La 33

Recently I succumbed to the power of marketing of one of the most interesting sites I´ve came across on the net. Last-fm is not a new service on the net, and it mainly offers a free-customizable radio station that suggest new or underground artists based on your parameters of preference. It gathers that information by synchronizing its servers with your audio tracks in Itunes/ipod. In some sense this "free music" comes at a really high price: you are sharing your consumer preferences so the mayor companies can studie your market behaviour. Moreover, it's a market platform where every artist played in Last-fm is actually offering its products in front of a potential consumer that otherwise wouldn't notice them. However, the strategy is not bad for the final user, as it gets to know interesting music when he is tired of his own collection of purchased items, and allows the possibility to enrich his taste proposing interesting combinations that can suit to its needs.

Was in this process where La 33 arrived to my ears as one of the suggestions of new artists in the salsa field. These bogota-based salsa group doesn't have anything to be discontent of being in a city with no salsa heritage. Actually, as most of the business in Colombia, the centralization of power makes the best players move to Bogota as it is more probable to find an a recording label sponsoring them than in any of the other mid-size cities. Its single ¨La pantera mambo¨ is a rich collection of fusions between latin jazz and underground salsa movements. I was very pleased to find that its album is much more than just one single, and that not only covers salsa, but also mambo and bogaloo with different perspectives.

Listen to this album of La 33 is like being transported to one of the almighty salsa clubs in Cali, Colombia. The band succeeds in shaping an album with the energy of a live performance even in a recording studio.

The style of the album can be catalogued as ¨a unisex salsa¨, that is, a genre that can well be worth for a fan of the Gran Combo de Puerto Rico or to an avid listener of new groupings like Orishas or Sergent Garcia. Its swing is in some respect influenced by Yerba Buena, Sidestepper, and Eddie Palmieri.

The best songs for my taste:
- La pantera mambo¨
- Que rico boogaloo
- La 33
- Suelta el Bongo