| Format: | 2LP |
| Availability: | Out of stock |
VAMPI283
16/06/2023
Saoco, one of Vampisoul’s most celebrated, and long-time unavailable, compilations is back in stock with new remastered sound, different colour variation in the artwork and 2LP package format. This reissue is coproduced with Puerto Rican label Ojo de Tigre. Cortijo y su Combo with Ismael Rivera, and Mon Rivera with his tongue twisters and trombones, are pioneers of a story that opened up the way to the salsa movement. With an unprecedented mix of flavours and Afro-West Indian rhythms, their dance proposals competed with the best tropical orchestras of the 50s and 60s. The legendary legacy of these Puerto Rican orchestras, however, hadn't been the subject of a proper retrospective until now. In the case of Cortijo and Ismael, it's a cultural legacy related to the "third root", or African contribution, in Puerto Rico's Caribbean culture. Since its birth in the year 1954 until today (half a century after its break up in 1962), Cortijo's combo and its stellar singer, Ismael Rivera, have been the best exponents of a modern, orchestrated and commercial way of performing bomba and plena, Afro-Puerto Rican genres in whose tradition they had been raised in the capital's neighbourhood of Santurce. To these native rhythms they added other Caribbean ingredients which were popular at the time, creating an integrating and innovative proposal that many consider the greatest precedent of the salsa movement that would emerge years later in New York.
