HOT SALSA : Proyecto Uno

CD selection :

New Era
(H.O.L.A. ;1996)

Sample from
Latinos
in
New Era
(H.O.L.A. ; 1996)

With its inclination for party, rhythm and dance, it was inevitable that Latin music would venture on the grounds of house. Latin house was born from this first love during the 80's : a genre stocked with music data processing and sampling, and enhanced with some scratches borrowed from the rap.

Alas, it's all too easy to fork out. And in spite of some successes, many artists are satisfied with easy mediocrity, destituded of any musical concern.

That is not so with Proyecto Uno, where the sharp timbales rolls coast luckily with the repetitive pulsation of the sequencers, to generate a brilliant merengue house of a frightening effectiveness for the legs on the dance floors.

The 4 singers of Proyecto Uno were nourished with Latin music. Nelson Zapata was born at the end of the 50's before landing in New York at the age of 14 with his parents, leaving behind them a too poor Dominican Republic.

To create Proyecto Uno, Nelson Zapata join forces in 1988 with Magic Juan, a young cat of the same age also of Dominican origin. From an island where merengue is the national dance, they invent almost naturally the merengue house, boosted with rap and crossbred with light funk reminding Kool & The Gang and Earth Wind & Fire.

The other two singers, Johnny Salgado and Erik Morales, born in the 60's from Puertorican parents join the band the following year.

Today, New York is the largest Puertorican city in the world and Dominicans are almost as numerous. Given that, a band reinvigorating merengue should succeed if its carreer is ever so little well conducted.

And indeed, they are doing well : the 2^nd album (In Da House, released in 1994) stays for months and months on the Top 50 Billboard, the honorary distinctions rain down, while platinum records follow after the gold and that pints of sweat run on the night clubs floors to the beat of their music. Here is the good old merengue, for a while turned into game-master in the night clubs of the world, all that owing to Proyecto Uno.

PROYECTO UNO Dominican Republic / Porto Rico / USA	In a genre too often gone astray - Latin house -, Proyecto Uno avoids the trap of poor variety and keeps a touchy course : that of a quality merengue house.