You can’t mess with Christmas traditions that start at 160BPM and rise. Dominican merengues navideños are a holiday force!
[audio:https://negrophonic.com/mp3/02 Los Rosario – Esto Ta Bueno.mp3]Any holiday song which concludes with sirens & calls for the Fire Dept. is a ‘success.’
For the current Style/Music issue of the New Museum’s New City Reader newspaper (Daniel Perlin & I co-edited the Music section), I asked one of the smartest music writers around, Carolina Gonzalez (she literally wrote the book on the latino life in NYC!) to guide us through Nuyorican traditions of villancicos, asaltos, and aguinaldos. The results can be picked up at The New Museum, seen on display at a few spots around Manhattan, and downloaded here as a handy PDF.
I’ll post more about our Style/Music issue soon, as it is jam-packed with goodness spanning Luc Sante to DiS magazine! Until then, another holiday merengue stomper to ensure yr Christmas party gets crunk:
[audio:https://negrophonic.com/mp3/03 Toros Band – Llego La Navidad.mp3]Here’s a screenshot excerpt from Carolina’s article in the newspaper’s PDF version:
