seeline

Thanks again... and oh, are you lucky, being so close to Mexico. I'm on the East Coast. Yes, it's only a two hour flight to Mexico City, whereas it's over three hours to New York. Flight time's one thing; cost is the other. (I bet that's true for you as well.) it's funny how Amtrak and the airlines seem to jack up prices in an arbitrary way. When I lived in D.C., a round-trip train ticket to NYC cost several hundred dollars. Now I live up in PA< and a round-trip ticket to NYC costs less than 100.00 bucks. (Though I'd have to change in Philly to get the Metroliner or Acela.) Basically, Amtrak ticket costs are far higher if you're *only* traveling on the NE corridor lines. Book a ticket from a bit further west, and it's so much cheaper, even though you're actually on a NE corridor train. Go figure!

Larry Harlow (longtime NYC salsa bandleader) has worked a lot with Yomo Toro recently. Here's Yomo taking a solo (with Harlow's band): Here's a song from a classic NYC album (on Fania), Asfalto Navideño - leaders were Willie Colon, Yomo and singer Hector Lavoe: Tresero Arsenio Rodriguez with one of his bands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71GHJf7Zi8E Aresenio's music, with lots of historic pics and album covers: For Spanish-speakers, a docu on Arsenio's influence on NY salsa, etc.: Cuban tresero Eduardo Suarez: Charanga has a violin and flute lead. I'll try to find some decent vids; right now I'm wading through dance clips, which aren't what I'm looking for! Orquesta Aragón - one of Cuba's best-known charanga groups, has been around for over 50 years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M5AygPuR9M NYC salsero Johnny Pacheco had his own charanga for many years, then moved on into a lead singers' role (and recorded some great albums with Celia Cruz and others). * Descarga.com is a terrific source for info. on NYC salsa, many forms of Puerto Rican and Cuban music, etc. - very highly recommended. It's a store, but their reviews and newsletter archives are invaluable. They used to print up hard-copy catalogs that had very complete discographic info. for all records listed.

Thanks again... and oh, are you lucky, being so close to Mexico. I'm on the East Coast.

Those look really good, kh! Thanks muchly for the links. One of the all-time greats of Cuban trova music is Maria Teresa Vera. She and other trova composers, lyricists, singers (etc.) are really important, both on and off the island. She had a very "unpretty," raspy voice, but her interpretations - wow! There's also a lot of trova feeling in the Buena Vista Social Club's style and repertoire.

I think you know that I ran into problems with some people who have a limited view of African music on another board... this stuff would send them into conniptions! More seriously, now that I'm studying Malinke percussion (mostly Guinea and Mali styles), I'm finding that there seem to be two camps: the inclusive one (a lot of people who've been to W. Africa fall into this group), and the exclusive one, which categorizes African music in a very limited way. Sound vaguely familiar? S.E. Rogie: I love his music!

My take: This is more about local tastes than anything else. NYC-style salsa does not use guitars per se. But many smaller NYC groups often use the cuatro, sometimes the tres - or both. they're types of guitars, just not "our" guitars (6 or 12-string). Cuban trova (both the original style and more contemporary stuff - played at places like the Casa de la Trova in Santiago) is *very* much guitar-based. I'm not sure what else I can suggest on this topic. (Though Banning Eyre's observation on Malian guitarists being able to play amazing blues solos but not "getting" the 12-bar blues as a form comes to mind - he talks about this in his book, In Griot Time.) Banning does a lot of reviews and features for Afropop Worldwide. Might be well worth your while to drop him a line over there. he's very helpful, and quick to answer queries when he's not traveling. He's also very knowledgeable re. Malian and Guinean guitar playing and styles.

But Jobim's primary instrument was piano. Egberto Gismonti has said that he prefers piano, but took up guitar as a teenager because it's an instrument that you can carry anywhere, to any party. He still views himself as a keyboardist first. Brazil is guitar-centric in a major way. Again, I think some of you gents aren't looking at the big picture...

NYC-style salsa and Cuban music. From Cuba, not made by Cuban immigrants to the US. You really need to check out Gary Stewart's Rumba on the River... People in Africa get recordings from everywhere. I've been told by a reliable observer that you could get all sorts of rare, o.p. country, jazz, blues etc. records in the market in Bamako, Mali, back in the 70s. (Meaning things that were o.p. in both the US and Western Europe.) I have no doubts that that's true. Re. salsa, NYC salsa is a lot different than Miami salsa, Puerto Rican salsa (from the island), Colombian salsa, etc. The term ""salsa" is pretty much as broad as the term "jazz."

