New music! Sometimes old music. Music that we love!

Let’s keep going with some more great Latin music this week. There are a ton of amazing moments and solos in this Cuban jazz piece, but the real star of the song for me is the feeling itself. Incredibly tight and unbelievably loose, it’s impossible not to move along with. There’s something great about a group that knows exactly where the beat is supposed to land, so they can casually ignore it. Check out 3:20 when the pianist decides to briefly enter an alternate universe, requiring you to keep track of two entirely separate rhythms. So good!

And if that’s not quite enough for you, try this:

When it was originally released by the Eurythmics, this song was so far ahead of it’s time that we’ve still barely caught up. This version, however, is… questionable. It’s like an old jacket you’d find in a thrift store–it’s either incredibly cool or horribly awful. But it’s a pretty killer horn arrangement.

Brook Reeder