Latin Boogaloo
Exciting mashup of Latin and Black music born in New York City
Latin Boogaloo (sometimes spelled bugaloo or bugalu) is a type of musical hybrid created in New York City in the 1960s. Boogaloo in essence was a successful interracial marriage of Latin music to African-American soul and doo wop.
“At its best, boogaloo is a joyous clash of cultures… an honest reaction by young Newyorkinos to the world they lived in. What could be wrong with that?” - Brother James, Rubber City Review
ROOTS: The sounds that gave birth to Boogaloo
“In this test tube, you put a little Cuban guajira, son montuno, cha cha cha, blues chords, some R&B vocal stylings, start shaking it up, throw it down and what do you get? Latin boogaloo. Latin soul!”
- Bobby Sanabria in “We Like It Like That”
Soul and Funk
Latin Boogaloo was heavily influenced by Motown, Stax and other soul and R&B artists like James Brown. Brown and duo Tom & Jerrio even recorded different songs titled “Boo-Ga-Loo” although neither recording featured cha cha or son rhythms associated with Latin Boogaloo hits of the same time period.
“The boogaloo and way we think of it existed far longer than we remember. It’s a cha cha beat. Smokey Robinson was doing it when he [produced] ‘My Girl,’” said Joe Bataan when interviewed in 2015 by Vice Magazine. In New York City, African Americans and Latin Americans lived in the same neighborhoods and listened to music from both cultures. Boogaloo was a hybrid that developed from that close proximity.
Listen to examples of Soul influences here
Cuban Music
Cuban charanga, cha cha, and son montuno were giant influences on the Latin Boogaloo sound. There are many definitions of boogaloo but Latin Soul Brothers bandleader Henry “Pucho” Brown’s is likely the best known: “cha-cha with a backbeat.” The Paris Review’s article of the same name explains this further by adding “cha-chas are set in traditional Afro-Cuban two-three clave, and boogaloo’s backbeat came from soul and rock and roll and emphasized the second and fourth beat of each measure”.
Cuban music was very popular in New York especially in the Mambo King heyday of the 1940s and 1950s. Cuban musicians who performed other syles like charanga and son montuno would often travel to New York to perform on Manhattan stages and radio shows.
Listen to examples of Cuban influences here
Doo Wop
The vocal harmonies and stylings of doo wop were a key ingredient in the musical stew that became Latin Boogaloo. In the documentary “We Like it Like That”, musician and producer, Bobby Marin, explains “Growing up I wasn’t really into in Latin music. I got more interested in and what I was listening to on the radio was doo wop. I just fell in love with that music.”
Doo wop recording artists including Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers (pictured above) , Little Anthony and the Imperials and the Flamingos were very influential to many Boogaloo musicians and the layered harmonies are very present in several boogaloo recordings.
Listen to examples of Doo Wop influences here
Major artists of the Latin Boogaloo era
Latin boogaloo was born in New York neighborhoods like East Harlem and the South Bronx but it didn’t come out of nowhere. As Latinos, Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans lived together, young musicians blended latin polyrhythms with soul’s beat. Like the inner city teenagers who created it, boogaloo songs utilized English and “spanglish” words to communicate its message.
Before Latin boogaloo music was noticed by promoters and recorded by record labels, a few songs in the early 1960s portended its arrival. Mongo Santamaria’s “Watermelon Man” and Ray Barretto’s “El Watusi” were early examples of the mashup of soul with danceable latin rhythms. By 1969, a few years after Latin boogaloo entered New York’s music scene, it was a dead genre. Latin Boogaloo was a short lived “fad” but some wonderful songs came out of that time period and it retrospect has been seen as a pivotal umping off moment that set the stage for salsa and hip hop.
Pete Rodriguez
Unlike other artists who went on to play salsa or jazz, Pete Rodriguez’s only recorded music is Latin boogaloo.
Pianist and singer, Pete Rodriguez’s band released the quintessential Latin boogaloo song “I Like it Like That” in 1966. His last album was released in 1971 at the tail end of the boogaloo craze. It was almost the end of his career until a new audience discovered the music on dance floors and in documentaries.
