Also, do you have a cd with Amor a la Mexicana and Piel Morena ? I ask because the tracks seems to be on different cds and I only really like those
These tracks, which were heavily played in Buenos Aires at one time, are by Mexican actress turned popstar Thalía - sort of a Mexican Kylie Minogue, if that’s not too strange a concept. I am dating myself by knowing the answers to these questions without much research, but, here goes: ‘Piel Morena’, on the 1995 album ‘En Extasis’ was her first international hit. The album was Thalía’s first on EMI, who gave her more exposure outside Mexico after a successful but limited career with Universal.
‘Amor a la Mexicana’ comes from the 1999 album of the same name. It’s her best and her most successful album, selling 4½ million copies.
Thalía made two more Spanish albums, ‘Arrasando’ (2000) and the mediocre ‘Tú y yó’ (2002) before attempting to cross over into singing in English. Her move was even less successful than Ricky Martin’s, which at least produced one hit; the album bombed and it would be fair to say that her career as a musician effectively ends at this point (2003).
EMI’s response was to rush out this greatest hits cd, compiled from the four Spanish albums on EMI. With the album title in English rather than Spanish, the cd is firmly targeted at the USA. Hispanic fans were outraged by this shameless milking of her back catalogue but it’s handy for us, as it contains the tracks we are after. Naturally, EMI don’t include any of the earlier material on Universal, but this is no problem.
If you’d like us to source this for you, just contact us
Haris Alexiou is a legend in her native Greece where she has recorded over thirty albums. Like some other Greek artists, for many years she was unknown outside her native country, but in the 1990s she began to get more international exposure after signing to Polygram. In 1996 she wrote a lyric to the Loreena McKennit instrumental ‘Tango to Evora’, and the new song, ‘To tango tis nefelis’ (Tango of the angels) became a big hit all over Europe.
That song was included only in the live album “All Around The World 1992-1996.” That went out of print almost immediately, and even the 2006 reprint with bonus DVD is unobtainable as well.
Happily, the 2004 retrospective Antologia has now been released outide Greece by Capitol. This compilation includes ‘To tango tis nefelis’ and also ‘Gia en tango’ (For a tango), which is another favourite at the milonga. These are available - get one whilst you can (we can source them for you).
Warning: don’t overplay these tracks at the milonga! They are a bit sweet, and over-exposure will turn people off them.
If there’s a word that’s given adjectives a bad name, then - in the music industry at least - it must be ‘essential’. So it’s quite something to come up with an album that truly merits the name.
Tito Puente, “El Rey del timbales” (the king of the drums) made outstanding music for over 50 years. His sides from 1949-1960 - the mambo era - are the ones which really command my attention. Any wannabe salsa band should just listen to this stuff and then decide whether or not it’s worth getting up in the morning. The music is full of energy and vibrancy, the band is tight, the musicians are outstanding, but best of all are the sparkling arrangements - simply light years ahead of anything else that you can hear nowadays, not least because this was still - just - the big band era.
A few years back RCA released a collectors’ version of Tito’s awesome 1957 album Dancemania. Apart from the sparkling transfers from the master tapes, a great feature of that release was that RCA included everything from the moment the tapes began rolling. On “Agua Limpia Todo” we hear the whole band warming up chaotically as Tito bangs frantically on the side of his drum kit to bring them to attention. As silence falls, he reminds them sharply, this one isn’t a cha-chá, it’s a guaguancó, hits the floor four times - hard - to count them in, and then the whole sixteen piece band bursts into life in perfect synchronism. It’s a wonderful demonstration of the bandleader’s craft, and makes one realise how much work goes into these effortlessly sounding tracks.
Now Dancemania is a wonderful album, but there are some other good albums from the period too, as well as Tito’s sides from the early 1950s. But look: RCA have done all the hard work for you with this new 2 CD album. The fact that ‘The Essential Tito Puente’ collects tracks only from the mambo era, when he become much more famous later on is, at last, a tacit admission from his record label of the true greatness of this early work.
If you want one of these, we can get them for you - contact us soon, because this release is unlikely to be well supported by RCA.
I don’t know how to introduce The Mandé Variations, the superb new album from Malian kora master Toumani Diabeté.
The kora is an African stringed instrument with a truly beautiful tone. For 700 years, the instrument has been passed down from father to son. Unlike any previous generation, Toumani Diabeté grew up listening not just to the music of his forefathers, but to blues, pop and jazz. Speaking about these influences, Toumani says:
The kora has become a multi-dimensional instrument. The Mandé Variations is a continuation of these 20 years of experience together, where you discover the past which meets the present for the future, because I took songs that date back 100, 200, 300, 500, 700 years and I played them with modern tunings, or ancient tunings which had not been played on the kora before, which are completely new directions for the instrument. I also composed new songs that I adapted from centuries-old arrangements. That is why I say, it is a meeting of the past and the present for the future
The title of the new album alludes to Western classical works such as Elgar’s Engima Variations and Bach’s Goldberg Variations, but this is in no way a derivative work. If you like classical music, you will love this too.
