Paying homage to the greats of Mexican music, including Pedro Infante, Jose Alfredo Jimenez and Jorge Negrete, isn't too complicated unless you decide to do it with both mariachi and banda outfits. But if anyone's up to the duel-genre challenge, it's Rivera, whose two-CD set slam-dunks both styles and proves the guy's got a versatile voice and cojones to match.
Chavela Vargas made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2003 at age 83, and the audience fed on her performance like they'd been thrown meat after decades of marshmallow fluff. Which, in a sense, they had. No focus group, no producer could come up with the Chavela Vargas recipe, which involves transforming the ravages of time, boozing and womanizing into songs that hit the listener like a gnarled tree branch jutting out of the speakers. Vargas at 83 is more alive, more passionate than all the prefab teen pop bands crooning for big bucks on the radio. She's a disappearing breed; listen and learn.
The controversial pop star may still inspire discomfort -- or heated debates -- in her fanbase, but there's no denying the sheer bombast of Gloria Trevi's stage presence. The woman simply throws it all on the table when she sings, even when (as here) she indulges in slightly more reflective songs than usual. Trevi's still a powerful champion of the underdog, however, and Una Rosa Blu benefits from that and from its expansive incorporation of Caribbean and traditional Mexican rhythms. The album also features the first collaboration of Trevi's career, with Puerto Rican diva Olga Tanon.
They didn't call her "la reina de la musica ranchera" for nothing. Lola Beltran earns that crown over and over on this anthology of tunes from her decades-long career. All the classics are here (and, yes, no matter how many times you hear it, "Cucurrucucu Paloma" is a revelation), each one drenched in drama as Beltran soars, croons, belts and coos across it. Her magnificent voice is like bronze: warm and strong, bolstering your spirits and piercing your heart with one fell swoop -- or hoot or sob. Her pathos will break your heart, but it's her sheer diva power that'll take your breath away.
For his 21st album, El Chapo puts together a lively set of his favorite rancheras. These include standards like "La Feria de las Flores," leading banda composer Joan Sebastian's "Lo Dijo el Cura," and "Con Olor a Hierba," a ballad written by Manuel Alejandro and Ana Magdalena. An excellent band, featuring characteristic clarinet and brass, sets up El Chapo's likable and straightforward delivery on rousing songs of love found and lost.
When you’ve been in the game for nearly 50 years, you’ve earned the right to rest on your laurels a bit, to even phone in your umpteenth album. But La Arrolladora -- the other offshoot of the old Banda El Limon founded by a clarinetist (not be confused with La Original Banda el Limon) -- does no such thing. Instead, Irreversible works a smooth, sweet, horn-tastic groove crafted out of confident tubas, passionate vocals and buttery clarinets. Bits of pop, pinches of salsa, mellow waltzes and, oh yeah, the smash hit slow jam “Llamada de Mi Ex” show off just how much these guys still got it.
The granddaddy of bandas had been around for decades (not to mention through multiple generations of the Lizárraga family) by the time it had its first No. 1 album on the Latin charts with this 2002 effort. The Grammy-nominated No Me Sé Rajar is a testament to both the group's longevity and the widespread appeal that helped them take the sounds of Sinaloa mainstream and global. Banda's tubas and trumpets saunter and swell as usual here, but they also waltz with bits of samba, sassy cumbias, tropicalismo (don't miss the swooning cha-cha "De Que Manera Te Olvido") and even club beats!
Behold the masterwork that has put the name Vicente Fernandez back on the tongues of more people than we can count. Fernandez has enjoyed a massive resurgence late in his career, and it's due in large part to this 2007 album -- or, more specifically, to the title track, which graces the telenovela Fuego en la Sangre. Chente has always had a voice for the ages -- the man's one of the greatest living mariachi singers -- but the alchemical reaction didn't ignite until Joan Sebastian added his deeply poetic songwriting to the mix. Voila! An album that romances from start to finish.
After stealing the show on The Chronic, Snoop Dogg became a major superstar on the strength of this classic 1993 debut. Produced entirely by Dr. Dre, Doggystyle is one of the dopest, most influential, and just plain funkiest hip-hop albums ever made. Packed with hits, it includes "Gin and Juice," "Who Am I" and "Ain't No Fun."
This compilation of some of Wanda Jackson's most beloved songs profoundly illustrates the rockabilly queen's greatest skill. No, not singing; though hers is nuanced and dexterous, dipping in and out of plaintive crooning and salty, scratchy caterwauling. Nor is it her commanding presence, though honey, she's got one. What Jackson most excels at is existing between and exacerbating apparently opposing poles: country and rock, male and female, sweetness and sass. Such ambivalence was par for the course for a female performer in the 1950s, but nobody straddles the divide with Wanda's style.
Compared to the songs contemporary corridos artists are writing, Chalino Sanchez's hits can feel downright sweet. The pained lover of "Nieves Del Enero" is a far cry from the hardened gunmen who populate narcocorridos. Still, Sanchez is a spiritual parent to the singers; his unconventional voice was deemed wrong for norteno audiences but caught on anyhow. Perhaps even more inspiring to the singers was his spirit -- when a fan shot him onstage in 1992, he pulled out a gun and shot the guy right back. Sanchez survived the attack, but later that year he was kidnapped and murdered.
When El Coyote, a vet of stalwarts like Banda El Limon and Los Recoditos, broke off on his own in the late '90s, banda was in transition. Kids who had shunned it as their parents' conjuntos were getting interested again as up-and-coming artists were polishing banda's brass into a pop sheen. El Coyote, on the other hand, went the OG route, keeping his band's debut steeped in the Sinaloan tradition: oom-pahing polkas and waltzes, slippery wind instruments, drunken brass and soaringly nasal, salt-of-the-earth vocals. And old-school sounds mighty fine. As El Coyote himself says, "Oi, Una Voz."
In February 2011, Los Tigres played a show at the Hollywood Palladium and invited high-profile Latin artists to perform their biggest hits with them. Understandably, the MTV Unplugged recording sounds like a giant party. But it's a party with a unique purpose that, by dabbling in Latin pop, rock and even hip-hop, challenges the often heavily policed boundaries of Latin music. The results are, at times, groundbreaking: Funked-up "America" (with Calle 13's Residente) and "Somos Mas Americano" (with an exuberant Zach de la Rocha), for instance, are thick with both artistic and activist politics.
This album catapulted Etta James to crossover stardom with a perfect blend of blues, soul and R&B. Heavy saturation on oldies stations and movie soundtracks still hasn't diluted the ballads "At Last" and "A Sunday Kind of Love." Elsewhere, James sounds tough as nails. The CD adds four bonus tracks. Essential.
Already a hardened veteran at age 19, Tucker had the muscle to really tick off Nashville with this hard-rocking 1978 release. It was a big hit, and Music City was quick to rip off the very bluesy, honky-tonk sound they were castigating. What's funny is how people wish Nashville made albums that sounded as "country" as TNT.
Norteno troubadour Joan Sebastian really couldn't have chosen a better name for his gazillionth album. Like its namesake, Huevos is warm and satisfying; it's stuffed to the brim with sunny strings, bright brass bursts, accordions as friendly and familiar as a family fiesta and plenty of those delectable little norteno hoots and hollers. And then there's Sebastian's strong, rich voice, which manages to come off both plaintive and suave, cozily comfortable and boldly self-assured, tapping into the other meaning of huevos. Those are some mighty big breakfast dishes, sir.
