Latin boogaloo
Encyclopedia
Latin Boogaloo aka bugalú (aka shing-a-ling) is a genre of Latin music and dance that was very popular in the United States, Central and South America from the mid to late 1960s. Latin boogaloo originated in New York City among teenage Cubans and Puerto Ricans. The style was a fusion of popular African American
R&B, rock and roll
and soul
with mambo and son montuno
.
, R&B and doo wop. Puerto Ricans in New York City shared in these tastes, but also listened to genres like mambo or cha cha cha. There was much intermixing of Latinos, especially Puerto Ricans and Cubans, and African Americans, and clubs that catered to both groups tried to find musical common ground to attract both. Latin boogaloo was the result of this search, a marriage of many styles including the Cuban rhythms son montuno
and guajira
, guaracha
, mambo and most uniquely, American R&B/soul.
The boogaloo was a marriage of Afro-American and Afro-Cuban rhythms. The sound was foreshadowed in early/mid 1960s hits such as the 1961 song, El Watusi by Ray Barretto
, the 1963 cover of Herbie Hancock
's, Watermelon Man by Mongo Santamaría
and Joe Cuba
's 1965 single, El Pito. The 1965 hit single, Boo-Ga-Loo by the Detroit R&B duo, Tom and Jerrio inspired the recording of dozens of copycat boogaloo songs amongst R&B musicians, though the fad was relatively short-lived.
John Storm Roberts
notes 1966 as the year the bugalú (his spelling) was first recorded, in the Ricardo Ray (aka Richie Ray) album, Se Soltó.p167 One of Ray's songs on that album, Lookie Lookie, created a basic template for the Latin boogaloo: a central rhythmic riff (known as a montuno
), audience-friendly English lyrics and a catchy chorus, sometimes done in a call and response
style.
1966 also produced several hit singles. The first million-sellin boogaloo was Joe Cuba
's Bang Bang
which used Lookie Lookie's bassline. This launched a string of major Latin boogaloo hits, including Pete Rodriguez
's I Like It Like That, Hector Rivera's At the Party and Joe Bataan
's Gypsy Woman. The same year as Latin boogaloo's breakout success, 1966, saw the closing of New York City's Palladium Ballroom
, a well-known venue that had been the home of big band mambo for many years. The closing marked the end of mainstream mambo, and boogaloo ruled the Latin charts for about two to three years before the early development of salsa music
began to take over.
One of the key factors in the boogaloo success was its use of English lyrics, or a mix of English and Spanish. This certainly helped its reception by non-Spanish speakers.p336
The Latin boogaloo bands were mostly led by young, sometimes even teenage musicians from New York's Puerto Rican community. These included, but weren’t limited to, Bataan, Cuba, Bobby Valentín
, The Latin Souls, The Lat-Teens, Johnny Colon
, Willie Colón
and The Latinaires. As such, Latin boogaloo can be seen as "the first Nuyorican
music" (René López), and has been called "the greatest potential that (Latinos) had to really cross over in terms of music" (Izzy Sanabria). However, Latino musicians and composers also made a big contribution to doo-wop
.
Latin boogaloo also spread throughout the wider Latin music world, especially in Puerto Rico, where top band El Gran Combo
released many boogaloos. Latin music scenes in Peru, Colombia, Panama and elsewhere also embraced the boogaloo. Though the dance craze only lasted until 1968/69, Latin boogaloo was popular enough that almost every major and minor Latin dance artist of the time recorded at least a few boogaloos on their albums. That included boogaloos by long-time veteran, mambo-era musicians such as Eddie Palmieri
and his Aye Que Rico or Tito Puente
's Hit the Bongo.
The boogaloo was dead by the end of 1969.p168 What caused the fairly rapid end of the boogaloo's reign is in doubt. According to several sources, jealous older Latin music artists colluded with record labels (in particular, Fania), radio DJs, and dance hall promoters to blacklist boogaloo bands from venues and radio. Alternatively, it was a fad which had run out of steam.p168 Its demise allowed older musicians to make a comeback in the New York scene. The explosive success of salsa in the early 1970s saw former giants like Puente and the Palmieri Brothers return to the top, while most Latin boogaloo bands went out of business (Joe Bataan and Willie Colón being two notable exceptions).
Latin boogaloo remains popular to this day in Cali
, Colombia
, where the genre is played extensively, along with salsa
and pachanga
, in various FM and AM radio stations and hundreds of dance clubs. The Caleños prefer their boogaloo sped up, from 33 to 45 RPM, to match the city's fast dance style.It is also a list available through HLB - part of the WWAVRC group
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
R&B, rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
and soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
with mambo and son montuno
Son montuno
The son montuno is a style of the Cuban son, but exactly what it means is not an easy question to answer. The son itself is the most important genre of Cuban popular music. In addition, it is perhaps the most flexible of all forms of Latin-American music...
