Eddie Palmieri, seen right here performing in 2009 on the Theatre de la Mer in southeastern France.
Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Pictures
disguise caption
toggle caption
Frans Schellekens/Redferns/Getty Pictures
Bandleader and pianist Eddie Palmieri, whose pounding rhythms solid a brand new fashion for Latin music, died Wednesday on the age of 88.
Fania Information, the famend Latin jazz label that launched a number of of Palmieri’s traditional recordings, introduced his demise in an announcement.
“As we speak, Fania Information mourns the lack of the legendary Eddie Palmieri, some of the progressive and distinctive artists in music historical past.”
Within the Sixties and early ’70s, Palmieri launched a string of albums along with his orchestra La Perfecta. They fused syncopated Afro-Caribbean beats and jazz stylings.
Songs like “Bilongo,” “Café” and “La Malanga” featured Palmieri’s signature, extremely percussive piano enjoying. His was a full-bodied method, using forearms, elbows and even an occasional growl from the maestro himself.
Palmieri was born to Puerto Rican mother and father in New York Metropolis’s Spanish Harlem. It was a musical residence. Palmieri received his begin in his uncle’s ensemble, enjoying drums and timbales, his first devices. His brother Charlie Palmieri would additionally go on to turn out to be a celebrated salsa and Latin Jazz musician.
Because the Puerto Rican diaspora grew within the metropolis within the Fifties, so did the circuit for Latin dance music. In an period marked by mambo, huge bands and ballrooms, Palmieri quickly discovered a house as a pianist in Tito Rodriguez’s Orchestra.
Identified for his heat and spirit, Palmieri was emphatic when requested on NPR’s Piano Jazz in 1997 to explain his explosive musical combine. “It is positively going to excite you,” he informed host Marian McPartland. “I do not guess I will excite you with my music. I know it.”
By the mid Sixties, Palmieri was branching off in new instructions, most notably in collaboration with vibraphonist Cal Tjader.
His knack for recognizing legendary singers started with La Perfecta’s longtime lead voice, Ismael Quintana. Then, in 1974, Palmieri teamed up with a young person from Puerto Rico named Lalo Rodriguez. The results of that collaboration was his first Grammy-winning album, The Solar of Latin Music. Palmieri would win greater than half a dozen Grammys over the course of his profession.
Palmieri turned an elder statesman of Latin jazz, holding forth on its historical past, normally with a protracted cigar clasped in his hand. His music “Azúcar Pa’ Ti” was added to the Library of Congress’ Nationwide Recording Registry in 2009. In 2013, the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities awarded him a Jazz Grasp Fellowship, one of many highest honors in jazz.
Palmieri would usually dig into the historical past of the Caribbean to interrupt down the rhythmic patterns that fashioned the idea of his music. “In a 300-year span, there was roughly 12 million Africans that have been delivered to the New World,” he informed Piano Jazz. “They have been by no means allowed their drums out of concern of communication. Worry of revolt. And these advanced rhythmical patterns united in a compositional type referred to as jazz.”
The Puerto Rican expertise in New York Metropolis was for him a central theme. He protested in opposition to systemic inequalities in his seminal 1971 album, Harlem River Drive. His music “Puerto Rico” from his 1973 album, Sentido, is a permanent anthem for salsa aficionados all around the world. It is also a testomony to the inspiration Eddie Palmieri drew from his island roots all through his storied profession.