You're right that guitars (in many different forms, not just our 6 and 12-string instruments) are huge in all of Central and South America. MG, I think you might want to do a bit more checking around.... I honestly feel that the presence - or absence - of guitars in certain styles has much to do with taste, little to do with what's available. Guitar is a rarity in Domincan merengue, too - in the old country style, accordion and sax are the lead instruments, not guitar; "city style" Dominican merengue uses brass and saxes. Haitian pop, OTOH, has *lot* of electric guitar - to some extent, that's due to the influence of African pop music from Congo and elsewhere. Same island as the DR, different tastes/styles. but this is a huge, complex subject, and I only know bits and scraps of information. There are better sources than me, for sure!

Just for fun, Nigerian-American blogger With Comb and Razor's Nigerian Christmas records post... And here's his "When Naija Meets Nashville" Nigerian C&W mix. I have to smile at the "back to Africa" purists who think that nobody in the Motherland listens to anything like the latter, let alone plays it....

In one of the obits I read last night (NYT, I think) they mentioned that she was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2006, but kept performing despite the odds.

The short answer is: they don't - the opposite is true. But in big bands and most NYC-style salsa bands, they're not used. In other styles, 6-string acoustic guitars - and guitar "family" instruments - like the tres (Cuban) and cuatro (Puerto Rican) are used a lot. And since so many NYC salseros are Puerto Rican, there are many records where cuatro is used. Yomo Toro is probably the best-known contemporary player who's involved in that scene. (He's also recorded with Africando, as well as appearing on some of the charanga albums that producer Jules Sagna made in NYC for the Senegalese market.) Arsenio Rodriguez was a tresero. My guess is that you probably would want to look to Afropop.org and other sites (and books) on the history of West and Central African (Congo) pop music for reasons on the prominence of the electric guitar. I'm sure there are practical as well as aesthetic reasons behind some of these choices. (How can you amplify a tres or cuatro enough for it to cut through all the NYC-style brass and percussion?, etc.) Edited to add: Barbarito Torres (from Cuba) plays the laud (name is derived from Arabic, al-'ud, which is usually translated into French and English as "oud"). You can see and hear him here, with Pio Leyva.

Steve and Eydie were on the radio every Christmas when I was younger, but that doesn't mean that I bought any albums by them!!! MG, your grandson is the tops. Especially his checking all the "sell by" dates so carefully!

I started using Firefox 4 years ago and haven't looked back since, although I've switched over to Google Chrome for most things over the past few months, mainly because it's faster than FF and (generally speaking) less buggy. I also use Opera, which is a great browser. IE is only for Netflix's "watch instantly" feature these days - because they refuse to do the development for other web browsers. (I really dislike IE; have for years.) All that said, Firefox just rolled out a brand-new update with major bug fixes, so now's the time!

Obviously, there are plenty of small things on the web - like avatars. You'd be surprised at how generous 100 x 100 is, really.

Yes! Dion and the Belmonts: pretty cool. Frankie Valli: not so much (imo), but I still like some of his songs, both with the Four Seasons and solo.

Fireball XL5! Hah. Now there's a blast from the past. I thought it was very cool. Super Car was made by the same people, but apparently it only ran on a handful of stations here in the US.

Oh boy, kind of embarrassing, but... - Some of Frankie Valli's songs. (Really. ) - Those English sci-fi shows with marionettes that were so popular during the 60s. (I was a big fan of Super Car and Fireball XL5.) - Tom Baker as Dr. Who. - The Dr. Who theme song music (from the Tom Baker era). - Sardine and tomato sandwiches. (Picked up habit at a sandwich shop in London.) - "The Purple People Eater." - Sappy Brazilian, Cuban (etc.) love songs. - Surf guitar, a la Dick Dale. - Johnny Hallyday. [just kidding!]

nah, but it was a desert then, too...

Not a blonde, but not Chinese/East Asian, either. I think we're both thinking of China, not Mongolia? Lots of trade in both countries back then - the Silk Road, etc. There's an article on the mummy in question - either on the National Geographic site, or else the Smithsonian site - that i bookmarked recently. If I can find it, I'll post the link here. The western part of China (Xinjiang Autonomous Region) has used the mummy (and similar remains as well as artifacts) to try to build their case for independence from Beijing. Sadly, the PRC has no intention of letting go of that part of the country...

Why would anybody want Apple's propriety format? Screw Apple and their iRestrictedBlackBoxes, btw. I wish Apple would start *believing* that!

Not me! I've never used it, though I do have some EAC files. A plain-English tutorial would be nice, though.

I was replying to Bev's comments about not being able to tell the difference between MP3s encoded at high bitrates vs. low bitrates; plus the material he posted above re. various file formats used by Chandos and Gimmell. (Link.) The other part of this (again, in reply to Bev) is that the quality of the source material is pretty important. I have some things as 128 k MP3s, and I doubt they'd sound much better if they'd been ripped at a higher bitrate, let alone in WAV or FLAC.

A lot of classical fans use Exact Audio Copy software, for both vinyl and CDs.