EVERY GENRE PROJECT - February 10 - Boogaloo

Genre of the Day - Boogaloo

Album of the Day - Acid by Ray Barretto

Like yesterday’s album, today’s album is an exercise in history—albeit much more recent. It’s easy to take for granted the normalization of music that fuses culturally disparate elements today, but today’s genre shows how in the ‘60s it felt like a little miracle to do so. With the growth of the American music industry as the foremost national innovator in music industry in the 1930s and 1940s, the nation set itself up perfectly for the rapid economic globalization that took place post-war and for the US was fueled by immigrants from all over the world, including many Caribbean and Latino immigrants from all over the Caribbean and the Americas. Today’s genre exposes the explosion of fused music genres that exploded in the nation’s cultural hotspots during that time.

There is perhaps nothing more future-facing and sonically distinctive than being able to mix two disparate genres and push forth the ways they can meld well together, which is why boogaloo turns out to be incredible music. Throughout the 1950s, Cuban immigrants were leaving to the US in droves, worried by the nation’s economic changes that eventually resulted in its highly-disliked communist regime loathed by the US. Those thousands of Cuban immigrants brought with them particular regional sounds and rhythms to urban centers where jazz and R&B dominated the sonic landscape. They saw a vision in which they could both maintain and spread the sounds of their homeland while incorporating the upbeat, community-affirming sounds of R&B and jazz. 

Boogaloo can also be recognized as something of a stepping stone, as some genres simply acted historically as conduits to ones that we recognize better. Boogaloo may have laid the sonic foundation for more commercially viable and well-known genres like salsa, but it still represents an important, transitional moment in time, showing how the transitional stages of art and life hold as much value as the familiar ones lucky enough to come after. Boogaloo was very forward-facing, though, with specifically festive, consistently upbeat drum rhythms grouped with hypnotically jazzy, contemporary R&B influenced catchy melodies—is RYM on the Boogaloo Commission’s payroll or something? Its public relations campaign was also attached to a distinctive dance style as well. Evidently, one of the powers of connecting music is that the results can resonate across a variety of art forms heightened by its significance as a genre that bridges worlds and interests. 

Across just eight tracks and just over half an hour, Ray Barretto brews a compelling concoction of the various sounds he’s drawing on. Many are very apparent in their intent to showcase their unique nature, such as “Soul Drummers.” They often track lyrical content that was popular across the mainstream, such as crying for romantic mercy on the impassioned, James Brown-esque “Mercy, Mercy Baby.” Despite these somewhat transactional lyrics, Acid’s late ‘60s optimism cuts through gleamingly. The melodies are bris and purposeful, but never compromising in their sense of joyfulness and revelatory nature, with genuinely gorgeous horn and piano melodies contrasted against a lush, rich, dynamic background of bongos and other drums. Though only a bridge to more streamlined visions of the rhythms that could be contributed, the vision of Acid remains fresh and exuberant.