Los Hombres Calientes
New Congo Square, Vol. 3
Label: Basin Street Records
Original Release Date: April 17, 2001
Okay, I confess - Amazon caught me at a weak moment.
It had been a long day and I was working my way through five or six thousand pieces of junk-email in my inbox, when I got to a note from Amazon.com. It said something to the effect of, "Hi! We notice that you like jazz albums - have you considered this one?" There was a photo of a cd by a band called Los Hombres Calientes and the usual hype about how this was the best jazz cd ever recorded. Yada, yada, yada.
For reasons that still escape me, I ordered the cd on a whim, got it in the mail, opened it and then set it aside for the next year and a half without listening to it. I do this from time to time. I probably have five or six cds that I've never listened to. Then, last week, again on a whim, I grabbed a cd at random to listen to on the commute to work and picked up "New Congo Square".
It really is possibly the best jazz cd I've ever listened to.
Los Hombres Calientes are from New Orleans and this album reflects some of the hugely different cultural influences that you can find in that city. The first cut on the cd, Forforo Fo Firi is a down-and-dirty salsa number that will make you want to grab somebody - anybody - and start dancing with them. (Warning: if you are rhythm-impaired like me, this is a prescription for social humiliation.) Jah Rastafarai is a jazz hymn that forces you to rethink the spiritual side of reggae.
The best number on the cd, however, is New Second Line, one of the best, most engaging examples you are likely to hear of Mardi Gras festival music. The number starts out as a standard, dixieland-inspired marching song, heavy on horns. As the song unfolds and the background singers start getting more and more into what they are doing, the melody line starts to dissolve, then coalesce, then dissolve again, in a musical dance with entropy. If you happened to walk into a room where this was playing, halfway through the song and didn't have a frame of reference, it would sound completely discordant, but if you have been along for the ride from the beginning, it is riveting.
Given how good "New Congo Square" is, I'm going to have to see what else I've got at the back of the cupboard.
