COMING SOON OCT. 24TH LATIN GRAMMYS

Don't miss the excitement of the LATIN GRAMMY EVENTS This is the official site with a interactive home page.
Mouse over some latin sounds of the city. There will be a LATIN GRAMMY Street Party in Los Angeles October 24th, 2010 and a Latin GRAMMY Street Party in Las Vegas....November 07, 2010. I need to rethink my life and my schedule. I can't imagine a more fun event....!! There has been an amazing documentary showing for a number of weeks now on the history of latin music in America. Starting with the wonderful old dance halls, on the PBS.

Latin Grammys Light Up Vegas 2009

10th Annual Latin GRAMMY awards
LINK TO VIDEOS AND FOTOS
HERE'S SOME SCOOP ON LAST YEAR...LET'S CHECK THEM OUT THIS YEAR.
Calle 13 and Rueben Blades performed with Cirque De Soleil.
Puerto Rican duo Calle 13 were the big winners at the 10th Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards, celebrated Thursday evening at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. Hosted by actress/singer Lucero and actor/comedian Eugenio Derbez, the ceremony was an extravaganza reminiscent of a Las Vegas-style show, including not only music and dance but also star presenters, grandiose production, special effects, and acrobats and gymnasts courtesy of "Le Rêve" and the Cirque de Soleil show "Mystère."

Calle 13’s René Pérez (aka Residente) and Eduardo Cabra (aka Visitante) swept their five Latin GRAMMY nominations, taking home Record and Album Of The Year, Best Urban Music Album, Best Alternative Song, and Best Short Form Music Video.

Other big winners included alternative rockers Café Tacvba, veteran rock group Jaguares and singer/songwriter Caetano Veloso, who won two statues each. Also picking up Latin GRAMMYs were Mexican singer Alexander Acha, son of pop star Emmanuel, who won the coveted Best New Artist award; singer/percussionist Luis Enrique, whose comeback was rewarded with two awards including Best Salsa Album; pop rocker Fito Paez; singer Laura Pausini; former Menudo member Draco Rosa; and up-and-coming Mexican trio Reik.

There were several highlights during the milestone 10th anniversary telecast including veteran Cuban singer Omara Portuondo, winner in the Best Contemporary Tropical Album category for Gracias, becoming the first Cuban artist living in Cuba to receive an award onstage. Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa, known as the Voice of Latin America not only for her artistry but her championing of social causes, passed away Oct. 4 before she was able to enjoy the fruits of her latest album, Cantora 1. The recording won two Latin GRAMMYs including Best Folk Album, and Sosa was remembered throughout the show, including a touching video segment introduced by Panamanian singer Rubén Blades.

Dizzy's Day

This would have been Dizzy Gillespie's birthday.
Dizzy Gillespie's Birthday

Blame It on the Bossa Nova

Excerpt from JAZZ The Complete Story....
"In 1956, the Bahian guitarist/composer Joao Gilberto relocated from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro, where the colourful cultural mix was inspiring another brilliant guitarGilberto recorded Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes's 'Chega de Saudade' (No More Blues). which became the hit single (backed by his own 'Bim Bom') widely considered to be responsible for launching the bossa nova movement in Brazil."

Their follow-up single, Jobim's 'Desafinado' ('Off-Key') ws a fully formed materspiece that floated on Gilberto's distinctive, syncopated guitar rhythm, which would become the basis for this new, hybrid form. Momentum for the movement picked up the following year with the popularity of the Oscar winning film Black Orpheus, a romance set in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival, featuring a beguiling score by Jobim, and fellow Brazilian guitarist/composer Luiz Bonfa, and introducing such enduring bossa nova anthems as 'Manha de Carnaval' and 'Samba de Orfeo'. Then, in 1960, Gilberto and Jobim, recorded 12 original bossa nova pieces on the largely overlooked Capital release, Samba de Uma Note So.

