Descarga is a merger of two albums recorded near the beginning of the '70s – the fascinating studio session Aqua Dulce and the self-explanatory Live at the Funky Quarters. Having not yet lost his yen for adventure from the Verve days, Tjader neatly integrates Al Zulaica's Rhodes electric piano, electronic effects, and occasionally horns and voices into a bedrock Latin format, and the combination works even at its most outlandish. Two of the reasons why Aqua Dulce stays on track are the solid Latin percussion team of Pete and Coke Escovedo and Michael Smithe, and that Tjader's rippling, to-the-point, easily adaptable vibraphone manner hadn't changed a whit over the years.
A few years later of “Vamos A Comer” EP (2010 © Lovemonk) and the “Unexpected Tapas” (2011 © Lovemonk) album releases, the Basque-German DJ & music maker, Mikel Makala, and the producer and director of the Gasteiz Big Band, Jimmy Bidaurreta, join forces again to create a new album called “Descarga Libre” (2019 © Orrua Diskak). Now the Basque duo strikes with the same purpose to rescue those Latin, Jazz, Funk and Descarga to Nuyorican Salsa sounds of labels like Fania, in combination with club & dancefloor rhythms. In the beginning of 2019 they’re back with a new album containing 7 originals songs, giving continuity to that brilliant sound they have signed together & have already obtained remarkable admiration from some international reputed DJs, producers and radio hosts.
Built on the Afro-Caribbean past, forged by visionaries such as John Santos and his comrades, and steeled by its rootedness in American life, Latin jazz is a major force shaping contemporary American musical culture. Over decades of performing, arranging, producing, and teaching, Santos has helped make the San Francisco Bay area a Latin jazz stronghold. In Art of the Descarga, The John Santos Sextet and a parade of stellar guests mine the music’s imaginative motherlode, the descarga—the spontaneous, improvisatory interplay that is the beating heart of Latin jam sessions. Orestes Vilató, Jerry González, Orlando “Maraca” Valle, Tito Matos, Juan “Juango” Gutiérrez, and other luminaries join the sextet in this spectacular collision of beauty, design, and time-honored creativity.
On first thought, one might be hard-pressed to find a common ground between Algerian raï music and Latin jazz. But for the pianist Maurice el Medioni, an Algerian-born Jew who left his home for France decades ago as an exile, and the Cuban-born, New York-based percussionist Roberto Rodriguez, the link connecting North Africa and Cuba is a direct one – by way of Spanish Andalusia. World music fusion exercises are more common all the time, and cultural distinctions often become so blurred that the sources are obscured rather than accented.