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“I Hope You Dance”.
It was the optimism for the youth of the world at
the heart of her original version from the year 2000 that touched him. La
Palabra knew at one this song was ripe for a Latin reinvention, a great number
to open his album, and the perfect song to reflect the resilience that ever
animates his spirit.
“Tu Pasion (Desafia Descripcion)”
sets the sound of lovemaking to music with the dynamic push and pull of
the horns, strings and rhythm. He sings and raps the three-part story of a woman
whose
passion is sooo deep…it defies description.
“Biribing
Barabao,”
a salsa descarga (“jam”)
about a beautiful black “brick house” of a woman. Celebrating her attributes,
the horn
section roars its approval as the percussion percolates - every instrument in
a chatter
about a girl who’s got everything on her platter!
“Beautiful Girls,”
a song in English on which La Palabra does what he does
best - carefully selecting a hit song from the radio then tricking it out in
a tropical
whirlwind. “The secret of Salsa Romantica is picking the right song,” La Palabra shares, “a
song you can make your own.” “Beautiful Girls,” which was an out-of-the-box
hit for
young pop-rap newcomer Sean Kingston in 2007, also appealed to Palabra because
the
bass line was lifted from soul man Ben E. King’s spring of `61 evergreen “Stand
By Me.”
“That was the first song I ever tried to sing when I came to this country,”
Palabra
remembers with a chuckle. “When I did, my father made fun of me, but I’ve always
liked that
‘soul holler’ that black singers like Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Wilson Pickett
do.
That’s the kind of singing I wanted to bring to salsa but never felt I could
pull off until now
“Mi
Corazon te Anora,” fromthe soundtrack of the steamy movie Woman on Top.
This marks the second time he hasfused rap with Salsa Romantica as he so successfully
did on “Tun Tun.”
That makes it a
sequel of sorts and Musicholic’s guaranteed hit. He reprises the song in English
a few
tracks later, titled “Unleash Her Heart
“MerenBlues”
a mix of merengue and bluesfeaturing guitarist Rick Whitfield that our hero
describes
as “Count Basie meets LaPalabra.” He’s been toying with it since 2005, but didn’t
like the way he was singing it.
“Then I was at Harvelle’s club in Santa Monica and ran into Sir Harry Bowens,
an R&B
singer from Detroit [and the band Was (Not Was)] who also sings great Salsa.
He showed
me how to tap into the soul I needed for that song.” You have never heard blues
sound
like this! Then again, you could say that about most of what La Palabra records.
“Pensando en Ti”
is the result of a challenge from worldly Colombian gentleman
Efrain Logreira, who Palabra encountered in Los Angeles who insisted that he
record this
song. Palabra didn’t think he could do anything with it, but once challenged,
swung the
tune in multiple directions, moving from pasa doble into tango into Salsa. The
result: one
highly danceable bowl of pan-cultural gumbo.
“Caimanera”
is a blend of son montuno and oriente that finds La Palabra proudly putting
his Cuban hometown on the map in the same way that nearby Guantanamera was
immortalized in song. “This is very sentimental to me,” he confesses. “Caimanera
is in the
mountains where most blacks live. It is also the birthplace of son montuno:
‘The Blues’ of
Cuba. I describe the place and things I did there as a kid - flying kites, riding
bikes, la
balina (shooting marbles), playing tops, baseball with no shoes, postalita (a
storybook
game that requires one to collect stamps and cards to illustrate it) and the
joy of
carnival.”
“Musicholic”
where the arena rock intensity of Santana meets merengue meets reggae, and a
mean busy bee bass line
“Rap-a-Salsa ,”
a sunny mix of hip hop and cha cha cha on
which Palabra indulges in a bit of wordplay. “In English,” he explains, “’‘rap’
is to talk in
general or bust a rhyme over a beat, but I’m twisting the term, mixing it with
a similar
sounding word in Spanish, ‘raspa’ (pronounced in the streets as ‘rappa’ with
a hard-drolling
r) which translates as ‘the burnt part of the rice’ or ‘the shavings of an Italian
ice.’”
“El Tun Tun de Tu Corazon”
(acapella) |