Archival photograph of Arsenio Rodriguez, who is called the “Godfather of Salsa Music.”
Photograph courtesy Anat Gerstein Inc.
On March 15, The Bronx Music Corridor (BMH) will host “El Ciego Maravilloso – The Blind Marvel: A Tribute to Arsenio Rodríguez,” a particular live performance by the multi-Grammy nominated Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Huge Band celebrating the legacy of the “Godfather of Salsa.”
The 24-piece band, led by famend drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, radio host, documentary movie producer, and educator Bobby Sanabria, pays tribute to Rodríguez as they carry out his most well-known compositions with new forward-thinking preparations and compositions by artists whom Rodríguez influenced.
Elena Martinez, co-artistic director of the Bronx Music Heritage Heart, stated, “Arsenio Rodríguez was greater than a musical innovator — a visionary whose affect formed the very basis of salsa, and he known as the Bronx residence.”
She provides that folks shouldn’t miss this occasion as a result of ”That is greater than a live performance — it’s a homecoming for the music that defines our borough.” Will probably be an “electrifying night time of historical past, tradition, and unstoppable rhythm.”
He was as transformative in Cuban music as Louis Armstrong was in jazz and is acknowledged as essentially the most essential determine within the historical past of Afro-Cuban-based dance music. Rodríguez was the primary bandleader so as to add the conga drum, piano, and a number of trumpets to carry out Cuban son music and developed a brand new hard-driving rhythmic strategy, which he known as son montuno. This strategy turned the basis of what turned often called mambo, thus forming the template for what in the present day is thought in New York Metropolis and the world over as salsa.
The live performance will spotlight vocalist Jennifer Jade Ledesma, a multilingual musical polyglot, and Oreste Abrantes on vocals and congas. Each are members of the Multiverse Huge Band and featured on the orchestra’s newest 2024 Grammy-nominated launch, Vox Humana. The band will even function famend Cuban-born vocalist Gerardo Contino and tres and guitar grasp Benjamin Lapidus.
Acclaimed as certainly one of Cuba’s most famed bandleaders, Rodriguez was identified by the sobriquet “El Ciego Maravilloso” (the Blind Marvel); his blindness occurred when a mule kicked him within the head as a baby. In 1947, he got here to New York looking for medical consideration to probably restore his sight however was knowledgeable that his optic nerves had been destroyed. This expertise led him to compose certainly one of his most well-known works, “La Vida es un Sueño” (“Life is a Dream”).
A screening of “La Vida es un Sueño” (“Life is a Dream”), a brief movie about Rodríguez, named after Rodriguez’s well-known composition of the identical identify, by Cuban filmmaker Ariety Veunes Toro, will occur earlier than the live performance.
The live performance and screening at BMH, situated at 438 East 163rd St., Bronx, NY 10451, will begin at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $25 and obtainable to buy by calling 917-557-2354 or on-line right here: https://ci.ovationtix.com/36821/production/1222449?performanceId=11562197.
