East Side Story

You can watch this hour-long BBC programme for another week. It's part one of a four-part series on Latin music in the US, and it's the kind of thing that the Beeb, to give them their due, do very well. Worth a look, if only for the clips of the night-life in old prohibition-era Havana, back when it was America's playground, and for the feel and energy of New York and Spanish Harlem in the Forties and Fifities. Afro-Cuban jazz with Machito and Dizzy Gillespie, Perez Prado and the mambo craze, West Side Story and the Puerto Rican barrio, it's all there - though a bit less Carlos Santana would've been fine with me (and if we're talking about the Latin influence on rock music, where was Ritchie Valens?).

Next week - into the Seventies with the birth of salsa...

Comments

[BobFromBrockley]

I'm so irritated I missed this, stupidly taping some blood and gore forensic drama I am addicted to. I will look out for part II next week

[Laban]

Any boogaloo therein ?

http://ukcommentators.blogspot.com/search?q=boogaloo

[TDK]

Whilst I enjoyed this, the narrative grated at times.

[Mick H]

Boogaloo? No. Maybe next week, as a precursor to salsa.