Pete Rodriguez y su Conjunto released songs in both English (“Pete’s Boogaloo”, “Here Comes the Judge”) and Spanish (“Organizate” and “Soy El Rey”) the latter is a nod to his self-appointed title, the King of the Boogaloo.
Ray Barreto
Conga player, Ray Barretto, also grew up in New York with his Puerto Rican mother. Mambo was the music in the streets but he listened to big band swing at night on the radio and started to play conga in jazz bands. He was a session musician for many years and played with Tito Puente in Mambo’s heyday in New York. In 1962, he released the proto-boogaloo, recorded “El Watusi” and c. Barretto’s career later took him on to the seminal Fania record label and he deftly surfed the wave between Boogaloo and Salsa during the years of the late 1960s and early 1970s. His 1967 album “Acid” is considered a Boogaloo classic and includes a few songs that brilliantly straddle the line between Latin music and soul like “A Deeper Shade of Soul” and “Mercy Mercy Baby”.
Ricardo “Richie” Ray
Ricardo "Richie" Ray was a Nyorican pianist who grew up in Brooklyn. He was considered a prodigy and was formally educated in music at the Julliard School of Music. Richie Ray is best known for his partnership with vocalist, Bobby Cruz, with whom he created many best-selling salsa records.
In 1964, before salsa fame, Ray formed the Richie Ray Orchestra and hired a Bobby Cruz as his singer. In 1967 they jumped on the boogaloo bandwagon and created albums infusing rhythm and blues with Cuban guajira and guaguancó. Richie Ray’s best known Latin boogaloo recordings include “Lookie Lookie” and “Mr. Trumpet Man”.
Joe Bataan
“My father was Filipino and my mother was African “My father was Filipino and my mother was African American, and my culture is Puerto Rican," was how Joe Bataan described his ethnic background. He later stated he was the only Afro Filipino kid he knew of while growing up in Spanish Harlem. Joe Bataan first gravitated to a life of crime which ended when he was incarcerated in a boy’s reformatory. Although he didn’t speak Spanish, he had a deep love of Puerto Rican music and vowed everything he could after he was released. His compositions reflected his street origins as he even claims a degree in “streetology” in his doo-wop influenced song “Ordinary Guy”
Although Joe Bataan did not like the word “boogaloo” and preferred describing his genre as “Latin soul”. His album “Gypsy Woman” featured the classic title track – a version of a Curtis Mayfield’s atmospheric Impressions song which Bataan reworked to open with shouted vocals (“she smokes – ha ha – she smokes!”). Even though he didn’t like the name Latin boogaloo, Joe Bataan recorded and performed several archetypal works of the era. .
Joe Cuba
"A bastard sound," Joe Cuba said about Latin boogaloo, "You don't go into a rehearsal and say 'Hey! let's invent a new sound, or dance.' They happen.”
Joe Cuba’s original name was Gilberto Calderon and he grew up in Spanish Harlem with his Puerto Rican parents . He originally started playing congas with mambo orchestras in New York but later steered his own band towards the rhythms and melodies that came to be known as boogaloo.
About Latin boogaloo, Joe Cuba said “it just came out of left field,” he said, and noted that playing it was a natural progression resulting of playing dance music and observing how “the audience relates to what you are doing.”
““It was just putting the music together, the sounds that you were raised with. And as a kid from El Barrio, born in in El Barrio, it just came out””
Citations
A Fusion of Culture and Identity: Joe Bataan’s Latin Boogaloo Music. 2020. Smithsonian Education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se9hYSAl72s
An Illustrated NYC Mambo, Boogaloo and Salsa Family Tree | Red Bull Music Academy Daily. 2016.
https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2016/05/mambo-boogaloo-salsa-music-family-tree
“Boogaloo - New World Encyclopedia.” Www.Newworldencyclopedia.org, www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/boogaloo.
“BOOGALOO.” www.Salsacrazy.com, www.salsacrazy.com/salsaroots/boogalu.htm. Accessed 6 Dec. 2020.
