Willie Colón to release new album

A new Willie Colón album is certainly a noteworthy event these days.

The new record will have great traditional Puerto Rican music along with some extended jams and a tribute to Hector Lavoe.

I will be getting this music right away!

nydailynews.com

Willie Colón: ‘El Malo’ strikes back
By Angela González and Maite Junco

More than a decade after his last CD release, and an immersion lesson in digital technology, salsa legend Willie Colón is back with a new album.

In between his latest recording, “El Malo, Vol. 2: Prisioneros del Mambo,” and 1998’s “Demasiado Corazón,” Colón devoted himself to touring and city politics — far from the mixing studio where he last worked with tapes.

“It took me a while to be ready, but once I got used to the new technology, which is like a word processor, I added a lot of details, sound levels,” says the Bronx Boricua. “It looks simple from afar, but it’s complicated.”

The result is 13 songs — some with Colón’s trademark social message — that mix salsa with plena (“El Brujo”), bomba (“Mucha Leña Pa’l Fuego”), son, 1970s descarga and even some urban music, a combo of genres he calls his “Afro-Boricua rhythm.”

“In this album, I play various trumpet and trombone solos, I sing and even do the chorus of some songs,” he explains. “Also, there are various of my own arrangements and compositions. I was able to do a bit of everything.”

The 58-year-old Colón, who has worked with Rubén Blades, Celia Cruz and Héctor Lavoe and whose name is synonymous with the heyday of salsa, retakes the name of his first album, “El Malo,” from 1967.

He also breaks with today’s music rule that songs should not exceed four minutes “so they are played on the radio,” he says.

Actually, nine of the songs in “Prisioneros del Mambo” break the barrier. “Four minutes is not really enough to develop the musical stories that I want to create,” he says.

Released on his own label, Lone Wolf, the CD is on sale on Amazon, in local music stores and at www.williecolon.com.

He hopes it will mark a new beginning for his live performances.

“It would be a gift to be able to play a new repertoire, because where I go, people have the list of what they want to hear. They ask for ‘El Gran Varón,’ ‘La Murga,’ and if you want to play something new, they want to stone you.”

A critic of the “El Cantante” movie because it focused too much on the “tragedy’ of Lavoe’s life and addictions and not his music, Colón includes his own tribute to his friend in the CD.

Nearly 14 minutes long, the “Héctor Lavoe Medley” runs through the classics “El Cantante,” “Periódico de Ayer,” “Todopoderoso” and “La Banda.”

“I wanted to do something fitting,” he says. “I feel I have the right to do it because I wrote the music to all these songs.”

An adviser to Mayor Bloomberg on media and Latino entertainment issues, Colón has run various times for public office. The last time, he was a candidate for Public Advocate in the 2001 Democratic primary.

He told the Daily News he wanted to do this album “before I hang up my trombone.”

“I don’t know the exact date, but it’s a matter of time,” he said.

And from politics?

“They are not getting rid of me yet,” he says with a laugh. “I want to stay active.”

mjunco@nydailynews.com

Benicio Del Toro leads the charge for “Che”

latimes.com

Benicio Del Toro leads the charge for ‘Che’

Benicio Del Toro has made a career of playing men on society’s outskirts. Now as the revolutionary ‘Che,’ he shows his power.
By Mark Olsen
December 11, 2008

In films as varied as “The Usual Suspects,” “Basquiat,” “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas,” “Traffic” and “Things We Lost in The Fire,” Benicio Del Toro seems drawn to play the eccentric outsider.

Now in director Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” — which opens for a one-week run on Friday in Los Angeles and New York — Del Toro plays 1950s and ’60s revolutionary leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Following Guevara from Mexico to Cuba to New York to Bolivia, the film — which will screen as a single 4-hour unit during its short run, and be broken into two separate films for the wider release in January — has a broad sweep, but also an eye for the specific, becoming perhaps the ultimate expression of Del Toro’s physical, enigmatic screen presence.

The project began with the 41-year-old Del Toro, who took an interest in Guevara’s book “The Bolivian Diary” and pursued the idea with producer Laura Bickford. This was just before his turn in the 2000 film “Traffic” (Bickford produced and Soderbergh directed), which earned Del Toro an Academy Award for supporting actor.

