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By O-Dub 
Jungle Fire: Comencemos (Let’s Start)
From digital release (Jungle Fire, 2012)
Phirpo y sus Caribes: Comencemos (Let’s Start)
From Parrilla Caliente (Phillips, 1973)
I recently got an email from the conguero of Jungle Fire, a L.A.-based Afro/Latin-funk band and he was kind enough to send along a couple of new tracks for me to peep. I just hit play without checking the song title and realized, “holy sh–, they’re covering Phirpo!” 1
Given that I think the Phirpo LP is pretty much the best Latin funk album ever, it’s cool [...]
Continue reading JUNGLE FIRE GETS IT STARTED
By O-Dub 
Bob Azzam and His Orchestra: Batucada Por Favor
From At the Club Opera (HMV, 1967)
Los Ladrones: Butta Fingas
From Montana Rusa (Giant Step, 2004)
Honestly, I have no idea what took me so long to track down a copy of the original “Batucada Por Favor.” I originally heard it on this 1998 comp from Mr. Bongo and for many years, when I was DJing in S.F., I would always keep this cut close by. But strangely, I didn’t remember to find an original copy until relatively recently (it doesn’t show [...]
Continue reading BOB AZZAM: SWEDISH SAMBA
By O-Dub 
Michael Piggott runs Masstropicas, dedicated to the sounds and styles of Peruvian cumbia. He first came to my attention back when his label put out the Ranil’s Jungle Party in 2010, and we’ve been chatting off and on since then. My readers know that I’m a big fan of the surf-y style of Peruvian cumbia and Piggott has gone literally deep into the cities of the Peruvian Amazon to find artists to interview and record. His latest is a reissue of the Grupo 2000 album as well as a very cool Cantos Icaros cassette of [...]
Continue reading THE SIDEBAR #24: MICHAEL PIGGOTT OF MASSTROPICAS
By O-Dub 
Alfredo Linares y su Salsa Star: Baila Montuno
From 7″ (Caliente, 1973)
This appears on Linares’s 1973 Sensacionales! album but I didn’t catch wind of it until I picked it up on 7″ first. I’m a huge fan of Linares’s work and so I was pleased and a bit stunned to realize that, unless I’m totally off-base, this is a cover of Bobby Matos’s “Nadie Baila Como Yo” (from his seminal My Latin Soul album of the mid/late ’60s). Matos isn’t credited (not an unusual happenstance) but certainly, there’s more than enough musical [...]
Continue reading ALFREDO LINARES: BAILA BAILA!
By O-Dub 
Sad news: Jimmy Sabater, the “velvet sound” of Latin soul, just passed away. To me, Sabater is one of the most undersung of the boogaloo giants, the literal voice to many of the style’s great hits. I had a chance to interview him a couple of years back for the liner notes to the Joe Cuba Sextet’s We Must Be Doing Something Right and am grateful to have had that opportunity.
Sabater and Cuba were, for the most part, inseparable from one another. It’s impossible to consider the accomplishments of one without crediting [...]
Continue reading REMEMBERING JIMMY SABATER
By O-Dub 
Orchestre Du Bawobab: Kelen Ati Len + Jarraf
From Visage Du Senegaal (Disques Buur, 1974)
Amongst certain circles of Afro-funk fans, “Kelen Ati Len” is probably the best-known song by this Dakar band but this LP is hardly a one-tracker 1 No doubt, “Kelen Ati Len” is killer with its crashing drums and angular guitar work. It’s like Bawobab/Baobab members had spent a few years jamming with the Kashmere Stage Band before returning to Senegal.
However, I included “Jarraf” because you get a whole other sense of cross-cultural play with its [...]
Continue reading ORCHESTRE DU BAWOBAB: CROSS-ATLANTIC CONNECTIONS
By O-Dub 
Katunga: Oh Cherie
From Mira Para Arriba, Mira Para Abajo (RCA, 1973)
Katunga was a 1970s Latin funk/rock outfit out of either Peru or Argentina (I’m still not 100% certain if they were Peruvians who recorded/toured in Argentina or the other way around) with a few LPs to their name. “Oh Cherie” comes off of what is probably their “best-known” LP (to American heads), Mira Para Arriba, Mira Para Abajo (“look up, look down”) thanks to a number of b-boy break-type joints, especially “Palo Bonito.”
However, I keep coming back to “Oh [...]
Continue reading KATUNGA: OH CHERIE, AMOUR
By O-Dub 
My history of the Latin soul label, Speed, is included in the new issue of Wax Poetics. I’ve written on Speed before but never in this complete detail, which includes quotes from a variety of people I interviewed, connected to the label, including Bobby Marin, Bobby Matos and Frankie Nieves.1
Speaking of Latin, UK’s Soundway has put up an awesome, interactive map of regional Colombian music styles.
Special thanks to Mathew Warren for sharing his interview with Chuito Santiago. ↩
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