year trumpeter Lázaro Herrera joined the group. With this septet he traveled to New York, where he recorded his first works.

In 1929 he participated with the Septeto Nacional in the Fair-Exposition of Seville, Spain; in that country they were hired as exclusive artists by the company SEDECA, and toured other cities of that country: Vigo, La Coruña, Santander, Madrid and Valladolid; in addition, they performed in the theaters Torero, Jovellanos, the Cine-Teatro Grado, and the cabaret Maicú, all in Madrid. In 1930 he was one of the founders of the National Association of Cuban Soneros.

Pioneros del son, una mezcla rítmica de música africana y cubana

They performed at the Sans-Souci cabaret (1930); in 1931 they performed at the Lavín and CMCG radio stations; in 1932, at the Dos Hermanos Hotel, he premiered Buey viejo; that same year the American composer George Gershwin came to Havana, at the CMCJ radio station he listened to Piñeiro’s son Échale salsita, from which he later used the theme played on the trumpet in his Cuban Overture.

In 1933 he performed at the Fair-Exhibition A Century of Progress, held in Chicago, United States.

In 1934 Piñeiro retired from the septet, which from 1935 was directed by trumpeter Lázaro Herrera. In 1954, Piñeiro reappeared as leader of the septet, with which he appeared on the television program Música de Ayer y de Hoy.

As a composer, Ignacio Piñeiro broke, although he took elements from the form of the oriental son, in which its creators used the quatrain and the tenth; an example of this break is his son Buey viejo, from 1932:

Carretero no maltrates a ese pobre buey tan viejo, que ya doblbla la cabeza por el peso de los tarros, y por senda de guijarros va tirando la carreta, y nunca llega a la meta, término de su dolor.

Piñeiro was one of those synthesis cases that managed to capture, develop and express the full richness of the son.

The structural modifications, the cadence, the rhythm and the use of refined melodies and lyrics, achieved by this creator and interpreted by the Septeto Nacional, make it possible to say that the work of this singular artist, although he did not mark the boundaries of son (which corresponded to the Sexteto Habanero), he did turn it into a son that today we can call classic, which became a model for its further development.

When Ignacio Piñeiro founded the Septeto Nacional, his purpose was to be a high exponent of the Cuban son and its various variants, he himself made use of those variants, composing guajira-son, canción-son, afro-son, so he worked with the elements offered by the oriental son, to which he gave a broader treatment, both musically and literary.

According to Miriam Villa: “If we analyze the organization of the literary text, we observe in his work the formal use of metrically heterogeneous links subjected to rhythm, characterized by the presence of accented and unaccented elements within the system of units that are repeated at intervals between them.

Piñeiro must not have been concerned about the meter in the text as a pattern, since through the rhythm of the composition he achieves the contrast relations, making the change of meter express a change in the thematic movement, either from intermittences or accentuations or sometimes both, which give it different semantic nuances and alternations of tensions and distensions.

And elsewhere Villa states: “Another aspect that in relation to the literary text is reflected in Piñeiro’s creative work is that of the thematic contents; these are shown from a diversification with greater scope in relation to his contemporaries.

His work can be divided into multiple themes among which are love, homeland, philosophical reflection, politics, the bucolic, the infantile, expressed in a variety of forms: satirical, apologetic, humorous and with greater depth than in the sonorous production that preceded him and even with which he shared.

With the Septeto Nacional, Piñeiro appears in the musical short El frutero, and in the film Nosotros la música, by director Rogelio París.

Ignacio Piñeiro Septeto Nacional

Septeto Nacional de Ignacio Piñero El Son de Altura

El Son de Altura (1998)

Tracks:

Mayeya – No Juegues Con Los Santos (Son) (I. Piñeiro)
Bardo (Bolero-son) (I. Piñeiro)
Lejana Campiña (Guajira-son) (I. Piñeiro)
Canta La Vueltabajera (Guajira-son) (I. Piñeiro)
Guanajo Relleno (Guaracha-son) (I. Piñeiro)
Esas No Son Cubanas (Son) (I. Piñeiro)
Suavecito (Son) (I. Piñeiro)
Alma Guajira (Guajira-son) (I. Piñeiro)
Castigador (Son) (I. Piñeiro)
Échale Salsita (Son-pregón) (I. Piñeiro)
EI Viandero (Son-pregón) (Ernesto Muñoz)
Son De La Loma (Son) (Miguel MGllamoros)
Trompeta Querida (Boleró-son) (Lózoro Herrera)
La Mujer De Antonio (Son) (Miguel Matamoros)
La Cachimba De San Juan (Son) (l. Plñeiro)
EI Alfiler (Son) (l. Plñeiro)
Noche De Conga (Son) (l. Plñeiro)
EI Paralitico (Son) (Miguel Matamoros)