.
History
In the 1950s and 60s, African Americans in the United States listened to a number of styles of music, including jump bluesJump blues
Jump blues is an up-tempo blues usually played by small groups and featuring horns. It was very popular in the 1940s, and the movement was a precursor to the arrival of rhythm and blues and rock and roll...
, R&B and doo wop. Puerto Ricans in New York City shared in these tastes, but also listened to genres like mambo or cha cha cha. There was much intermixing of Latinos, especially Puerto Ricans and Cubans, and African Americans, and clubs that catered to both groups tried to find musical common ground to attract both. Latin boogaloo was the result of this search, a marriage of many styles including the Cuban rhythms son montuno
Son montuno
The son montuno is a style of the Cuban son, but exactly what it means is not an easy question to answer. The son itself is the most important genre of Cuban popular music. In addition, it is perhaps the most flexible of all forms of Latin-American music...
and guajira
Guajira
Guajira may refer to:* Department of La Guajira, a department of Colombia which includes most of the Guajira Peninsula* La Guajira Desert, a desert which covers most of the Guajira Peninsula...
, guaracha
Guaracha
The guaracha is a genre of Cuban popular music, of rapid tempo and with lyrics. The word had been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical theatres and in low-class dance salons. They became an integral part of Bufo comic...
, mambo and most uniquely, American R&B/soul.
The boogaloo was a marriage of Afro-American and Afro-Cuban rhythms. The sound was foreshadowed in early/mid 1960s hits such as the 1961 song, El Watusi by Ray Barretto
Ray Barretto
Ray Barretto was a Grammy Award-winning Puerto Rican jazz musician.-Early years:Barretto was born in New York City of Puerto Rican descent...
, the 1963 cover of Herbie Hancock
Herbie Hancock
Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...
's, Watermelon Man by Mongo Santamaría
Mongo Santamaría
Ramón "Mongo" Santamaría Rodríguez was an Afro-Cuban Latin jazz percussionist. He is most famous for being the composer of the jazz standard "Afro Blue," recorded by John Coltrane among others. In 1950 he moved to New York where he played with Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Cal Tjader, Fania All...
and Joe Cuba
Joe Cuba
Joe "Sonny" Cuba was a Puerto Rican musician who was considered to be the "Father of Latin Boogaloo".-Early years:...
's 1965 single, El Pito. The 1965 hit single, Boo-Ga-Loo by the Detroit R&B duo, Tom and Jerrio inspired the recording of dozens of copycat boogaloo songs amongst R&B musicians, though the fad was relatively short-lived.
John Storm Roberts
John Storm Roberts
John Storm Roberts was a British-born, U.S.-based ethnomusicologist, writer and record producer. He is best known as the co-founder of Original Music, a mail-order company that distributed world music books and records....
notes 1966 as the year the bugalú (his spelling) was first recorded, in the Ricardo Ray (aka Richie Ray) album, Se Soltó.p167 One of Ray's songs on that album, Lookie Lookie, created a basic template for the Latin boogaloo: a central rhythmic riff (known as a montuno
Montuno
Montuno has several meanings pertaining to Cuban music and its derivatives. Literally, montuno means 'comes from the mountain', and so Son montuno may refer to the older type of son played in the mountainous rural areas of Oriente...
), audience-friendly English lyrics and a catchy chorus, sometimes done in a call and response
Call and response
Call and response is a form of "spontaneous verbal and non-verbal interaction between speaker and listener in which all of the statements are punctuated by expressions from the listener."...
style.
1966 also produced several hit singles. The first million-sellin boogaloo was Joe Cuba
Joe Cuba
Joe "Sonny" Cuba was a Puerto Rican musician who was considered to be the "Father of Latin Boogaloo".-Early years:...
's Bang Bang
Bang Bang
Bang Bang is a 1998 album by American indie/roots rock band Dispatch. It is their second album, following Silent Steeples.-Track listing:#"Here We Go" #"Bats in the Belfry" #"The General"...
which used Lookie Lookie's bassline. This launched a string of major Latin boogaloo hits, including Pete Rodriguez
Pete Rodriguez (Boogaloo)
Pete Rodriguez was the leader and pianist of a Puerto Rican Boogaloo band from The Bronx in the mid-1960s, sometimes known as Pete Rodríguez y Su Conjunto....
's I Like It Like That, Hector Rivera's At the Party and Joe Bataan
Joe Bataan
Joe Bataan is a Filipino-African American Latin R&B musician from New York.- Early life and career :...
