The Def Jam of Latin music is back with the latest in its series of re-issues. This time it’s the voices of the Fania stable that get the digital treatment
Posts tagged Fania
The prolific compiler and taste-maker Gilles Peterson delivers his first Latin compilation after digging through a few hundred Fania albums
Jose Luis, London’s Latin Mr Big turns his hand to the art of compilation making to deliver three big, bad slabs of music that will have purists gnashing their teeth and everyone else shaking their thing
I love the cover to this album, it’s as if Pitbull – dressed in his boxing robes – is just having a paddle but contemplating how he’s going to take Cuba from Mr Castro single-handed.
For a few short years from 1966-70, Latin Soul was the hip, young sound of Spanish Harlem. A riotous collision of Latin rhythms, late-1960s psychedelia and Afro-American R&B, the music was fresh, young and funky
Continue reading V/A – Explosivos: Deep-Soul From The Latin Heart
No ordinary guy, The Anthology charts the story of how Joe Bataan’s album became a label and the label became a genre and the genre became a legend
Sue Steward continues rifling through the Fania back catalogue for Rough Guide; this time she brings us a fresh selection from the Mambo King himself Tito Puente. With over a hundred albums to choose from, getting down to 21 tracks is no mean feat and any selection will inevitably be partial but we are treated to a wide selection of styles and collaborators including La Lupe and Celia Cruz
Latin Soul Brother Number One is back after a break of 20 years with a new album. The songs were all written and arranged by Daniel Collas but the vocals are unmistakably Joe Bataan and it’s great to hear him again as if the last two (actually make that three) decades had never happened.
The music is blisteringly good, the filmography marks it out as mid 70s concert footage straight away but apart from Celia herself the real stars of the show are the audience.
Continue reading Celia Cruz and the Fania Allstars in Africa (DVD)
