Cover design for My Latin Heart
Early this past June, Patois Records released an album including a reflection on one of the more prolific American Latin Jazz musicians of the last century. Vibraphonist Cal Tjader also had a solid command of both percussion and piano. Over the course of his career, he progressed beyond the usual domain of his colleagues to explore the possibility for both Latin rock and acid jazz. [updated 9/3, 12:10 p.m.: The new generation of this genre can be found in My Latin Heart, performed by a combo led by multi-instrumentalist Roger Glenn (shown playing flute on the album cover). This includes a track composed by Glenn and dedicated to Tjader entitled “Cal’s Guajira;” but, taken as a whole, the album reflects on a new generation of Latin-inspired music.]
Some readers may have noticed that I tend to shy away from the rhetoric of that style. Nevertheless, it surfaces primarily through the four percussionists on the album, with particular attention to Derek Rolando on congas; and those rhythms are consistently engaging over the course of all eight tracks of the album. (Rolando’s three colleagues, Paul van Wageningen, John Santos, and Michael Spiro, perform a variety of other percussion instruments, with Santos and Spiro adding vocals.) All eight of the tracks are original compositions by Glenn, and I must confess to feeling a bit refreshed in listening to “Samba De Carnaval” without any references to Black Orpheus! Indeed, each of the tracks on this album highlights Glenn’s own originality, honoring a tradition by setting it in a new light.
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