“Joe Cuba, Bandleader Known as the Father of Latin Boogaloo, Dies at 78”. 18 February 2009. New York Times (Online).
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/arts/music/18cuba.html Joe Cuba obituary[LW2]
Flores, Juan “Cha cha with a backbeat”: Songs and stories of Latin Boogaloo. Black Renaissance . 1999.
http://www.afrolatinoforum.org/cha-cha-with-a-backbeat-songs-and-stories-of-latin-boogaloo.htm
Flores, Juan. Boogaloo Soul. In Salsa Rising. Oxford University Press. 2016. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764891.003.0004
Goldman, Jonathan. “Fania at fifty”. The Paris Review. 9 October 2014. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/10/09/cha-cha-with-a-backbeat/
Kempton, Arthur, “Boogaloo: The Quintessence of American Popular Music,” Pantheon Books. 2003.
Kent, Mary. “ SALSA TALKS! A Musical Heritage Uncovered”. Digital Domain. 2005.
Lipsky, Jessica. "The Boogaloo Never Died": How the Quintessential Music of 1960s New York Is Making a Comeback” 4 August 2015. Vice Magazine.,
https://www.vice.com/en/article/rjxjd3/boogaloo-new-york-joe-bataan-johnny-colon-interview-we-like-it-like-that-documentary
“The Latin Boogaloo” Quine, Tim. The Rubber City Review. 25 January 2014.
https://rubbercityreview.com/2014/01/the-latin-boogaloo-2/
Latin Dance Party – 1960s Boogaloo. Compiled by Mike Delanian, Warner Music UK Ltd. 2000. CD.
Morales, Ed. "The Latin Beat: The Rhythms and Roots of Latin Music from Bossa Nova to Salsa and Beyond." Da Capo Press (2003): 60-7. Print.
The Salsa Revolution, Latin Music USA. Written by Jeremy Marre and Daniel McCabe. PBS. 2009.
Wang, Oliver, “We like it like that: the songs that defined New York City's boogaloo craze” The Guardian, 5 April 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/05/we-like-it-like-that-film-boogaloo-new-york-latin-soul-music
We Like it Like That. Directed by Matthew Ramirez Warren and Elena Ramirez, performances Joe Bataan, Johnny Colon, Ricardo Ray. 2015
“We Like it Like That Official Film Site”. www.latinboogaloo.com, https://latinboogaloo.com/about. Accessed 1 Dec 2020
YOUTUBE CITATIONS
Arsenio Rodriguez - Papaupa (RECOMENDADO). YouTube. 16 August 2011.
https://youtu.be/jD69upksknU
Dee Dee Sharp – Mashed Potato Time. YouTube. 13 July 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51eJ3-h86JQ
The Flamingos “I Only Have Eyes for You”. 24 November 2012.
https://youtu.be/nrzusdilnKQ
Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers – Baby Baby. 11 July 2010
https://youtu.be/_QjO3fA4xpQ
In the Still of the Night – Fred Parris and the Satins. 17 December 2006
https://youtu.be/fBT3oDMCWpI
James Brown performs "Night Train" on the TAMI Show (Live). YouTube. 16 March 2013
https://youtu.be/ZF_rZrH4yBY
Jose Curbelo and His Orchestra: La Ruñidera. 17 December 2015
https://youtu.be/bhcVsB7btkM
Machito and his Afro-Cuban Orchestra – Contillon Mambo. 10 April 2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI4nsBAa-ac
“Mickey's Monkey” The Miracles with Smokey Robinson. YouTube. 16 October 2011
https://youtu.be/ZVkAQUPGqpk
Stay – Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs. 20 June 2018
https://youtu.be/2RRPGmA_9Eo
The Temptations - My Girl ( Original Video Recording 1965 WS)” YouTube. 26 September 2018
https://youtu.be/g4Ftj1HZcU0
Tito Puente – Cuban Pete. YouTube. 24 August 2014
https://youtu.be/-S-VgW1VQ80