Snowboy and the Latin Section

Conga kingpin Blas, himself, keeps more or less to the background over most of the album, but Snowboy, another hotshot percussionist, takes a far more flamboyant tack. Snowboy has never paid much heed to the increasingly formulaic orthodoxy of club-bound salsa, and sees the mambo more as a jump-off point than actual dance music, although you would do well to keep up with the mambo grooves that Snowboy and the Latin Section chew up. But theirs is more of a jazz ethic; the grooves in place, the heated soloing begins and it's a very capable band Snowboy's pieced together. The propulsive engine of Afro Cuban jazz just seems to give the band all the momentum it needs to explode into inspired solos, usually with Snowboy's muscular, yet nimble conga work taking centre stage. Of course, there's now a plethora of Cuban music available as rarely ever before, but unless you're a completist, you probably don't want to just grab anything filed under Cuban, but in either case, you won't go wrong with Blas or Snowboy.