Del Toro’s work in “Che” appears to be a rare and a truly fortuitous match of actor and role.

“It certainly seemed that way to me immediately,” said Soderbergh of the way in which Del Toro suited the part. “I had the same sensation I had when I was working with Julia Roberts on ‘Erin Brockovich,’ the right person in the right role at the right time.”

Despite the film’s controversial reception following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival — Variety called it “defiantly nondramatic” and “a commercial impossibility” — Del Toro, who also has a producing credit on the film, was awarded the best actor prize. Sean Penn, who led the festival jury, later called Del Toro’s work “one of the first tour de force performances in film history that doesn’t rely on the close-up.”

Keeping it true

Del Toro’s tall, broad frame is frequently shot by Soderbergh in a full-body shot, so that the actor works with his shoulders and hips as much as his eyes, while allowing other actors equal visual weight within the frame.

“When Che wrote he was very honest; that’s one of the first things that really moved me,” said Del Toro. “My first attraction toward Che was a book of letters he wrote to his family. There was an honesty in that, where he could be very self-critical, but also with a witty nod.

“The approach of the movie is to be true, factually true from what we gathered, but also true to him.”

Del Toro believes the film will have a life beyond whatever it may (or may not) make at the box office during its initial theatrical releases. It recently played to cheers in Havana and protests in Miami.

“One day, the movie will pop up and they’ll shake hands with it,” he says. “I remember the first time I heard [ Miles Davis' landmark 1970 album] ‘Bitches Brew,’ I was like, ‘I can’t listen to that’. And then one time I was driving and one of the songs came on and everything changed. This movie, at some point it will change someone’s mind, what they thought it was.”

Transforming man

Before shooting the final sections of the film that portray Guevara’s time in Bolivia at the end of his life, Del Toro dropped some 35 pounds. For Guevara’s arrival in Bolivia in disguise, he shaved the top of his head rather than wear a bald cap. For his role in “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas” as the fictional sidekick Dr. Gonzo (based on writer Hunter S. Thompson’s friend and attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta), Del Toro put on 40 pounds.

It seems only fitting that following the release of “Che” he will next be seen in a new version of ” The Wolf Man,” perhaps the ultimate story of personal transformation.

“I wish I could stay home,” he said of what draws him again and again to roles that require severe physical transformation and deep emotional commitment.

“I wish I could be asleep right now. But why do I do it? That’s the way the cookie crumbles for me, I’m that kind of actor. Do I invite it? Maybe. At the same time it invites me.

“It’s just who I am.”

Who is Albizu Campos?

Cheo Feliciano marks 50 years salseando

nydailynews.com

Salsa royalty celebrates Cheo Feliciano’s 50 years in music
By ALFREDO ALVARADO

A super-class sonero, Cheo Feliciano traveled the world with Fania All Star icons Ray Barretto and Héctor Lavoe during salsa’s glory days of the 1970s.

On June 20, a dozen Latin music legends will celebrate his 50th anniversary in music, a long overdue tribute at Madison Square Garden’s WaMu Theater.

“It’s about time,” said Oscar Hernández, leader of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, who will participate. “If there’s anybody who deserves a tribute like this it’s Cheo Feliciano.”

“Cheo is one of my favorite singers,” said nine-time Grammy award winner Eddie Palmieri, who will be on hand for the celebration.

“His timbre and his phrasing, he really is one of kind,” said the veteran bandleader.

Fania mates Ismael Miranda, Roberto Roena, Bobby Valentín, Papo Lucca and Johnny Pacheco will also be part of the anniversary concert, along with singer and percussionist Jimmy Sabater.

Feliciano’s route to stardom began in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where he grew up until the 1950s, when he migrated with his family — like tens of thousands of other puertorriqueños — to New York City looking for better economic opportunities.

“It was very impressive,” said Feliciano, who was 17 when he arrived. “Back in Ponce, the tallest building was only five stories.”

He wasted no time in finding his way to the musicians union and soon was paying his dues as the band boy for the orchestras of Machito, Tito Puente and Tito Rodríguez, the bandleaders who ruled the New York dance floors during the golden Palladium era.

It was Rodríguez, a singer of impeccable style, who gave Feliciano his big break.

