The Fifth Case This Year of the Barefoot Latin Dance Party

I am kicking off "fall programming" with a bunch of records I acquired over the summer... new music to the show.

The theme this week is "Barfoot Latin Dance Party," where I play some of the sounds from Cuba that were more popular outside the urban hub of Havana. This theme sometimes covers classic son from Cuba, along with some of the Caribbean influenced sounds of Santiago. But today's show focuses primarily on two genres from the Barefoot Latin pool:  guajira, the country music of Cuba, and guaguanco ( or "rumba," as it is now known), the drum-heavy dance music so prevalent in Eastern Cuba.

The first set today starts out with some earnest old-timey guajiras sang with gusto. We move on to add some horn lines to country sounds, hearing some son montuno to end the first hour.

The second hour today provides a history lesson in guaguanco, playing a few tracks from the group most commonly spoken of as rivals to the great tres player Arsenio Rodriguez: I am referring to El Conjunto Modelo. We move on in the second hour to modernize the sound with some material from the 60s and 70s. We will start that set with a group of Cuban slow jams, then pick up the tempo on the way out the door.