's Gypsy Woman. The same year as Latin boogaloo's breakout success, 1966, saw the closing of New York City's Palladium Ballroom
Palladium Ballroom
The Palladium Ballroom was a second-floor dancehall on 53rd Street and Broadway in New York City which became famous for its excellent Latin music from 1948 until its closing in 1966.-Opening of Palladium:...
, a well-known venue that had been the home of big band mambo for many years. The closing marked the end of mainstream mambo, and boogaloo ruled the Latin charts for about two to three years before the early development of salsa music
Salsa music
Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...
began to take over.
One of the key factors in the boogaloo success was its use of English lyrics, or a mix of English and Spanish. This certainly helped its reception by non-Spanish speakers.p336
The Latin boogaloo bands were mostly led by young, sometimes even teenage musicians from New York's Puerto Rican community. These included, but weren’t limited to, Bataan, Cuba, Bobby Valentín
Bobby Valentin
Bobby Valentin, also known as "El Rey del Bajo" , is a musician and salsa bandleader.-Early years:...
, The Latin Souls, The Lat-Teens, Johnny Colon
Johnny Colon
Johnny Colon is an American salsa musician, leader of the Johnny Colon Orchestra and founder of the East Harlem Music School, also known as a major contributor to the boogaloo sound of the 1960s....
, Willie Colón
Willie Colón
William Anthony Colón is a Nuyorican salsa musician. Primarily a trombonist, Colón also sings, writes, produces and acts. He is also involved in municipal politics in New York City.-Early years:...
and The Latinaires. As such, Latin boogaloo can be seen as "the first Nuyorican
Nuyorican
Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms "New York" and "Puerto Rican" and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Rican diaspora located in or around New York State especially the New York City metropolitan area, or of their descendants...
music" (René López), and has been called "the greatest potential that (Latinos) had to really cross over in terms of music" (Izzy Sanabria). However, Latino musicians and composers also made a big contribution to doo-wop
Doo-wop
The name Doo-wop is given to a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music that developed in African American communities in the 1940s and achieved mainstream popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. It emerged from New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and...
.
Latin boogaloo also spread throughout the wider Latin music world, especially in Puerto Rico, where top band El Gran Combo
El Gran Combo
El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, commonly known as El Gran Combo, is a Puerto Rican Salsa music orchestra. It is Puerto Rico's most successful musical group, and one of the most popular salsa orchestras across Latin America...
released many boogaloos. Latin music scenes in Peru, Colombia, Panama and elsewhere also embraced the boogaloo. Though the dance craze only lasted until 1968/69, Latin boogaloo was popular enough that almost every major and minor Latin dance artist of the time recorded at least a few boogaloos on their albums. That included boogaloos by long-time veteran, mambo-era musicians such as Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Palmieri
Eddie Palmieri , is a Grammy Award winning Puerto Rican pianist, bandleader and musician, best known for combining jazz piano and instrumental solos with Latin rhythms.-Early years:...
and his Aye Que Rico or Tito Puente
Tito Puente
Tito Puente, , born Ernesto Antonio Puente, was a Latin jazz and Salsa musician. The son of native Puerto Ricans Ernest and Ercilia Puente, of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Puente is often credited as "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music"...
's Hit the Bongo.
The boogaloo was dead by the end of 1969.p168 What caused the fairly rapid end of the boogaloo's reign is in doubt. According to several sources, jealous older Latin music artists colluded with record labels (in particular, Fania), radio DJs, and dance hall promoters to blacklist boogaloo bands from venues and radio. Alternatively, it was a fad which had run out of steam.p168 Its demise allowed older musicians to make a comeback in the New York scene. The explosive success of salsa in the early 1970s saw former giants like Puente and the Palmieri Brothers return to the top, while most Latin boogaloo bands went out of business (Joe Bataan and Willie Colón being two notable exceptions).
Latin boogaloo remains popular to this day in Cali
Calì
Calì, also written in English as Cali, is an Italian surname, widespread mainly in the Ionian side of Sicily.For the surname Calì is assumed the origin of the Greek word kalos , or from its Sanskrit root kali, "time."The surname refers to:...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, where the genre is played extensively, along with salsa
Salsa music
Salsa music is a genre of music, generally defined as a modern style of playing Cuban Son, Son Montuno, and Guaracha with touches from other genres of music...
and pachanga
Pachanga
- Music :In Cuba in 1955, Los Papines fused the violin-based music of charangas and the trumpet-based music of conjuntos Eduardo Davidson's La Pachanga , recorded by Orquesta Sublime, introduced Cuba to a Colombian dance...
, in various FM and AM radio stations and hundreds of dance clubs. The Caleños prefer their boogaloo sped up, from 33 to 45 RPM, to match the city's fast dance style.It is also a list available through HLB - part of the WWAVRC group