“Tito didn’t know that I could sing and the guys in the band would tell him to give me a chance. So finally he asked me and I told him I was the world’s greatest singer,” Feliciano recalled with a chuckle.

“When he called me to go on stage, that’s how he introduced me, as the world’s greatest singer.”

For his anniversary concert, Feliciano will take his fans on a journey back to the hits he recorded with the Joe Cuba Sextet and the Fania All Stars, such as “Anacaona” and “Amada Mía.”

“We’re going to do a little bit of everything,” said Feliciano, whose first love is the romantic boleros of groups like Trío Los Panchos.

Feliciano’s next project is an album with salsero Rubén Blades, a longtime admirer of his.

“I recorded some of Rubén’s songs and he’ll record some of mine,” he said. “My part is already done, we’re just waiting for Rubén.”

Salsa great Lalo Rodriguez gets a star in New York

dominicantoday.com

Salsa great Lalo Rodriguez gets a star in New York

New York.- Puerto Rico salsa great Lalo Rodriguez said he’s very happy with getting his star in the park Celia Cruz, as he celebrates the 20 years since his international hit ‘Devorame Otra Vez’.

Rodriguez, the first salsa singer to win a Grammy prize when he recorded with Eddy Palmieri’s orchestra in the 1970s, will be the New York Dominican Parade’s international godfather,” said Latin music impresario Jessie Ramirez.

New Yorkers Use Classic Salsa to Fight Gentrification

New York’s salsa scene, still going strong in Spanish Harlem, valiantly beats back the McCondo purge
by Raquel Cepeda

I almost broke my neck the other day, walking across the intersection of Third Avenue and 109th Street in Spanish Harlem—better known as El Barrio—to pick my daughter up from school. I whirled around at the sight of a man I thought didn’t exist anymore in New York City. He was a local titere (a street tough), sauntering down the very same “Calle Luna, Calle Sol” that salsa legend Héctor Lavoe sang about on a song from friend and fellow icon Willie Colón’s classic 1973 album, Lo Mato.

The cautionary tale, sung in Spanish, warns the citizens of John Lindsay’s New York to stay clear of the matóns (hoodlums) locking down the streets unless they’re prepared to go fisticuffs, or worse. But here, in 2008, the older, weathered man—well into his fifties—strutted right past me rocking a beaded Puerto Rican flag necklace and matching T-shirt, carrying a shoddy boombox on his shoulder that blared yet another of Lavoe’s many emblematic collaborations with Colón, “Che Che Colé,” from its rustic speakers.

I couldn’t help but flash back to a rare interview—obviously one of his last, now canonized on YouTube—wherein a melancholic, barely recognizable Lavoe slurred that “Che Che Colé” was, to him, the most indelible song among all his nonpareil repertoire, because it transported him back to happier days when he had money, and his wife Nilda and son Héctor Jr. were in his life.

Sung in the authentically jibaro, rural timbre that makes every listen a visceral experience, the opening track off Colón’s (recently remastered) 1969 long-player Cosa Nuestra feels like an astral excursion into the countryside of Lavoe’s native Puerto Rico.

But to hear it now? In Manhattan?

Full Article

“Soy Barack Obama”

My posting of this ad in no way represents my support, in any manner for Obama.

I just wanted to share this video because I found everything about it to be pretty funny. Especially the pandering to the Puerto Rican people, who can vote in the Democratic primary but yet do not have the right to vote in the Presidential election.

I must say though, that Obama did a decent job with the Spanish pronunciation throughtout the ad.

So, how does Obama relate to Puerto Rican voters? Well, as he says, he was born on an island just like all Puerto Ricans………

South by South Bronx: Barrio Noir

dailynews.com

Author Abraham Rodriguez delves into Barrio noir in “South by South Bronx”
By Carolina González

A mysterious blond appears naked in the bed of an aimless man who has frequent blackouts. She’s got a pair of Manolo Blahniks, a secret and a gun.

This scenario would fit right in with the hardboiled detective novels from the 1950s, the ones starring cynical gumshoes like Mike Hammer or Philip Marlowe.

Instead, it’s the opening to Abraham Rodríguez’s new novel, “South by South Bronx” (Akashic Books, $15.95), which intersects concerns about terrorism, changes in the drug trade and gentrification with Hitchcockian double-crosses and a mountain of cash.

