New York salsa hasn’t changed; Yuri Buenaventura comes from that world of angular and sensual, romantic and combative salsa from the historical albums of the Fania All Stars.
“Talking about the origins of this music means talking about the Spaniards who left their country to seek a new life and got lost in the jungle among mosquitoes and snakes; about Africans who were thrown onto ships and whipped to make them work; about Native Americans attacked by the absolute evil with its cross, massacring them because they believed in the gods of the river and the sun. And then, within this tragedy, another tragedy: the exodus of Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Dominicans, leaving their sun-soaked islands for the cold winters of New York’s working-class neighborhoods. Well, New York salsa is this music.” When the general public discovered him in France through his extraordinary version of Ne me quitte pas in 1996, Yuri Buenaventura opened the doors to a renewed interest in Latin music, always emphasizing its roots, inseparable from its history. “Refusing to let artificial intelligence write music, wearing a suit to perform at a concert, is a tribute to Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Miles Davis—artists who were asked to enter through the back door of clubs for whites, and who couldn’t sleep in the hotels where they performed because Black people were not allowed in the rooms.”
Let’s take this opportunity: salsa, even romantic salsa, is history you can dance to.
