Good day everybody.

Recently a friend of mine had to go quite a long way to get a visa necessary for a trip to a certain country.

This experience made me recall a wonderful song by the ingenious Alexander Abreu and his current group, Havana De Primera.

The song is called “Pasaporte”, and is the title track of the band’s album by the same name which came out in 2011.

This song was released even earlier as a promo, and became a world wide hit right away.

Disfruten!

Good day dear readers!

Today I have the pleasure of presenting an interesting band from… Japan!
Even that their singers have a French accent 🙂

This little known group was formed in 1987 in Japan, and has been making wonderful Cuban music since then, also visiting Cuban in 1991.
Over the years the band’s compositions made it into top ranking places in European salsa charts, also with the band touring many countries.

Although hard to get, there exist 6 albums of this fine band which I can definitely recommend getting your hands on (some albums and singles are available on itunes: http://www.chevere.asia/disco.html ) :
Grupo Chevere (1996), Chevere que Chevere (1998), Chevereando (2000), Cheverelax (2002), Cheverenacer (2007) and Cheverisimo (2012).
Personally, I can recommend “Cheverelax”, which is my favorite of their work.

Youtube clips of this band are hard to come by, unfortunately, both studio and live recordings alike… but I did manage to find a video of one of their concerts in a Japanese salsa club, as a part of the band’s 25 year anniversary tour, and thus this I with you share 🙂

Disfruten!
(p.s: the song itself starts at ~01:50)

Good day my friends!

This week I am glad to present you a “Family orchestra” from Los Angeles, USA.
Why “family orchestra”? because this band was formed in 1955 by the Pulgar family (from Ecuador) in 1955.

The band has 12 members, and plays various rhythms and styles of music, most being Latin, but this is not exclusive (they also play Jazz, for example).
Today the band is run by some of the original members, but also some of their children, and performed all over the USA, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Canada.
The band also has their own recording company and studio.

Although not usually their style, the song “Asi No” sounded very “Timba influenced” to me, and IMO, managed to incorporate the feel of contemporary Cuban music quite well.

Disfruten!

Greetings dear readers!

I’m sorry if this “post” will be disappointing, but there shall be no blog entry this week, as this weekend I’ll be attending a local salsa event, featuring Wilmer & Maria and some other dance artists.

So, for you not to get entirely bored, here is a nice clip of Wilmer & Maria dancing.

Have fun, and see you around next week!