An\u00edbal \u201cSensaci\u00f3n\u201d Vel\u00e1squez is one of Colombia\u2019s most innovative and prolific Coste\u00f1o musicians, known as \u201cEl Mago del Acorde\u00f3n\u201d and \u201cEl Rey de La Guaracha\u201d. Vel\u00e1squez grew up hearing Cuban music as well as the local rhythms of his region, and this led him to tinker with and transform the beats and melodies of the regional music encountered in his home city of Barranquilla during the 1950s and 60s.<\/p>\n
By 1960, after being a sideman in several groups, Vel\u00e1squez formed his own conjunto with his elder brother Juan, a talented musician in his own right, and his younger sibling Jos\u00e9.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn\u00edbal Vel\u00e1squez en tremenda salsa\u201d is a perfect example of the musician\u2019s wanderlust and restless creative spirit. A pioneer of the adventuresome mixing of rhythms, genres and styles that was happening at the time in Barranquilla and the rest of coastal Colombia, in retrospect one can say that Vel\u00e1squez was quite daring in combining the music and instrumentation of his native country with other Caribbean forms. In 1968, when he made this album, very few Colombians were attempting to record an accordion-led session of descarga, guaracha, boogaloo, guajira, guaguanc\u00f3 and mambo, and for that we should recognize Vel\u00e1squez as a forerunner of various other records by Lisandro Meza y su Combo, Los Corraleros de Majagual, Los Caporales del Magdalena and Chico Cervantes y su Conjunto Internacional.<\/p>\n
The album kicks off with an intense and mesmerizing descarga featuring the guaguanc\u00f3 bass line, hot Cuban style piano and a heavy timbales solo, reminding one of the Tico-Alegre or Fania All-Stars jam session records. And yet, the accordion and caja are there throughout the tune, giving it plenty of \u201csabor colombiano\u201d and distancing it from the New York or Havana sound. It bears repeating that for this album Vel\u00e1squez and Fuentes added a crucial ingredient in salsa, the piano.<\/p>\n
Overall, the feeling on the album is of the loose, improvised jam session implied in the genre term descarga – a word written all over the back cover and a very apt description of Vel\u00e1squez\u2019s preferred manner of playing and inventing songs on the spot. Although \u201cEn tremenda salsa\u201d is just one of many such records that Vel\u00e1squez cut with his Cuban and Puerto Rican influences writ large on his sleeve, it is perhaps his most consistent and well-recorded, certainly only one of a few of his featuring prominent piano played in a salsa style, and this is why it is a highly sought after record by collectors in the know.<\/p>\n
Thankfully now it has been remastered from the original tapes, with its artwork intact, and two bonus tracks in the same style of \u201csalsa con acorde\u00f3n\u201d have been added to flesh out what was originally a far too brief album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Super heavy mix of descarga, salsa and boogaloo by accordion virtuoso An\u00edbal Vel\u00e1squez, done in the \u201csalsa con acorde\u00f3n\u201d style, featuring hot piano and timbales, yet played with a uniquely Colombian flavor. <\/p>\n
Recorded with fantastic production quality, this replica LP contains 8 hard-hitting dance floor bangers plus 2 bonus cuts including the 1972 version of \u2018Mambo loco\u2019, making this an essential addition to your Discos Fuentes collection. First time reissue. 180g LP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":109237,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[195,193],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-109277","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-colombia-en","7":"product_cat-latin-en","8":"product_shipping_class-lp-en-3","9":"pa_formato-lp-en","11":"first","12":"instock","13":"sale","14":"taxable","15":"shipping-taxable","16":"purchasable","17":"product-type-simple"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/109277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=109277"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=109277"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/munster-records.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=109277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}