Beginner's Guide To Latin Music

Latin music, like many genres, is hard to pigeonhole with a simple explanation, a sampler album, or a 500-word essay. It's complex and encompasses a lot of different styles, and it has undergone many changes and developments in its life. But London-based DJ Lubi Jovanovic should still be given credit for attempting to create a kind of introduction to it in his three-disc Beginner's Guide to Latin Music. The first disc, "Old School," presents some of the founders -- Celia Cruz, Johnny Pacheco, Willie Col¢n -- and Jovanovic does a good job of including songs (though not necessarily the most famous) from the biggest and most talented Latin artists of the '50s and '60s on one disc. Though it seems slightly unfair that such little space is given to these musicians, it can probably be explained by Jovanovic's own vested interest in modern sounds, because more than anything, the DJ seems to be trying to showcase Latin music's versatility and its popularity. The second disc, "Soul School," begins to show some of this adaptability. Jovanovic goes straight to New York City during the salsa and boogaloo movements that happened there in the 1960s and '70s, so the elements of funk, soul, and rock are quite apparent ("Gotta Have Brotherhood" by the Harvey Averne Band is pure funk, even though Averne was a mainstay in the Latin scene). The Fania All-Stars, the supergroup that counted many of the biggest names in Latin music as its members, and whose name was taken from the label that they all shared, are rightfully recognized with their cut "Picadillo," as is the group's music director and conguero Ray Barretto's solo work with the Latin jazz track "Retorno a Abidjan." The third disc, "Nu School," is where Jovanovic stretches out to show Latin music's worldwide influence, and includes artists who combine it with dance, Celtic, hip-hop, reggae, and even pop. Though this kind of genre-mixing worked well with jazz and funk, the songs on "Nu School" generally fall short of interesting. Britain's Sidestepper's "Rite Now" is a boring, dancy tune, while the cover of No Doubt's "Don't Speak," by "Arjelis y Su Grupo," is a disaster; campy and forced, with an awkward transition between the verse and chorus. However, the cover of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," called "Grapevine" here, is much more successful as it doesn't try to make Latin rhythms fit the original, but rather has the original fit the Latin beats. Probably because of his club sensibilities, Jovanovic ignores a lot of the rock- influenced modern Latin music (Santana, Ozomatli, los Fabulosos Cadillacs), focusing more on songs that could play well at a club. He also skips some of the artists who really contributed to the genre (Arsenio Rodriguez, Oscar D'Leon, and Jos‚ "El Canario" Alberto, to name a few), but as an album that attempts to educate an audience about an extensive subject, he doesn't do a bad job at all. ~ Marisa Brown|