Articles
Long-form investigations into the songs, records, and mysteries of salsa.
The greatest salsa band of all time barely wrote its own hits. My five favorite El Gran Combo songs, plus a 1965 B-side, and the outside songwriters behind every one of them. A ballad singer, a Cuban rumbero, a Vietnam vet, a comedian and a bolero composer.
Everybody knows El Preso and Cachondea. These are the sleeper Fruko y sus Tesos hits that deserve way more credit than they get, from the Discos Fuentes years with Joe Arroyo and Wilson Saoko up front. Plus one bonus.
Gunfights, Repping your city, The silent cost of war, A slave rebellion and a man who loves the ladies. These are my personal top 5 favorite Joe Arroyo songs.
For almost sixty years, one of the greatest salsa records of all time has carried lyrics almost nobody could understand. Cuban prison slang, Abakuá scholarship, Caló dictionaries, a Colombian novel, and the ears of five decades of witnesses finally give the song a real reading.