Roberto Roena: Roberto Roena Y Su Apollo Sound

Mention Roberto Roena to any fan of Latin music, and salsa royalty is on the menu. This pioneering band, literally in the works as Neil Armstrong took Apollo 11 to the moon in the summer of 1969, took its name from the space program and is rightly considered a classic of the mixed genre—jazz, funk, rock, and Afro-Cuban music—that people everywhere came to call salsa. Roena, like Ismael Rivera, is (and was) an iconic figure on the island of Puerto Rico. Roena died at the age of 81 in 2021 and was eulogized in the New York Times as a "whirlwind of salsa exuberance." Listen to this truly interesting recording and find out why.

Roena started out young, as a teenager, on the island as a dancer in Santurce, where he caught the attention of Rafael Cortijo, who put him in his band as a bongocero. The training paid off, and Roena began touring internationally with El Gran Combo, after which he formed this very well-regarded band. The horn-driven band was a sensation, and this, its first recording, appeared in 1970. There were, of course, echoes of Sly and the Family Stone, Blood Sweat and Tears, and a cover of Otis Redding, whose "Dock of the Bay" got mistranslated as "Duck of the Bay," and thus, oddly, appears as "El Pato de la Bahía." But there were also songs with a deep history in Puerto Rico, including "Soñando con Puerto Rico, that dated from the 1950s, at least. "El Escapulario" may or may not owe something to the classic Mexican film of the same name, which appeared in 1968. The only doubtful moment comes with "Han Pasado Algunos Días," whose intonation seems a bit wobbly. But otherwise, this is a time capsule, music of the moment, and in some ways, a look into the complex political and cultural synthesis that includes US citizenship but no presidential vote, and federal assistance in food, but no income tax from purely insular sources for Puerto Ricans.

If you think the music is challenging and rhythmically complex, so is Puerto Rico. And Roena captured it fairly in 1970. The vinyl sound, remastered, of course, is first rate and the album graphics preserve the look and feel of the original.