Tag: salsa

New Audio: Indy Fontaine Teams Up With Charlie Cruz on Swooning “Tú Tienes Algo”

Indy Fontaine is a Cuban-born, Miami-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who can trace the origins of her career to her early childhood: Singing alongside her uncle and his old guitar, she fell in love with music when she was three. By the time she turned six, she was enrolled full-time at a music school in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, where she trained to be professional vocalist and musician. 

Fontaine went on to graduate at the top of her class from Havanas prestigious National School of Art. When she graduated, she already had over a decade of experience playing gigs all across her native Cuba, including music festivals, live radio and TV sessions, and more.

Fontaine then joined Sol y Sun, an act that has played sets across the international music festival circuit between the States and Cuba, as well as some of the most popular venues in Havana. The band was also frequently performed on national TV and radio shows.

The Cuban-born artist relocated to Miami, where she stepped out into the spotlight as solo artist. Her debut, 2024’s Moments of My Life ranged across a number of genres and styles, including Adult Contemporary, Easy Listening, Soft Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Rock and R&B — with songs written and sung in both English and Spanish.

The album featured “El Amor No Alcanza,” Fontaine’s subtly modern take on bolero, a Cuban genre that frequently focuses on affairs of the heart. Since then, Fontaine spent last year releasing a collection of highly successful singles including “Esta Navidad,” “Vacaciones,” “Mariposas En La Lluvia,” “Mejor Sin Ti,” “Que Te Vaya Bien,” and “Después De La Caída.”

Her latest single, the Andrés Castro and Guianko Gómez co-written and co-produced “Tú Tienes Algo,” sees her collaborating with salsa star Charlie Cruz. The new single is a swooning and euphoric declaration of passionate and complete surrender to love — even if it strikes you as being wildly inexplicable.

The song invites lovers to surrender with the same intensity they bring to the dance floor, to declare their love not just with words, but also with movement.

“‘Tú Tienes Algo’ is about that irresistible, mysterious attraction—and I say mysterious because you can’t explain what that other person has, but you know that when you’re with them, they shake your world,” Fontaine explains. “In the song, this person is asking the other to let themselves be loved because there’s resistance to fully surrendering, perhaps out of fear—that’s why they’re asking to surrender completely to love,” she says.

“This collaboration with Charlie is a dream come true,” said Fontaine. “It was a tremendous honor to share the studio and create music with an artist I deeply admire. To me, Charlie is a salsa icon who has kept the tradition alive in such an authentic way,” she adds.

New Audio: Josbel Figurita Shares Soulful “Qué Difícil”

Josbel Figurita is a Cuban-born, European-based singer/songwriter, composer and performer, who has amassed a highly accomplished career: His full-length debut, En Cuerpo Y Alma, an effort dedicated to French artist Grégory Lemarchal received over 100,000 streams. Adding to a growing profile, Figurita has collaborated with Tito Nieves, Jerry Rivera, Tony Succar, Charlie Aponte, José Alberto El Canario, Willy Garcia, Lalo Rodriguez, Ray Sepulveda, Ismael Miranda and a growing number of beloved Latin music artists.

Figurita’s latest single “Qué Difícil,” is a soulful tune that reminds me of warm, summer afternoons in Corona, East Elmhurst, Bushwick, Spanish Harlem hearing familiar — and beloved — salsa rhythms and big horn lines from car stereos, barbecues and house parties, anchored by a star vocal turn from the rising Cuban vocalist.

New Video: Jacksonville’s LPT Releases a Stylistic Visual for Hard Charging “Sin Parar”

The Jacksonville, FL-based Salsa and Afro-Cuban collective LPT is comprised of a cast of local scene vets, including Josué A. Cruz (lead vocals), Milan Algood (timbales, vocals), Angel Garcia (keys, vocals), Mike Emmert (baritone sax), Bryant Patterson (trombone), Jonah Pierre (bongo and bell), Stan Piper (bass), Juan Carlos Rollan (tenor sax, vocals), JP Salvat (congas) and Steve Strawley (trumpet). Initially forming with the mission of keeping Salsa Dura (Hard Salsa) and Descarga Salsa alive, the act have quickly become ambassadors of Salsa and Afro-Cuban music in the Southeast. Additionally, the members of LPT pride themselves on sharing the region’s diversity with a new, young audience — while having an opportunity to play the old school inspired sounds that they love. 