The novel, Rodríguez’s third, takes the Bronx-born writer’s longtime concerns about Puerto Rican identity and street-level realism and meshes them with the structure of a classic pulp fiction narrative.

“It wasn’t a conscious thing, ‘I’m going to do a mystery book,’” says Rodríguez, whose first novel, the gritty and lyrical “Spidertown,” was published in 1994.

“I always wanted to do something with a Puerto Rican cop, and I’m obsessed with the concept of dragging Puerto Ricans into Americana,” he adds over the phone from Northern California, where he began his book tour last week.

“South by South Bronx” is divided into two narratives, set off by the use of different typefaces.

One follows Sánchez, a Puerto Rican police detective who has been shunned by his fellow officers for investigating a vigilante cop and is now sought out by a federal agent involved in a drugs-money-terrorism case.

Sánchez is a character borrowed from “Spidertown,” which depicted the world of young violent street dealers in the South Bronx.

The other storyline follows Alex, a heartbroken Puerto Rican slacker who has so many alcohol-induced blackouts he never questions the presence of a strange blond woman in his bed.

This story has a subplot involving two Puerto Rican artists, a writer named Monk and a painter named Mink, who are brought out of their creative blocks by the sight of the blond, Ava Reynolds.

“I saw it as two books, a dual narrative,” says Rodríguez. “Some people were disoriented at first reading it, but already in my last book, I was tired of the linear thing.”

Rodríguez’s South Bronx roots have always been a deeply specific source of inspiration, and in this novel, like in his others, it almost becomes a character of its own.

“I’ve always thought of the Bronx as a small town, and I see things changing, I see the world coming into the Bronx,” he says.

Rodríguez calls his novel “a tribute to New York” — a city that has changed, not necessarily for the better in the last decade.

It’s a view he has from Berlin, where he’s been living for the past eight years with his wife, whom he met there.

He says that while he loves his hometown and continues to visit yearly, Berlin has been personally and creatively enriching for him.

“It’s a very open kind of place, aesthetically, and in quality of life. Try walking with a beer down the street here [New York],” he says, citing laws like the city’s indoor smoking ban as “coercive.”

Is he still the “angry young man” he was portrayed as in the mid-1990s, when he denounced the notion of “Latino literature” as one uniform nostalgic immigrant story?

“I’m not angry, I was never angry, I just feel strongly about things,” he says. “The passion is real.”

Miguel Zenon turns traditional Puerto Rican sounds into innovative jazz

newsday.com

Miguel Zenón feels his way to jazz Nirvana

By ED MORALES

Saxophonist Miguel Zenón has made his mark in jazz by translating the traditional Afro-Caribbean rhythms in his head into freer forms of expression. On his 2005 album, “Jíbaro” (Marsalis Music), he used the “feel” of traditional Puerto Rican music as a creative space to play a kind of jazz so innovative that he won Best New Artist in a JazzTimes poll. The New Yorker’s new album, “Awake,” (Marsalis Music) takes the concept even further.

“If you start with the basic rhythmic structure of bomba, but you don’t necessarily use the drums or play the rhythm explicitly, you’re composing with a bomba feel,” said Zenón, whose quartet will be playing at the Jazz Standard (212-576-2232) Tuesday and Wednesday. “A lot of the stuff we did on this record is coming out of an Afro-Cuban feel, a Puerto Rican feel, or even a flamenco feel.”

Listening carefully to “Ulysses in Slow Motion,” inspired by the multilayered narrative technique of the James Joyce novel, you might be able to pick out the Puerto Rican rhythm bomba sicá. “Third Dimension” has the feel of a 12/8 Afro-Cuban rhythm, and “Camarón,” dedicated to flamenco legend Camarón de la Isla, takes off into an unexplored galaxy of rhythmic cycles.

“‘Camarón’ has that Arab and African thing going on,” said Zenón, who came to the U.S. from his native Puerto Rico to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston. “You can hear all the Spanish music that came with the colonization of Latin America in rumba and jíbaro music.” Another song has a more arbitrary inspiration. One day as Zenón was channel surfing, he was entranced by a Catholic Mass and adapted a Gregorian chant as the repetitive motif for “Santo.”

