Latin Jazz/Salsa
Guayaquil, Ecuador
“Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy”
Ludwig van Beethoven
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5NINE3 has a lot going on, and invites you to join us on our global musical journey. With a selection of highlights and updates pertaining to the worlds latest collaborations, developments and musical projects, 5NINE3 Latin Jazz is proud to share this with the communities.
El Septeto Santiaguero Presents: Raíz
By Raul da Gama
As the footprint and influence of Africa appears to expand into Caribbean and American music, even as the world seems to shrink, we find tradition remains as iridescent no matter whether in the music of David Virelles who ‘sings’ and ‘dances’ at a point seemingly furthest from the sun, or in El Septeto Santiaguero, who bask in all its scorching glory. “Ritmo negro” reigns supreme equally in Gnosis (by the former artist) and in Raíz by the large changeless ensemble El Septeto Santiaguero, aglow with viscerally refreshing son-montuno, son-changüí, danzón… and glorious boleros, served up as few bands playing today can, almost as if the charanga band is reinventing itself with their sweeping music resplendent with horns, reeds and flute, strings and chorus. In fact it often seems as if the golden age of Afro-Cuban music has been reborn yet again seemingly in a universe parallel to our own.
Raíz is easily one of the most ambitiously produced albums to come out of the new Cuba. It is also excellently recorded at EGREM Studios in Havana and is as good as, if not better than anything produced in the United States. It’s hardly possible that this music was produced on a princely budget. However, even a cursory look at the list of musicians who were invited to participate on the recording will indicate that the ensemble did not stint on getting what was necessary to adorn the music with a King’s ransom in artists from both inside and outside Cuba. Searing energy and extreme virtuosity run throughout the more-than hour-long sweep of music, which is brimful of lush orchestral scoring especially in “Si Tú Te Vas”, (featuring masterfully-arranged strings) and “Mosaico #1” and “Ya Se Va Aquella Edad” in which the excellent New Orleans musician and trumpeter, Nicholas Payton, facilitates an effortlessly shifting between dreamy reflection and buoyant bonhomie as one phrase connects seamlessly with the next, interweaving the choral elements into the instrumental like raw silk.
Ray Mantilla Presents: High Voltage
In 1932, Duke Ellington wrote one of the most famous songs, one that has not only endured for decades but might also be held up as a means to measure almost all Jazz and Latin Jazz. “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” was what The Duke called it. Throughout the more than 60 years that Ray Mantilla has made music he has more than complied with that obligation and this has endeared Mantilla to musicians as demanding as Ray Barretto, Gato Barbieri, Cedar Walton, Max Roach and Charles Mingus (to name, but a few giants of this music). The unbridled genius of Mantilla has meant that his skills have been in demand by many a bandleader. More importantly this also inspired him to create nine albums and counting. This disc High Voltage is the latest in an oeuvre that continues to enrich the library of Latin-Jazz music.
Ray Mantilla is a musician’s musician and a peerless percussion colorist who not only brings an enormous tonal palette to bear on music, more often than not, recreates familiar music with the extraordinary sense of color and texture of his playing. He does so in the sensuous caress of the skins of his myriad battery of percussion instruments, which is to suggest a definite physicality in his playing, but one based on what the Greeks would call both “agape” and “erotas”, that is “love” in a Platonic sense and “attraction” driven by lust. However, as we expect from Ray Mantilla, everything sounds natural and inevitable. Ego doesn’t come into it; rather he acts as a conduit between the drum and the music with a purity that few can emulate. (I‘m put in mind of Tata Güines, Candido, Puntilla, Barretto and only a handful of others). But to describe any of these figures – and certainly Ray Mantilla – as merely ‘intellectual’ would be to miss the entire humanity of their playing.
5NINE3 Ecuador Latin Jazz
May 20, 2017
The jazz radio stations 5NINE3 has been inspired by for the past 35 years.
About 5NINE3 Latin Jazz
A Life Steeped in Sound
Music has the power to transport us to another time and place. 5NINE3 Latin Jazz loves to harness that power with a broad audience of fellow music lovers and passionate musicians alike. Ever since a young age, 5NINE3 Latin Jazz has found great joy and satisfaction by being involved in the creative music process.
Over the past four decades we've bought, collected and now sharing with the jazz community our portfolio. From early 1900's Cuban Latin jazz pioneers to 21st Century urban hard bop rhythms, our catalog is exciting and wants to be shared with the public. We strive to provide listeners with as much historical data available for each track and update accordingly to maintain the integrity of the artists. Cuban percussionists like Compay Segundo, Rubén González, and Ibrahim Ferrer, who died at the ages of ninety-five, eighty-four, and seventy-eight respectively; shine a light on 100 years of percussion Latin jazz/salsa. With Cuba's proximity to the United States, Latin musical influences fused with American jazz in the 20th Century. Mario Bauzá, Machito, Israel "Cachao" Lopez, Chano Pozo, Chico O'Farrill, ALL planted the seeds of musical excellence which I share with the jazz/salsa communities. Puerto Rico has also contributed to the genre with Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, all favoring big band sounds and rhythms. The Latin musical roots flourish in South America and Ecuador is rich in musical history which adopts it's current sound from it's pioneers. Andean jazz and Ecuadorian salsa are two examples of this fact. The 5NINE3 A-Z Playlist extends to jazz/salsa from Israel, Ireland, Japan, Germany. There are no jazz/salsa boundrie's globally as the Latin influence is "vivito and coleando".
