Salsa Meets Jazz At The Village Gate

In response to last week’s article Does The Blurry Line Between Salsa and Latin Jazz Matter?, NPR’s A Blog Supreme cited promoter Art D’Lugoff’s famous concert series at The Village Gate, Salsa Meets Jazz, as an example of the blurry line. The Village Gate’s well-known event does serve as a fantastic example since it combined salsa bands, jazz musicians, and Latin Jazz artists into one amazing melting pot. Each week, the concert series brought together a popular New York Latin band with a jazz soloist, providing a unique musical meeting between two worlds.

The participants varied on both sides of the equation, culminating in some interesting results. At times the event utilized Latin bands with an inbred jazz sensibility, such as Machito and His Afro-Cubans, Tito Puente, or Orquesta Libre. The concert series also took turns leaning towards straight salsa bands lead by musicians such as Willie Colon, Hector LaVoe, and Johnny Pacheco. The jazz guest soloists ran the spectrum of artists affiliated with Latin Jazz such as Dizzy Gillespie to less obvious choices such as Dexter Gordon, McCoy Tyner, and James Moody. The resulting musical experiences ran from hot to cold; sometimes the jazz soloists clicked with the Latin bands, and at other times, the two different worlds stayed apart. Still, the event regularly brought together jazz and Latin musicians and their audiences, creating a fantastic display cross-cultural artistic sensibilities.

In many ways, the Salsa Meets Jazz concert series presented both the beauty and the difficulty of the blurry line between Latin Jazz and salsa. The event purposely blurred the line between the two musical approaches, finding a crossroads between popular music and artistry. Both jazz and Latin musicians found a place to experiment and stretch their musical concept. The Salsa Meets Jazz events included many open descargas that challenged jazz musicians and pushed salsa artists. The audiences certainly appreciated the excitement of jazz improvisation, but they also enjoyed the music’s dancing and social element.

The event stayed mostly focused upon dance rhythms though, missing the open possibilities of Latin Jazz. The event may have inspired some jazz soloists to dig further into the world of Afro-Cuban rhythms, altering their phrasing and overall concept to wrap around the clave. Most probably found the event entertaining, but simply played their same ideas over the churning two chord salsa vamps. We certainly gained some historical musical events, but we can only guess at their long term impact upon the greater Latin Jazz world.

I would guess that more good came out of Salsa Meets Jazz than anything else, but as with anything involving the blurry line between Latin Jazz and salsa, the answer remains very subjective. The concert series certainly served as a landmark time in New York Latin music history, so today’s Weekly Latin Jazz Video Fix will be dedicated to Salsa Meets Jazz.

The first video clip finds Bobby Rodriguez and his group Nueva Cia supporting guest saxophone soloist James Moody. The next shot brings together Tito Puente’s band with Dizzy Gillespie and Abdul Al-Khabyyr on piccolo. The last video features the most interesting combination, Mario Rivera and his Salsa Refugees with vocalist Leon Thomas. Regardless of labels and terminology, there’s some great music here - enjoy!

Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Mario Rivera & Sayyd Abdul Al-Khabyyr At The Village Gate

http://www.chipboaz.com/blog/2009/11/10/weekly-latin-jazz-video-fix-salsa-meets-jazz-at-the-village-gate/