Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. was an American Latin Jazz musician, often described as the most successful non-Latino Latin musician. He explored other jazz idioms, especially small group modern jazz, even as he continued to perform music of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.
Eddie Palmieri is an American Grammy Award-winning pianist, bandleader, musician, and composer of Puerto Rican ancestry. He is the founder of the bands La Perfecta, La Perfecta II, and Harlem River Drive.
Pablo Rodríguez Lozada, better known as Tito Rodríguez, was a Puerto Rican singer and bandleader. He started his career singing under the tutelage of his brother, Johnny Rodríguez. In the 1940s, both moved to New York, where Tito worked as a percussionist in several popular rhumba ensembles, before directing his own group to great success during the 1950s. His most prolific years coincided with the peak of the mambo and cha-cha-cha dance craze. He also recorded boleros, sones, guarachas and pachangas.
A descarga is an improvised jam session consisting of variations on Cuban music themes, primarily son montuno, but also guajira, bolero, guaracha and rumba. The genre is strongly influenced by jazz and it was developed in Havana during the 1950s. Important figures in the emergence of the genre were Cachao, Julio Gutiérrez, Bebo Valdés, Peruchín and Niño Rivera in Cuba, and Tito Puente, Machito and Mario Bauzá in New York. Originally, descargas were promoted by record companies such as Panart, Maype and Gema under the label Cuban jam sessions. From the 1960s, the descarga format was usually adapted by large salsa ensembles, most notably the Fania All-Stars.
Machito was a Latin jazz musician who helped refine Afro-Cuban jazz and create both Cubop and salsa music. He was raised in Havana with the singer Graciela, his foster sister.
Israel López Valdés, better known as Cachao, was a Cuban double bassist and composer. Cachao is widely known as the co-creator of the mambo and a master of the descarga. Throughout his career he also performed and recorded in a variety of music styles ranging from classical music to salsa. An exile in the United States since the 1960s, he only achieved international fame following a career revival in the 1990s.
"Oye Cómo Va" is a 1962 cha-cha-chá by Tito Puente, originally released on El Rey Bravo. The song achieved worldwide popularity in 1970, when it was recorded by American rock group Santana for their album Abraxas. This version was released as a single in 1971, reaching number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100, number 11 on the Billboard Easy Listening survey, and number 32 on the R&B chart. The block chord ostinato pattern that repeats throughout the song was most likely borrowed by Puente from Cachao's 1957 mambo "Chanchullo", which was recorded by Puente in 1959.
The 1st Annual Latin Grammy Awards were held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center on Wednesday, September 13, 2000. The big winners were Luis Miguel, Santana and Maná with 3 awards; Juan Luis Guerra, Shakira, Fito Páez and Emilio Estefan Jr. received 2 awards each.
Mario Rivera was a Latin jazz saxophonist from the Dominican Republic. Besides saxophone, Rivera played trumpet, flute, piano, vibraphone, congas, and drums.
Bobby Sanabria is an American drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, documentary producer, educator, activist, radio show host, and writer of Puerto Rican descent who specializes in jazz and Latin jazz.
Ernest AnthonyPuente Jr., commonly known as TitoPuente, was an American musician, songwriter, bandleader, timbalero, and record producer. He composed dance-oriented mambo and Latin jazz music.
Arturo O'Farrill is a jazz musician, the son of Latin jazz musician, arranger and bandleader Chico O'Farrill, and pianist, composer, and director for the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. He is best known for his contributions to contemporary Latin jazz, having received Grammy Awards and nominations, though he has trained in other forms such as free jazz and experimented briefly with hip hop.
The Latin Grammy Award for Best Traditional Tropical Album is an honor presented annually at the Latin Grammy Awards, a ceremony that recognizes excellence and creates a wider awareness of cultural diversity and contributions of Latin recording artists in the United States and internationally. The award goes to solo artists, duos, or groups for releasing vocal or instrumental albums containing at least 51% of new recordings in the traditional tropical music category which includes genres such as son, danzón, guaracha and bomba interpreted in a traditional style.
William "Scotty" Barnhart is an American jazz trumpeter. A two-time Grammy winner, he has played since 1993 as a featured soloist with Count Basie Orchestra. In September 2013, Barnhart was announced as the new director of the Basie Orchestra. He has multiple recordings with pianist Marcus Roberts, as well as recordings with Tony Bennett, Diana Krall, Ray Charles, and Tito Puente. A solo CD, released with Unity Music, is titled Say It Plain and features Clark Terry, Ellis and Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Jamie Davis and Etienne Charles; it achieved number 3 in the Jazz Charts. Also active as an educator and clinician, he is author of The World of Jazz Trumpet - A Comprehensive History and Practical Philosophy. He is a professor in the College of Music at Florida State University.
Omer Pardillo Cid is a Grammy, Latin Grammy and Emmy-winning producer and talent manager. He began his career in 1992 in the Media Relations department at RMM Records in New York City. At RMM, he handled publicity for celebrities, such as Celia Cruz, Marc Anthony and Tito Puente.
Latin music is a term used by the music industry as a catch-all category for various styles of music from Ibero-America, which encompasses Latin America, Spain, Portugal, and the Latino population in Canada and the United States, as well as music that is sung in either Spanish and/or Portuguese.
Ahmad Khatab Salim or Ahmad Kharab Salim was an American jazz composer, and arranger.
Pete Rodriguez plays jazz trumpet and is a composer, vocalist, and percussionist. The reviewer Brian Zimmerman, in a review of the El Conde Negro album, wrote in 2015 that "Rodriguez is not only an attentive student of the Latin jazz tradition, but also one of the talented young artists who will usher it into the future."
"Chanchullo" is a danzón-mambo composed by Cuban bassist Israel "Cachao" López. It was first released as a single in 1957 by Arcaño y sus Maravillas. It was the third single released on Cuban independent record label Gema and has been covered by multiple artists including Tito Puente, Típica '73 and Rubén González. Puente himself reworked the song as the successful "Oye cómo va", later recorded by Santana, for which Cachao received no credit. Instrumental versions of the song have been recorded variously under the titles "Mambolandia" and "Mambología", often credited to Peruchín.
Hector Martignon is a Colombian pianist and composer of Italian descent living in New York City. Two of Martignon's albums have been nominated for a Grammy Award: Refugee (2007) and Second Chance (2010). Martignon is known for crossbreeding the improvisational language of Jazz with diverse musical idioms, such as Classical European, Latin American folklore and World Music. On its exhibit Latin Jazz, the Smithsonian Institution lists Martignon among the leading artists “exploring the regional sources of Latin Jazz”.
