{"id":4858,"date":"2015-02-10T18:50:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T18:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=4858"},"modified":"2015-02-10T18:50:19","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T18:50:19","slug":"arturo-ofarrills-afro-latin-orchestra-wins-grammy-with-gorgeous-collage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/10\/arturo-ofarrills-afro-latin-orchestra-wins-grammy-with-gorgeous-collage\/","title":{"rendered":"Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Orchestra Wins Grammy With Gorgeous Collage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Rolling Stone’s website gives the only complete list of Grammy Award winners<\/a> I can find. Once there, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to get to the listing for\u00a0Best Latin Jazz Album<\/strong>,\u00a0won this year by Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra<\/strong>‘s The Offense of the Drum <\/em>(Mot\u00e9ma).
\nA few years back, you could have scrolled all you wanted without finding that listing at all. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) had eliminated the category from the annual awards. I wrote a piece in the Village Voice on that controversy<\/a>, in which NARAS president Neil Portnow complained that, with so many awards categories, the Grammys had “become a collage.” (NARAS reinstated that award, after forceful outcry from several musicians, including O’Farrill and drummer Bobby Sanabria.)
\nAs I wrote in about O’Farrill’s album\u00a0in a\u00a0\u00a0recent Wall Street Journal piece<\/a>:<\/p>\n

As part of his nonprofit Afro Latin Jazz Alliance since 2007, the orchestra has developed an expansive aesthetic that plays out through commissioned pieces for concert seasons. \u201cThe world of Latin jazz has exploded,\u201d he said recently at his Brooklyn home. \u201cMy father did what he did in his era because that was the world he knew. In my world, there’s Peru and Colombia and Ecuador and Venezuela and more\u2014plus, of course, Cuba. For the past seven or eight years, I’ve explored these connections for all their beauty, power and range.\u201d
\nMr. O’Farrill’s CD opens with \u201cCuarto de Colores,\u201d a celebration of Colombian harp composed by Edmar Casta\u00f1eda, who plays that instrument with remarkable command. Among its most stirring pieces are Pablo Mayor’s \u201cMercado en Domingo,\u201d based in the Colombian marching-band tradition; \u201cGnossienne 3 (Tientos),\u201d for which Spanish arranger Miguel Blanco invested French composer Erik Satie’s music with the pained vocals and curled melismas of flamenco; and \u201cThe Offense of the Drum,\u201d an ambitious O’Farrill composition incorporating Japanese taiko<\/em> drums. That such range forms a coherent musical whole lends credence to his mission.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe collages aren’t such a bad thing.
\nPhoto courtesy of Afro Latin Jazz Alliance<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rolling Stone’s website gives the only complete list of Grammy Award winners I can find. Once there, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to get to the listing for\u00a0Best Latin Jazz Album,\u00a0won this year by Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra‘s The Offense of the Drum (Mot\u00e9ma). A few … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Orchestra Wins Grammy With Gorgeous Collage”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[130,131,256],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4858"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}