The Jacksonville-based Salsa and Afro-Cuban collective’s full-length debut was released last Friday, and the album finds the band capturing the high energy of their live set paired with their thought-provoking take on hard salsa. The album’s first single, album title track  “Sin Parar” — which, translates into English as “non-stop” — is a Fania Records-like dance floor friendly song that is centered around lyrics that encourages listeners to start looking at their world critically. 

“The inspiration for the single is the feeling we all get from the machine,” according to the band’s Josué A. Cruz. The Machine as Cruz explains is a metaphor for life, work. tech and family going non-stop. “As a band,” Cruz adds, “we decided that if the machine is going to march on without stopping, then so are we. It’s almost innate in the metaphor that you have to keep marching on if the machine is marching on. It’s the only way to deal with the grinding of the gears and nerves.”

The band concludes, “Salsa music, and Latin music as a whole, is easily characterized as simple party music with whimsical lyrics, and there is a place for that. Yet, there is a rich tradition of music with substance in our genre. Music created on the street is going to have something to say about said street. We hope to humbly add our fingerprint to the thought-provoking canon.”

Directed by Antoine Prat, the recently released video is split between the members of the collective performing the song at Heartwood Soundstage and some film noir-like segments following a camera carrying, trench coat wearing figure shot in black and white. Much like the album, the video stylistically captures the band’s live show. 

The Jacksonville, FL-based Salsa and Afro-Cuban collective LPT is comprised of a cast of local scene vets, including Josué A. Cruz (lead vocals). Milan Algood (timbales, vocals), Angel Garcia (keys, vocals), Mike Emmert (baritone sax), Bryant Patterson (trombone), Jonah Pierre (bongo and bell), Stan Piper (bass), Juan Carlos Rollan (tenor sax, vocals), JP Salvat (congas) and Steve Strawley (trumpet). Initially forming with the mission of keeping Salsa Dura (Hard Salsa) and Descarga Salsa alive, the act have quickly become ambassadors of Salsa and Afro-Cuban music in the Southeast. Along with that, the band has managed to share the diversity of the area with a new, young audience while allowing the band’s grizzled vets an opportunity to play old school-inspired sounds.

The band’s full-length debut Sin Parar is slated for a January 2020 release, and the album reportedly finds the band capturing the high energy of their live set while featuring their thought-provoking take on hard salsa. Interestingly, the album’s first single, album title track “Sin Parar” — which translates into English as “non-stop” is a Fania Records-like dance floor friendly song that is centered around lyrics that encourages listeners to start looking at their world critically. 

 

“The inspiration for the single is the feeling we all get from the machine,” according to the band’s Josué A. Cruz. The Machine as Cruz explains is a metaphor for life, work. tech and family going non-stop. “As a band,” Cruz adds, “we decided that if the machine is going to march on without stopping, then so are we. It’s almost innate in the metaphor that you have to keep marching on if the machine is marching on. It’s the only way to deal with the grinding of the gears and nerves.”

The band concludes, “Salsa music, and Latin music as a whole, is easily characterized as simple party music with whimsical lyrics, and there is a place for that. Yet, there is a rich tradition of music with substance in our genre. Music created on the street is going to have something to say about said street. We hope to humbly add our fingerprint to the thought-provoking canon.”

 

 

 

Ray Lugo and the Boogaloo Destroyers at NUBLU 7/11/14

Ray Lugo and the Boogaloo Destroyers Nublu July 11, 2014 Originally founded back in 1964 by the Dominican bandleader and composer Johnny Pacheco and an Italian-American lawyer, Jerry Masucci, Fania Records quickly became the beloved […]

Bio Ritmo at Radio Bushwick 6/28/14

Bio Ritmo Radio Bushwick June 28, 2014 Over the last two decades, the Richmond, VA-based salsa act Bio Ritmo have developed a reputation for experimentation and stubbornly refusing to be pigeonholed, as they’ve employed the […]

Originally founded back in 1964 by the Dominican bandleader and composer Johnny Pacheco and an Italian-American lawyer, Jerry Masucci, Fania Records quickly became the beloved home of salsa music, the sound that courses through the barrios of […]