John Santos-Raúl González Rumba Report

Tom files this special report on an event featuring John Santos and Raul Gonzalez Brito "Lali" from Havana, Cuba. It's Lali's first tour performing in the United States.

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Friday, 25 October 2013, 09:48 PM

One of our long-standing and most elusive goals at timba.com has been to find one or more great writers in every area with a strong Latin music scene. This month we've filled two of the top cities on our wish list: New York (Ian Stewart's Gotham Report) and Los Angeles (Kay Torres' Curuyé in LA). We're still looking for regularly reporting from Lima, Miami, and ... oh yeah, Havana.

Speaking of Havana, Bob Fernández talked to Pupy's conguero Duniesky Barretto, who confirmed that both Manolín and Issac both now have working bands in Havana. We reported last week that Manolín had been touring around the island with Pachito Alonso, but now he's played Casa de la Música under his own name. If Issac and el Médico recruit some young geniuses from la ENA start cranking out new material, the level of competition could rise exponentially. Keep your fingers crossed. In other news, two popular young singers, El Noro and El Niño, have left Pupy and Revé respectively to form their own bands and there's some hope that Pupy will finally tour the US again late this year. [Kevin Moore]

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Wednesday, 23 October 2013, 09:37 PM

Paperback Book - eBook - Audio Files

A free audio download is coming soon. This one has four major sections: a theoretical course on creating the rhythmic breaks that Arsenio called cierres, a massive 120-page survey of Arsenio's Cuban recordings, a chapter on Cachao López and a chapter called "The Golden Age" that provides bass tumbaos for each piano tumbao of Beyond Salsa Piano Vol. 2. I'm already about halfway through Volume 3: Salsa, Songo and The Roots of Latin Jazz.

Also new to LatinPulseMusic is a new book by one of my favorite writers, Chuck Silverman. Among many other publications, Chuck wrote the sublime "The Funkmasters" on the rhythm sections of James Brown, one of the greatest method books ever published in my humble opinion. His new book is called The Latin Rudiments. [Kevin Moore]

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Monday, 21 October 2013, 07:24 PM

Perico Hernández and Nelson González - photo by Tom Ehrlich

Tom's first gallery covers the rehearsal at Lennon Studio, San Francisco. Next up, the concert at Yoshi's SF.

Also, various updates to Peter's Maiden's section to reflect the major updates to his home site.