Word: bamba
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Richie Valens hit it big with La Bamba in 1959. The music industry didn't wholeheartedly embrace another Latin rocker until Santana's autumnal success...
...BAMBA Seventeen-year-old Ritchie Valens' Spanish-language hit tops the U.S. charts and makes him the first Latin rock star, one month before he is killed in an air crash with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper...
...Some tunes wore their otherness proudly. It was hard to ignore that Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba" was Spanish or that "Sukiyaki" by Q (Kyu) Sakamoto was Japanese; those were the languages the tunes were sung in. Even a few translated songs had the novelty of distance and difference - "Skokian," for instance. As I recall the English lyric, it wore its ethnographic condescension jovially: "Oh, far away in Africa,/ Happy happy Africa,/ They do a bingo-bongo-bingo/ In hokey-smoky-Skokian...
Maybe if one of them had looked like Ricky Martin, Los Lobos would have gotten the recognition they deserved. As it is, they are probably best known for their No. 1 hit remake of Richie Valens' "La Bamba," but those who bother to look a little deeper will find one of the most versatile and accomplished ensembles in American contemporary music, whose work is chronicled (and beautifully packaged) in yet another of Rhino's scrupulously crafted compilations. "El Cancionero Mas Y Mas" is a four-CD retrospective that starts in 1977 and takes us to the present, and what becomes...
...earliest forays into the studio with traditional material like "Guantanamera"; the rowdy guitar-driven rock 'n' roll that fits them like a favorite leather jacket; the thoughtful, melodic writing of "Will the Wolf Survive" and "One Time One Night," with which they hit their stride; the inevitable "La Bamba," complete with its traditional acoustic coda that reels it back to the real roots without being pedantic about it; the increasingly adventurous and atmospheric production and songwriting in the albums "Kiko" and "Colossal Head...