Barcelona adds Salsa & Latin Jazz to its wide spectrum of music festivals

The capital of Catalonia already has its Salsa & Latin Jazz Festival. According to its director, Marcelo Rosero, the range of festivals in the city “lacked high quality salsa and latin jazz music”. Although the inaugural concert took place last 15th of July with the performance of Gilberto Santa Rosa, this festival has a wide programme with “top-level bands” as Rosero has asserted. Eddie Palmieri, Calle 13, Larry Harlow with Alfredo de la Fe, and Ruben Blades are some of the artists invited to the festival. Most of them have performed at the square at Poble Espanyol (Barcelona), however, Ruben Blades and Calle 13 will perform at La Farga de l’Hospitalet the last Friday of July.

The festival began with a piece by La Sucursal. According to Marcelo Rosero, the director of the festival, five years ago the orchestra movement was abandoned. “With La Sucursal, we worked and tried to get closer to people interested in this type of music to return to a golden time of this genre as it was some time ago in Catalonia”, Rosero has explained. The crowd grew and we succeeded, as he pointed out. “People were getting used to live orchestra music and not just the DJs and commercial music.”

All this led to a performance, last year, at Poble Espanyol. This year the organization has committed itself “to make it the most important festival in Europe” of Salsa and Latin Jazz music and they hope the audience will enjoy the programme that is taking place.

At the Salsa & Latin Jazz Festival, Rosero has detailed that they have devised an open programme with different elements of the salsa genre of music. The organisation has tried to invite “top-level international artists that represent different groups within Salsa”. That is why they have aimed to have salsa groups from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, Europe, and also what is called ‘salsa Brava’ which, according to Rosero, reinvents the sound of this music style.

After the inaugural concert last 15th of July, the Salsa & Latin Jazz Festival started the third weekend of July at Poble Espanyol with the performances by the pianist Larry Harlow and the Cuban violinist Alfredo de la Fe, the singer and trumpeter Alexander Abreu and the orchestra La Excelencia from New York. Also there was the legendary pianist from New York with Puerto Rican origins, Eddie Palmieri, who has performed with musicians such as Jimmy Bosch and Nelson Gonzales.

The festival will end the last weekend of July with the performances at la Farga de l’Hospitalet of Rubén Baldes, Roberto Delgado's orchestra and the most important band in Latin music, Calle 13.

Salsa dancing competition

The Salsa & Latin Jazz Festival will host the “España Salsa Open” competition and the winning couple will represent Spain at the world championship in Puerto Rico and at “Salsa King”, a competition with national dancing groups which has a prize of 2.500 euros. The festival will also have a selection of DJs.