Joe Arroyo

• Genre: Caribbean

About

Joe Arroyo is Colombia's most famous Salsa singer. Throughout his career as a singer with Fruko y Sus Tesos and another Fruko project, the Latin Brothers, his powerful, high-ranging tenor voice has sang of his African heritage, the hopes of his people, and the joy that music brings; he also plays the claves (wooden sticks that keep time) with an intense vigor that best characterizes his live performances. His Salsa includes a mixture of other Caribbean elements -- most notably Soca and Merengue (a pair of styles popular in his coastal hometown of Barranquila), as well as the ever-popular Cumbia. With his band La Verdad (The Truth), his popularity spread throughout Latin America and Europe in the 1980s. The infectious mixture of his dance music invigorated a Salsa scene that many felt had grown weak at its New York City vortex.

- Robert Leaver