1978

Summer: Irakere recorded two live concerts that won them a Grammy, established them as an international jazz sensation, and had a profound effect on the future of live timba.

• In June, 1978 Columbia released what we now call the "Grammy Concert", which was in fact a mix of songs from the Newport and Montreux jazz festivals. The Japanese and Tierrazo vinyl versions had a blistering version of Juana 1600 [write EGREM] that for some insane reason didn't make it onto the Columbia CD. Mercifully, they did manage to include Aguanile bonkó [source].

• A month later, they were back in Cuba playing for the "Festival de los estudiantes y la juventud", some sort of international communist shindig that resulted in Irakere tearing the roof off of the legendary "23 y 12" theatre. It's interesting to compare Arturo Sandoval's Aguanile bonkó solo on the Havana version [source] to the Newport version [source] mentioned above. There are several other long, hot dance tracks, including another version of Por romper el coco, (that's Sandoval on trombone!) and a live version of Quindiambo. This is a devilishly hard concert to piece back together and after sorting through it all we highly recommend the EGREM Colección, Vol. IV as the most complete and least confusing package.

Ritmo Oriental released their 5th self-titled LP, at least as good as anything they'd done previously:

• Con el chenche buchenche [source]
• Maritza [source]
• La Ritmo te está llamando [source]

And one of my all-time favorites ...

• Nena así no se vale - example 1 -- example 2 -- [source]