La Raza Latina - A Salsa Suite

I must say that this album is not your typical salsa album. It tries to tell the story of how latin music formed from is early beginnings in Africa, all the way to the mean streets of NYC. I can't say it succeeded doing this, but was an admirable try. The standout track as to be "Africa" with its clearly heavy influence on the music known today as salsa. "Caribbean" features the GREAT Ruben Blades on lead vocals (did chorus on other tracks) with extremely good plena like music, hard-hitting drums. THe final track is the only one that I really did not like much. The album is not great, but its pretty good. You might not like it the first time around, but again, its because its not the usual hard hitting salsa from "Hommy: A Latin Opera" (which really set the bar for Larry.)

I fortunately had the chance to go to the first and only concert held in New York featuring Ruben Blades and it was an outstanding performance, maybe that's why I like it so much.

Larry Harlow is a big name in the classic Salsa genre. When I heard about the Harlow Orquestra, I got excited and in fact got the chance to see a concert live at Lincoln Center in NYC. The concert was great in great measure because of the participation of the legendary sonero Ruben Blades of Panama. Ruben gave life to all of the "La Raza Latina" Harlow Orquestra songs and I was thrilled. Then I bought the album, and to be honest, without Ruben's voice and soul, the albums falls flat.

Don't bother buying it. Your best off buying a Ruben Blades album. Do go see the Harlow Orquestra perform live. The live experience is great, the album experience not so much.

This 1977 Larry Harlow recording featuring only 6 songs which are supposed to narrate the history of Latin music, is an album that I do not rate very highly. For my opinion, it's not disastrous to the point of deserving 1 star, but at the same time, I cannot say it is overwhelmingly amazing by any means!
Apart from a few bits and pieces of music here and there, this OVER-AMBITIOUS concept album is an ABSOLUTE FAILURE in the narration as it doesn't get into enough detail AT ALL about this music's history and development.
I am also convinced that it would have taken much more than just one music album with 6 songs to narrate such a rich history/music, and that this is not an appropriate format AT ALL for SUCH a purpose!




Otherwise, the title-track is a FINE piece of classic Salsa music featuring some FINE vocals by the late Néstor Sánchez, and a rather original and PLAYFUL style of Piano solo by Larry Harlow!...
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