Ray Barretto – Soul Drummers

Before I start with this week’s song selection I’d like to first say a few words about the sad loss recently of two titans of the music world – Dave Brubeck & Ravi Shankar.

Dave Brubeck was probably one of the first jazz artists I heard in my youth – with Take Five being my first introduction to his music (much like many other people I would imagine). This led me on to discover various other jazz greats and for this alone, I’ll be eternally grateful.

Ravi Shankar first came to my attention (again like many other people I suspect) via his work with The Beatles and in particular George Harrison. The sound of the sitar sounded so exotic to me and encouraged me to delve deeper into this sound upon which I discovered Dave Pike & Ravi Shankar’s nephew, the late great Ananda Shankar amongst others. The loss of two great innovators & originators will be sad for all genuine music fans – may they rest in peace.

On to this week’s update now and to a man who is our personal favourite latin artist here at Gazfunk HQ. The first track of his that I ever came across was this week’s selection – The Soul Drummers way back in the late 90s (before I’d reached my 18th birthday!). Shortly after that I began to seek out more of his back catalogue and I found that he had many other great tracks including Teacher Of Love, Together, Right On, Love Beads et al.

Ray was probably the artist who opened my ears to the joys of latin music and helped me discover other legends like Joe Bataan (who we have already featured here on the blog), Tito Puente, Mongo Santamaria and Harvey Averne so it’s not before time that we feature him in his own right.

Enjoy!