Meanwhile, this 'quiet revolution'continued to unford. In 1961, the US State Department sponsored a good-will jazz tour of Latin America that included American guitarist Charlie Byrd. A swing through Brazil on that tour was a revelation to Byrd, igniting the guitarist's love affair with bossa nova. Back in the States, Byrd played some bossa nova tapes to his friend, the soft-toned tenor saxophonists, Stan Getz, who then convinced Creed Taylor at Verve to record an album of the alluring Brazilian music with himself and Byrd. Their historic 1962 collaboration, Jazz Samba enjoyed immense popularity on the strength of the hit single, Jobim's 'Desafinado'(Off-Key), prompting a rush by American jazz record labels to repeat its success, which produced a flood of copycat releases between 1962 and 1963, including Gene Ammons' Bad! Bossa Nova ,Dave Brubeck's Bossa Nova USA, Herbie Mann's Do The Bossa Nova With Herbie Mann and Eddie Harris' Bossa Nova."

"Versed in rural blues as a boy, Charlie Byrd turned to jazz in 1945 after meeting Django Reinhardt in Paris."

Brazilian Jazz

From JAZZ The Complete Story....Brazilian Jazz. "In the mid 1950s, a cultural crossfertilization of Brazilian samba rhythms, American cool jazz and sophisticated harmonies led to the development of bossa nova. In the early 1960s the bossa nova movement swept through the United States and Europe producing a strain of Brazilian-influenced jazz that remains a vital part of the jazz scene.

By the early 1950s, a few pioneering Brazilian composers began listening seriously to American jazz, particularly the limpid-toned west coast variety practiced by Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and Shorty Rogers. In absorbing that cool influence, composers such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Baden Powell and Luiz Bonfa stripped the complex polyrhythms of Afro-Brazilian samba down to their undulating essence and offered a more intimate approach, in which melodies were caressed rather than belted out in the raucous Carnival fashion.

Around the same time, American jazz saxophonist Bud Shank (from the west coast branch of cool jazz) had joined forces with Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida(appearing with the Modern Jazz Quartet and one of my vibraphone influences, Milt Jackson) in a quartet that blended Brazilian rhythms and folk melodies with cool jazz improvising. Recorded five years before the term 'bossa nova' was even coined, their 1953 collaboration on the World Pacific label, Brazilliance, would have a significant impact on the ultimate architects of the bossa nova movement."

Stan Getz said, on his first involvement with Brazilian music, the album Jazz
Samba, "I just thought it was pretty music. I never thought it would be a hit."

"Black Orpheus was an updating of the Orpheus & Eurydice myth, set against the background of a Brazilian Carnival. The intense vitality of the music in the film fascinated viewers and the soundtrack sold in the millions."

You Love This One

PAQUITO D RIVERA-JORGE DALTON-MARIO BAUZA & EL MAREITO More contemporary. Great Latin arrangement. I love it.

Mario Bauza en The Cosby Show

Cute...but with some heavy weight players
Mario Bauza en The Cosby Show

MACHITO & HIS AFROCUBANS

DANCING WITH THE STARS eat your hearts out. This is an old clip, thank God for film, of MACHITO & HIS AFROCUBANS Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong era. Here is another with a video of old photographs of Machito and his orchestra. You can notice the folkloric influence in the chorus of this song. CARAMBOLA
One more...then you can search your own views. AY QUE MATE and YO SOY LA RUMBA and CHANGO TA BENI

SUCH A CONSISTENTLY BEAUTIFUL STYLE AND INCREDIBLE MUSICIANSHIP

More on the Latin Jazz story..

Another excerpt from "JAZZ The Complete Story"....
"In January 1946, the influential American pianist/bandleader Stan Kenton was awestruck when he heard the same "Tanga" at a club in Los Angeles. soon, he too added Latin elements to virtually all of his music."

Gillespie made Latin music history himself with his 30 December 1947 recording of 'Manteca' on RCA Victor, which he co-wrote with a musician introduced to him by Bauza. Mario Bauza started out as a professional clarinet and oboe player in the Havana Philharmonic before moving to New York in 1930. It was there while playing with Noble Sissle, that he took up the trumpet. It was the master conquero Chano Pozo, another seminal figure in the birth of Latin jazz and the key figure in Gillespie's continued 'latinization' of jazz. 'Manteca' would subsequently become Gillespie's signature tune and one of the most covered standards in the history of the genre.