By:

EcuRed

Dj. Augusto Felibertt

L’Òstia Latin Jazz

Also Read: From Cuba El Septeto Son de Nipe vienen Abriendo Caminos

Claudia Acuña She is mainly known for singing jazz standards, ballads, and bossa nova

Claudia Acuña (Santiago de Chile, July 31, 1971) is a Chilean jazz singer considered the most successful Chilean jazz artist of all time. Since 1995 she has lived in New York, USA.

Photo by Hollis King dress by Anthony Manfredonia back stage at Carnegie Hall

She is known mainly for singing jazz standards, ballads, and bossa nova, as well as for developing and promoting Chilean folklore in the United States and the jazz world.

Abandoning the traditional jazz standards she covered in her two works for Verve, Chilean vocalist Claudia Acuña reveals a more contemporary Latin sound, with R&B influences, in her Maxjazz debut.

Undoubtedly Acuña’s most personal work to date, Luna once again displays her immense gift for delicately passionate vocals and interesting arrangements. While still using the smooth, sensitive Fender Rhodes keyboards of longtime collaborator Jason Lindner, Acuña sings more in Spanish on his third disc only Lindner’s “Yesterday You and I” is sung in English and eschews any straight-ahead jazz style for an almost fusion approach.

This is not to say it is jazz-pop, but the delicate melodies are reminiscent of 1970s Airto Moreira and the best Al Jarreau.

Claudia Acuña Se destaca principalmente por cantar jazz standards, baladas, y bossa nova

Although there are few jazz improvisations (most tracks are less than five minutes long), the music remains complex, cultured and sophisticated, with deep harmonies that should please jazz lovers and Latin music enthusiasts alike. Matt Collar.

Claudia Acuña, born in 1971 in Santiago, Chile, is one of the most representative voices of contemporary Latin American singing.

Her music, which fuses elements of jazz and Chilean folk music, has captured the attention of audiences both nationally and internationally.

Claudia has managed to position herself as a key figure in the diffusion of Chilean culture through her art.

Early years and formation

From a very young age, Acuña showed interest in music. She grew up in an environment where Chilean musical traditions were part of everyday life. In her childhood, she began to learn about the guitar and piano, which led her to develop her vocal talent. Claudia Acuña trained in the musical field in various institutions, where she cultivated her love for jazz, a genre that would profoundly influence her throughout her career.

Successes and trajectory

Claudia Acuña’s debut in the music world was well received, which opened the doors to a series of presentations in festivals and concerts in Chile and other Latin American countries.

Her debut album, which includes a fusion of traditional Chilean rhythms and rhythms from other cultures, was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, propelling her career to new heights.

Throughout her career, Claudia has collaborated with leading musicians and participated in important international festivals. Her ability to perform not only Latin American music, but also jazz standards, has made her versatility recognized by her peers and followers.

The albums she has released throughout her career reflect her love for music and her commitment to creating a unique sound that represents her cultural identity.

Cultural Impact

Claudia Acuña is not only a talented singer, but also a fervent advocate of Chilean culture. Through her music, she seeks to preserve and promote the traditions of her country, and often incorporates elements of folklore in her interpretations.

Her presence on international stages has allowed many people to discover and appreciate the richness of Chilean music.

In addition, she is known for her charisma and energy on stage, which makes her a memorable performer in each of her presentations.

Claudia has inspired generations of young musicians in Chile and abroad, encouraging others to explore their cultural roots and express themselves through music.

Recognitions and awards

Throughout her career, Claudia Acuña has been honored with several awards and recognitions, both nationally and internationally. These awards not only highlight her artistic ability, but also her impact on the music community. Claudia continues to work actively in the industry, collaborating with new artists and participating in musical projects that promote Chilean talent abroad.

Conclusions