Watch World Circuit’s publicity film for the new album below
The album is faultlessly recorded by Nick Gold of World Circuit Records. After being released too late to figure in the running for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards this year, this will be a very strong contender for 2009.
If you’d like to hear more music by Toumani Diabeté, I’d recommend the 2002 release New Ancient Strings.
Bésame mucho (kiss me a lot) is one of the most famous boleros of all time (a bolero is a South American form of love song, most popular in Mexico and Cuba). It’s a song that has touched millions of hearts around the world. Written by the Mexican Consuelo Velázquez in 1940, it soon became popular all over South America.
Perhaps the greatest recording is that of the original Trio Los Panchos from the mid 1950s. With their close harmony singing and the sweet runs on the requinto (a Mexican guitar a fifth smaller than a conventional guitar, with proportionately higher notes), Los Panchos were the interpreters of boleros par excellence. If you want to hear this music - we will try to get if for you, but we don’t stock it as so few people in Europe and interested by it. If buying yourself, be aware that the band is still going today so you may not get what you think!
The version of this song I want to tell you about is very different! It’s by the black Argentine swing guitar master, Oscar Alemán. A contemporary of Django Reinhardt, he played alongside him in Paris and the two men were friends, but Alemán was more inventive and his music swung harder. Reviews at the time were unequivocal, but somehow Alemán never achieved the kind of fame enjoyed by Reinhardt and Grapelli. Perhaps his music was too strong for European tastes.
His 1942 recording of Bésame mucho is often to be heard in the swing breaks in traditional Argentine milongas. It’s one of his greatest recordings, with mesmerizing playing from his violinist, who swings much harder than Stefan Grapelli. The band camp it up - it’s hugely enjoyable.
As a final note: Consuelo Velázquez had not reached her sixteenth birthday when she wrote Bésame mucho and had not yet been kissed.
One of the musicians about whom I feel most passionately is the Cuban tresero and band-leader Arsenio Rodríguez. Considering that he created the son montuno, which is basically the music which became first mambo and then salsa, it’s stunning that most people in the salsa community have never heard of him.
Arsenio’s tracks from the 1940s burn so hard that they’ll set your music system on fire, and it’s not for nothing that the Buena Social Vista Club used many of his compositions on their recordings - even sometimes using his arrangements. 60 years on, they still sound modern and exciting. This isn’t the slick salsa romantica we often hear - this music has edge and bite.
It’s wonderful therefore to announce that Jordi Pujol and his colleagues at Tumbao Cuban Classics have produced a 6 cd boxed set with the entire discography of Arsenio on the Cuban RCA label (they say complete - I’ve found one track that’s missing). I’ve been listening to this for hours since I got one - it’s just fantastic. The boxed set includes a discography and a booklet about Arsenio’s life with many rare photographs.
This boxed set will have limited availability. If you want one, get one soon - once they’re gone, they’re gone. I don’t expect to sell a single one, but I wanted to share my excitement at the availability of this long neglected music
When I started dancing tango the music of Astor Piazzolla was very popular among the new dancing public who, myself included, were by and large completely ignorant about dance music in general and tango music in particular. At that time, the dramatic music of Astor Piazzolla was very popular. Many of the live bands, which were made up of musicians who knew next to nothing about tango, focussed on his music.
Piazzolla of course cared nothing for dancers, and as we began to tire (some less quickly than others) of the Piazzolla diet on which we were being fed, tangueros began to wake up to the fact that his music wasn’t that easy to dance to. Susanna Miller summed it up with these unforgettable words: the question isn’t whether or not you can dance to Piazzolla, but whether it’s enjoyable.
Musically speaking, things have improved so much on the tango scene that these days it’s a shock if a live band play Piazzolla, and one hardly ever hears his music at the milonga. He does have a place there, but one has to choose carefully.
The problem is that his most famous music, such as the iconic Buenos Aires Hora Cero (Zero Hour) or The Rough Dancer And The Cyclical Night is not the best for dancing. The most accessible music for tango dancers was recorded after this, and in fact comes from his final years. There is a wonderful selection of his music on the British label Music Club. It’s deleted, but we can still get it and currently we have stock. If you’re interested in this music, get a cd soon whilst it’s still available.
I’m trying to find this canaro song (El rey del bosque)… in my collection i have a quinteto version but i’m sure it’s different to the version i want - which is more dramatic, or am i imagining it?!