Ecuador has embraced Latin jazz/salsa and one can here Afro-Latin vibes in Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca. Stay awhile and let us know your thoughts as we update the playlist weekly with hidden gems produced in the past century and updated several times over the years. We love being inspired by music and this is my journey as an expat in Ecuador. Take a look around the site to get to know more about 5NINE3 Latin Jazz.
Gracias
Turabo Aymaco
5NINE3 Latin Jazz
My Ecuador Experience
It’s been said that music is the language of the soul, a concept 5NINE3 Latin Jazz/Salsa has taken to heart throughout 40 years of being exposed to Latin percussion music. Explore our portfolio to see the work that showcases the musical experiences and creative development of amazing Latin jazz/salsa pioneers throughout the past 100 years. Our goal is to share our jazz/salsa portfolio with Ecuador and inspire the future generations to create music for the next millennium.
In Ecuador, as in all of South America, Latin jazz/salsa is alive and thriving. The past 100 years of musical excellence continues to pave the way for future artists. Pioneers like Frank "Machito" Grillo, Mario Bauzá, who introduced the Cuban rhythms which have become a benchmark of how one arranges Latin jazz today. The Ecuador jazz/salsa scene is being embraced countrywide and prominent in Quito and Cuenca. In Guayaquil, local talent is starting to develop sounds which embody the habanera/tresillo sounds of our Latin musical roots. Although the exact origins of jazz syncopation may never be known, there’s evidence that the habanera/tresillo was there at its inception. Buddy Bolden, the first known jazz musician, is credited with creating the big four, a habanera-based pattern. The big four was the first syncopated bass drum pattern to deviate from the standard on-the-beat march.
Latin jazz, also called Afro-Cuban jazz, a style of music that blends rhythms and percussion instruments of Cuba and the Spanish Caribbean with jazz and its fusion of European and African musical elements. -www.britannica.com
Jelly Roll Morton once stated that the "Latin tinge" characterized some of the jazz that was played in New Orleans at the beginning of the 20th century. Due to Cuba's proximity to New Orleans, the Cuban Habanera genre contributed and borrowed some of the expressive jazz notes developed in American jazz. Mario Bauzá born on April 28, 1911 and Machito (born Francisco Raúl Gutiérrez Grillo on December 3, 1908? Both musicians pioneered the advent of Latin jazz, collaborating with American jazz legends George Shearing, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Stan Kenton. Machito further added ten musical innovations that have become the norm for jazz musicians globally.
Machitos Afro-Cubans were the first to:
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make a triumvibrate with congas, bongos and timbales
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explore jazz arranging techniques with authentic Afro-Cuban rhythms on a consistent basis
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explore modal harmony (a concept explored much later by Miles Davis and Gil Evans)
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explore, from an Afro-Cuban rhythmic perspective, large scale extended compositional works
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wed jazz big band arranging techniques within an original composition
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first truly multi-racial band in the United States
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first band in the United States to publicly utilize the term Afro-Cuban as the band's moniker
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first Afro-Cuban based dance band to overtly explore the concept of clave counterpoint from an arranging standpoint
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promoted and set a standard of professionalism and musical excellence that had to be met by other subsequent band leaders
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provided a proving ground for the exchange of progressive musical ideas, experiences, and performance of musical compositions and arrangements for Afro-Cuban based dance music and its fusion with jazz arranging techniques
You have to tell it the long way. You have to tell about the people who make it, what they have inside them, what they're doing, what they're waiting for. Then you begin to understand.
—Sidney Bechet (1960:2009)
A defining moment in the history of LATIN JAZZ occurred in 1947 when Luciano Pozo González, Cuban percussionist Chano "Pozo joined Dizzy and his band, creating a new musical genre called CU-BOP. So the big bands were born of Machito, Chico O'Farrill, Tito Puente and Tito Rodriguez who were the main architects of the legendary Palladium in New York. The Cuban embargo threw a rock into the current of LATIN JAZZ but after the splash, the eddies finished vacuum feeding the language from two sources. However, “Latin jazz” is more strongly associated with Afro-Caribbean music. Compared to other forms of jazz, Latin jazz has stayed closer to its roots in dance and many important figures in Latin jazz, including Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri, have never stopped playing for dancers. Compared to dance genres like mambo and salsa, Latin jazz generally gives musicians more freedom to explore, improvise and stretch out. This freedom has drawn musicians from many countries and musical backgrounds to Latin jazz, adding to its diversity of styles and possibilities.
