Far from being the obligatory “essential Latin Jazz” album, Machito’s Kenya escapes this glib epithet by the skin of its teeth. Drumming out the “Afro-Cuban Jazz”...
Herbie Hancock was just twenty-three when he recorded this Inventions & Dimensions. The music on the recording, and the fact that Mr. Hancock was laying down...
It is curious thing that this album is listed in very few biographical notes about the Jazz Messengers. Perhaps it is a small matter in the...
Essential Albums Revisited Who knew that Dámaso Pérez Prado, the “Mambo King”, director of Sonora Matancera between 1936 and 1939, long before he formed his iconic...
Sixty-five years on this seminal album has been credited as the one Cal Tjader album that set the vibraphonist on a course that put him on...
This recording by Herbie Mann is an extremely rare and beautiful disc. Originally recorded in 1959, it has been available as an analogue recording on vinyl,...
Arturo “Chico” O’Farrill, who was born in Cuba in 1921, decided to follow family tradition and enter into law practice. But before he could complete his...
Giovanni Hidalgo is just fifty-two years old, but he has been a professional percussionist for a little over forty years. This is remarkable. Very few percussionists,...
Although much of the world was welcoming of Cuba after the Revolution and although many artists did flee the country for a new world of freedom...
This album by the late pianist Paquito Hechavarría, Frankly was recorded in 2007 and released in 2009. Although it has been in circulation for just...
The great Candido Camero moved from Cuba to New York in 1952. The lure of Jazz must have been too strong for the percussionist. Sixty-four years...
The clave that is pronounced in Afro-Cuban music is almost stealthily present in Jazz and has been lurking secretly in that idiom ever since the music...
The year 2014 marks fifty-two years after the classic album Jazz Samba, was recorded. There is a very good reason for the extraordinary longevity of this...
Mongo Santamaria, more than any other Cuban percussionist, has had a wider appeal across musical idioms and metaphors. His music comes from deep within his soul...
Dizzy Gillespie honored his African roots in many ways. His chameleonic writing was a testament to this fact. He also, along with Chano Pozo, wrote one...
