review Latino Music Cafe:
Nicaraguan Salsa star Luis Enrique use the jukebox theme in his new album “Jukebox, Primera Edición”, to symbolize his new take on old Latin pop music hits and standards that filled “velloneras” around Latin America.
The concept of the jukebox is a neat one, and this time Luis Enrique enlisted Puerto Rican master producer Angel “Cucco” Peña, to provide a new fresh spin to this songs and to the Luis Enrique pop Salsa sound.
New Sound & Arrangements – Cucco Peña, who initially help to lift Marc Anthony’s career, demonstrates he has plenty of music in him. The musicality in this album is simply amazing! Just listen to the scales where the trombone play, and the energy of the arrangements.
I take my hat off to the maestro Cucco Peña! Justifiably Luis Enrique shouts several times, “sopla Cucco” (I guess parodying Marc Anthony’s now popular “ataca Sergio”). I also have to comment on the electric guitar that shows up with great timing and musicality in several songs. Cucco didn’t miss anything here!
Multiple “mambos” and “coros” – in pop Salsa? Nahh…nobody does that, right? Or has Cucco Peña gone mad? As I said, this album is different. In several songs, starting with the very first song and album single “Noche de Copas”, Cucco Peña incorporates more than one mambo (not just the same “mambo” twice, but two different “mambos”), and complex coros that mix from one to another, and may change completely into a 3rd “coro”. Yes, the “mambos” are relatively short, but…hey, in a pop Salsa recording this is a novelty!
n my opinion this in one of the most musically amazing pop Salsa albums I have ever heard! Luis Enrique is able to keep up with Cucco Peña’s music step by step, and if Cucco brings high energy, Luis Enrique matches him.
I’ll be very surprised if “Jukebox” doesn’t win several Grammy (and other) awards!
If you like this romantic style of Salsa, but also like the classic Salsa dura, this is a somewhat hybrid style, where monotonous repetition (so prevalent in pop Salsa) was banned from the recording studio.