“Awakening Prelude” and “Awakening Interlude” represent the state of mind Zenón was in as he tried to find direction as a budding young jazz star. He used a string quartet to “color” the proceedings, which culminate in a free-jazz explosion inspired by Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane’s experimental phases.

From time to time, he asked longtime collaborator Luis Perdomo to switch from piano to Fender Rhodes, giving some of the tunes an electric fusion sound. Zenón feels a great camaraderie with his quartet, made up of Perdomo, Hans Glawischnig on bass and Henry Cole on drums.

“Hans and I played with David Sánchez’s band,” Zenón said, “and then with Luis we played in [the late] Ray Barretto’s band.”

Zenón credits Sánchez and Boston-based pianist Danilo Pérez as “shining examples of Latino musicians who were making it in the jazz world.” Barretto was also an important mentor, since Zenón had grown up listening to his salsa records and was stunned by the master percussionist’s encyclopedic knowledge of mainstream jazz.

But like Barretto, Zenón had roots in playing dance music. “In Puerto Rico I played in all kinds of bands that played salsa and merengue,” Zenón revealed. “That’s how I saved the money to come to the U.S. We used to play El Gran Combo tunes. Half the band was my friends – we were around 15 – and the other half was my friend’s father and his friends from the hospital where he worked. They were all, like, 50,” he chuckled.

Benicio Del Toro takes on Che-TWICE

nydailynews.com

Benicio Del Toro plugs new film while shooting 2 Che biopics

BY LEWIS BEALE

Benicio Del Toro admits his name “is a mouthful in any language, even in Spanish,” so when he was starting out in the acting business it came as no surprise that people suggested he shorten it to “Benny” or some other moniker that sounded like it was meant for a character in “West Side Story.”

“There was a lot of pressure to change my name for a little bit,” says Del Toro, who plays a recovering drug addict in “Things We Lost in the Fire,” opening next Friday. “I understand it. There are many people who changed their names to be in the movies, but I just didn’t want to, and I didn’t.”

Smart move. Del Toro’s distinctive name, shabby good looks and acting style have combined to make him one of this country’s most visible, and talented, Latin film stars.

The 40-year-old native of Santurce, Puerto Rico, first entered mainstream consciousness playing the mumbly-mouthed Fred Fenster in the 1995 cult hit “The Usual Suspects.” He became one of only three Boricuas to win an Academy Award when he copped a best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of a Mexican cop in the hit 2000 film “Traffic.”

In his latest film, Del Toro is a down-and-out druggie whose best friend (David Duchovny) is a successful architect who has never given up on his troubled buddy. When the friend is murdered, his widow (Halle Berry) asks Del Toro to stay with her for awhile, and the two grieve and get better together.

“The character is someone who’s sick and gets the motivation to get better,” says Del Toro while puffing on a stogie. “It’s not a straight line. It’s the journey of getting better.”

He looks great — tall, slim, cheerful — in a dark suit and open-collared black shirt.

But his scraggly beard gives evidence of his more recent obsession — he’s currently filming back-to-back films about Ernesto (Che) Guevara, both directed by his “Traffic” buddy Steven Soderbergh.

The first, “The Argentine,” which is being shot in the mountains of Puerto Rico, follows Che during his days with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra and ends with the Cuban leader’s ascension to power.

The second, “Guerrilla,” which will shoot in Bolivia and Spain, tells of Che’s misguided attempt to start a revolution among Bolivia’s peasants, which ended in his death 40 years ago yesterday at the age of 39.

Portraying such an icon is a “huge” undertaking, says the actor. “You have nightmares everyday. It’s very difficult, but you just do it. You know it’s never going to be perfect; it can’t be. We’re just trying to stay true to the historical period, showing what he tried to accomplish.”

After finishing the Guevara films, which are due out late next year, Del Toro is set to star as tortured man-beast Lawrence Talbot in a remake of the classic horror film “The Wolf Man.” It’s just another offbeat role in an intriguing career, one that began, like all too many Latino actors, playing gangsters in movies and TV shows like “Miami Vice” and “License to Kill.”

But Del Toro was able to scramble out of that ghetto, and it’s because, he says, he refused to play stereotyped roles stereotypically.

“Not every bad guy is the same. And not every Latin is the same,” he says. “So if one is Martínez, and one is Rodríguez, it don’t matter, they’re not all gonna be the same.”