Salsa & Merengue by The Latin Thing Band Friday, September 19, 2003
Salsa & Merengue by The Latin Thing Band Friday, September 19
The Latin Thing Band will appear at the “Bergen Music & Art Festival” on Friday night, September 19th . The band will perform in the Auditorium at the Bergen Mall on Route 4 East & Forest Ave. in Paramus starting at
7:30 PM.
The Latin Thing Band’s members are all veterans of the well known clubs and recording studios of New York. The band’s reputation has been correctly referred to as legendary. They describe their music as pounding and joyous-to-the-soul.
This is a band that will keep you moving so bring your dance shoes and enjoy a great night of Latin music. The band plays Merengue, Salsa, Cubia, Cha-Cha, Bolero and Salsa with American lyrics as well.
Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased in advance at the Bergen Museum or may be purchased at the door.
What is Salsa
Salsa is the Spanish for ‘hot sauce’ which is a good way of describing the dance craze which has hit the clubs! It describes a style of music which came from New York City’s Hispanic community in the mid 1970s. It is typically a blend of Afro-Cuban and Puerto Rican music with Rock and Jazz. Salsa dance and music is becoming increasingly popular on a global scale, evolving from its original Latino domain. Izzy Sanabria, (pictured left) otherwise known as “Mr. Salsa”, popularized the term for New York’s Latin music, so we have him to thank for this saucy dance style!
The influences of other Cuban rhythms such as Mambo, son and Merengue can be seen in salsa music.
WHY THEY CALL HIM “MR. SALSA”
In 1978, the prestigious GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly) magazine published a profile of Izzy Sanabria in which it stated: Known as “Mr. Salsa” because he almost single-handedly popularized the term “Salsa” (during the 1970s) which the world now recognizes as the name for New York’s Latin Music.
Sanabria is something of a Puerto Rican Toulouse Lautrec as well. His bold colorful posters plastered throughout the walls of New York documented and immortalized Salsa’s (subculture) events in much the same way Lautrec’s posters immortalized the Moulin Rouge in Paris. Izzy’s album cover designs and illustrations also set new standards of quality in Latin music packaging and provided the world with its first visual imagery of Salsa.
Sanabria is a multi-talented artist who regards the world as his canvas. Besides being an artist, writer, actor, dancer, photographer, publisher, philosopher and visionary, he is also a versatile stand-up comedian. Sanabria’s brand of bi-lingual humor have made him one of the community’s favorite master of ceremonies.
As the official emcee of the Fania All-Stars (the world’s greatest exponents of Salsa), Izzy has traveled throughout South America, Europe and as far as Africa and Japan always adding little bits of humor to his presentations. In Japan, to everyone’s surprise, he actually emceed in perfect Japanese (by using Spanish phonetics).