No you’re not imagining this! Canaro recorded this with his orchestra in 1939. It was on the deleted cd Colección Aniversario which has been reprinted as Serie de Oro - we have these in stock priced £7.50
This is by Goran Bregovic and appears on his album Tales and Songs from Weddings and Funerals. There are some other tracks to which you can also dance milonga, such as “Hip Hop”, and the rest is Bregovic’s typical Balkan madness!
We don’t normally stock this, but will happily source one for you
The 1960s was not a great time for tango in general. One of the few orchestras to keep going was that of Osvaldo Pugliese. The bulk of his output in this period were vocal numbers - never Pugliese’s strongest point after the departure of Chanel. On the other hand, the instrumentals form this period include the classic “A Evaristo Carriego”. We’re often asked for the studio recording of this album, and it seemed a pity to recommend Antologia vol.4 - in many respects, a fairly duff album - just to pickup this one track. But here’s the answer: Nostalgico - an album just of Pugliese instrumentals from the years on Polygram - has been reprinted.
The cd includes some other strong instrumentals from this period, including Didi, although not the little-heard Verano Porteño - you’ll still have to buy Antologia vol.5 for that one! Anyway - here they are: Pugliese’s 60s instrumentals on one cd, with those pesky vocal numbers weeded out. Sure to be popular once people realize it’s available.
These tracks, which were heavily played in Buenos Aires at one time, are by Mexican actress turned popstar Thalía - sort of a Mexican Kylie Minogue, if that’s not too strange a concept. I am dating myself by knowing the answers to these questions without much research, but, here goes: ‘Piel Morena’, on the 1995 album ‘En Extasis’ was her first international hit. The album was Thalía’s first on EMI, who gave her more exposure outside Mexico after a successful but limited career with Universal.
‘Amor a la Mexicana’ comes from the 1999 album of the same name. It’s her best and her most successful album, selling 4½ million copies.
EMI’s response was to rush out this greatest hits cd, compiled from the four Spanish albums on EMI. With the album title in English rather than Spanish, the cd is firmly targeted at the USA. Hispanic fans were outraged by this shameless milking of her back catalogue but it’s handy for us, as it contains the tracks we are after. Naturally, EMI don’t include any of the earlier material on Universal, but this is no problem.
Haris Alexiou
Happily, the 2004 retrospective Antologia has now been released outide Greece by Capitol. This compilation includes ‘To tango tis nefelis’ and also ‘Gia en tango’ (For a tango), which is another favourite at the milonga. These are available - get one whilst you can (we can source them for you).
If there’s a word that’s given adjectives a bad name, then - in the music industry at least - it must be ‘essential’. So it’s quite something to come up with an album that truly merits the name.
The version of this song I want to tell you about is very different! It’s by the black Argentine swing guitar master, Oscar Alemán. A contemporary of Django Reinhardt, he played alongside him in Paris and the two men were friends, but Alemán was more inventive and his music swung harder. Reviews at the time were unequivocal, but somehow Alemán never achieved the kind of fame enjoyed by Reinhardt and Grapelli. Perhaps his music was too strong for European tastes.
It’s wonderful therefore to announce that Jordi Pujol and his colleagues at Tumbao Cuban Classics have produced a 6 cd boxed set with the entire discography of Arsenio on the Cuban RCA label (they say complete - I’ve found one track that’s missing). I’ve been listening to this for hours since I got one - it’s just fantastic. The boxed set includes a discography and a booklet about Arsenio’s life with many rare photographs.
The problem is that his most famous music, such as the iconic Buenos Aires Hora Cero (Zero Hour) or The Rough Dancer And The Cyclical Night is not the best for dancing. The most accessible music for tango dancers was recorded after this, and in fact comes from his final years. There is a wonderful selection of his music on the British label Music Club. It’s deleted, but we can still get it and currently we have stock. If you’re interested in this music, get a cd soon whilst it’s still available.
No you’re not imagining this! Canaro recorded this with his orchestra in 1939. It was on the deleted cd 
This is by Goran Bregovic and appears on his album Tales and Songs from Weddings and Funerals. There are some other tracks to which you can also dance milonga, such as “Hip Hop”, and the rest is Bregovic’s typical Balkan madness!
The 1960s was not a great time for tango in general. One of the few orchestras to keep going was that of Osvaldo Pugliese. The bulk of his output in this period were vocal numbers - never Pugliese’s strongest point after the departure of Chanel. On the other hand, the instrumentals form this period include the classic “A Evaristo Carriego”. We’re often asked for the studio recording of this album, and it seemed a pity to recommend Antologia vol.4 - in many respects, a fairly duff album - just to pickup this one track. But here’s the answer: Nostalgico - an album just of Pugliese instrumentals from the years on Polygram - has been reprinted.