Following closely behind Machito, Pozo, Gillespie and Kenton is master timbalero, bandleader and composer Tito Puente, also known as El Rey del Timbal and The Mambo King. Born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, Puente was instrumental in taking jazz to a broader audience thanks to his big band orchestrations and his on stage flourish. And, of course, he wrote and recorded 'Oye Como Va' later popularized by Carlos Santana, which incorporated a coro section and used other eminently Latin elements, such as a charanga-style flute and, of course, the characteristic syncopated piano cha-cha riff.

Another pioneer who took Latin jazz to the mainstream was master conquero Ramon
'Mongo' Santamaria, beat known for his hit rendition of Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man' and for authoring jazz standard 'Afro Blue'. It was with Santamaria's band, that a then-young Chick Corea first received major exposure, while present-day conquer Poncho Sanchez cites Santamaria as his mentor and major influence."

(Well him and I have that in common)(Also, Cachao first wrote the basic tune 'Oye Como Va' and never took credit for it)

Latin Jazz (from Jazz The Complete Story)

Excerpt from JAZZ - The Complete Story" Latin jazz is commonly defined as the fusion of American jazz melodies, improvisation and chords with Latin American rhythms, predominantly those of Afro-Cuba origin. How this marriage of styles occurred is also one of the most significant cultural, musical exchanges in history.

Mention the birth of Latin jazz to any aficionado of the art form and they will invariably reply with two names: Machito and Mario Bauza. The former was born Francisco Raul Gutierrez Grillo on 16 February 1912, in Cuba. The young vocalist/maraca man hit New York City in 1937, where he played stints with Xavier Cugat (another influence) and Noro Marales before forming his own band, Machito's Afro-Cubans. By 1940 Machito asked his brother-in-law, Mario Bauza, a trumpeter, pianist, arranger and composer who had already worked with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Chick Webb, to be his band's musical arranger. It was this orchestra that two American musicians-one in Los Angeles, one in New York-would hear, and the musical world would never be the same again.

On 31 May 1943, the already legendary Gillespie went to the Park Place Ballroom in New York. There , he heard Machito and his orchestra perform 'Tanga'(meaning marijuana), a dazzling new Afro-Cuban composition written by Bauza during a rehearsal. The piece is widely recognized to be a breakthrough in the creation of a new style of music, which has been called Afro-Cuban jazz, Cubop and Latin jazz, a term Bauza reportedly hated. Still, Gillespie would often recall that night as one that changed his life. The trumpet virtuoso was so taken with the conga, bongos, and 'clave' rhythms that he immediately incorporated them into his own group. Harlem-born Puerto Rican Tito Puente's arrangements of the mambo and cha-cha earned him admiration across a wide cultural sphere. He recorded over a hundred albums and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

JAZZ The Complete Story

I was sitting in the my dentist office, and he had this wonderful coffee table book, that turned out to be a great compilation of the chronological journey through the story of Jazz. It is called JAZZ - The Complete Story published by Flame Tree Publishing in 2007. It has been put together by a number of Authors and Consultant editors. The general editor is Julia Rolf.
I will be posting excerpts from this book pertinent to the biggest influence on my musical journey.
Be it jazz, afro-Cuban, Brazililan influenced, it has got to swing. If you exam the music coming from Cuban and Brazilian composer, you will hear what swing really is. When we get into Funk, then Soul you feel "the groove". The bottom line is this music moves your body and soul. More to come....

NEW!! BlogTV Kidd Karrim

BlogCast...from BlogTV KIDD KARRIM LIVE STREAM. You are invited to be a Friend and Subscribe to my broadcasts.
Friday October 8th will be the first one. The Classical Joint was a Vancouver club that started and supported the musical careers of many fine Vancouver musicians. It was a sad day when it closed. The Classical Joint Reunion is being held at The Ironworks as a Coastal Jazz and Blues event. Friday October 8th. It was a great community of people, some won't be able to make it, so I am broadcasting it "Live From The Ironworks". Bookmark my BlogTV page and check it out.

Kidd Karrim's "PASAJE" - Explodes WorldWide!

Kidd Karrim's "PASAJE" - Explodes WorldWide!