LJC Community Conversation: The Ultimate Latin Jazz Playlist
LJC Community Conversations are designed to explore major ideas in the Latin Jazz world together as a community and inspire conversation through comments. My main motivator here is my belief that LJC readers hold a great deal of knowledge and passion around Latin Jazz, and I think that we can learn something from everyone. Whether you’re a seasoned Latin Jazz performer or a newcomer to the music, leave a comment and let your voice be heard!
Those of us that spent our youth in the 1970s and 1980s fondly remember the beauty of a self-made mix-tape. The empowering notion of pulling together all your favorite songs and then sharing them with family or friends was a theme for a generation. We would create mix-tapes by genre, giving us the rock mix-tape, the jazz mix-tape, the fusion mix-tape, the pop mix-tape, and more – ready to be popped into the cassette player when the mood struck. Mix-tapes sometimes held a theme, such as romantic music, sad music, mellow music, or rocking music, pulling the best from several artists to suit the moment. Many of us often sent a message with a mix-tape, telling a girlfriend of boyfriend about our feelings, a friend about our admiration, or a peer about our shared interests. The only limit to the power of the mix-tape was the length of the tape itself, forcing us into 30 – 60 minute blocks of music. It never seemed like a limit in those days though, the mix-tape was the ultimate freedom and a powerful means of communicating self-identity.
Fast forward a couple of decades – the cassette tape has virtually disappeared, but the concept of a mix-tape has morphed into the playlist. These days we can mix and match MP3s into an iTunes playlist instantly, name it, and then burn it onto a CD or transfer it onto our iPod. When we talk about an iPod, we’re no longer limited by 60 minutes; now we’re talking about gigabytes, which translate into hours, days, or weeks worth of music. We have access to this much music and more, making us sort through our music collections carefully to build the best playlists. We can easily share our music with friends – we can burn a CD for them or they can plug their iPod directly into our computers and load the music themselves. The internet even makes it easier to share playlists, as we display them on our MySpace pages, our Facebook accounts, and even our own webpages. The playlist has become the face for our musical identities, a self-structured piece of ourselves on display for the world to hear.
So if we want to know LJC readers, we need to check out their Latin Jazz playlists. We don’t want just any playlist though – we want your ultimate Latin Jazz playlist. Give us the best of the best, without any substitutions. Let us know which songs you would choose, the artist that performed it, and the album where you found it. It might be a collection of classic recordings – Puente, Machtio, Palmieri, and more. You may be focusing upon new recordings, giving us a bit of Arturo O’Farrill, Papo Vazquez, and John Santos. Then again, a combination of the two might be interesting, jumping from Cal Tjader to Elio Villafranca. Feel free to make your playlist any length – it might be five songs or it might stretch out over the course of hours. Let you imagination be your guide, just make sure that you only give us your favorites.
LEAVE A COMMENT and let us know what would be on your ultimate Latin Jazz playlist. I can’t wait to hear the responses!
Once you’ve left your thoughts here, don’t forget to visit our past community conversations.
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Do you have an idea for a future Community Conversation? As much as I enjoy exploring my own interests with this regular post, I’d prefer to have this forum address the overall interests of the entire community. Do you have an issue that effects Latin Jazz? Do you have an idea for a fun topic? Let me know so that we can throw it out to the whole community – Leave a Comment or e-mail me.
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