I hate it when they remix salsa music for samba. The two conflicting rhythms give the music a split personality.

Blair

Just thought of another hideous Paso--Theme from Phantom of the Opera! Yuk!!

It seems the absolute WORST music available is played at our Thursday night studio parties. The DJ is a dance teacher who prefers country western and only plays other music because she has to. Complaints to the studio owner are useless as they have been friends for years. These dances used to have many dancers, but this has fallen off during the past six months. Many of the songs played now are vocals with SCREAMING!!!!!! singers. Horrible! There are so many great records out there that it makes me angry to listen to this crude.

Anything from the Latin Jam CDs.

Their formula seems to be to identify some great latin tunes and then water them down until there is no feeling left in them.

Anything that's produced as "ballroom music" is suspect to me. As far as Latin music goes, best bet is to just shop the Latino section of a music shop - for current LATIN POP... pick ANY CD from any of dozens of contemporary mexican/latin artists (Thalia, Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin, Daniela Romo, plus dozens more ...)and, guaranteed, you will find at least several great cha -chas, sambas, rumbas etc. that I'll wager you'll hear at your next comp.

Actually some of the ballroom music labels (ie: Casa Musica and Latin Jam) have been doing compilations of original artists' music. What's nice about that is they do all the dirty work finding the best danceable Latin music from all the current Latin pop artists out there. You could spend ages in the Latin music section of the music store and still not find one danceable samba. Plus the nice thing about these compilations is they adjust the tempo for you so you have a danceable song at the right tempo.

But you're right, Andoy, if the supposedly "Latin" songs are not from original artists, then they're probably not worth listening to. There's nothing worse than a cheesy instrumental remake of a pop Latin song and unfortunately most ballroom music companies are infamous for making that faux-pas.

However, having said that, the quality of standard/smooth music (particularly waltz music) has now reached a new dimension. I find that waltz music is now quieter and more subtle, but definitely more beautiful. Quite a change from the old whiny songs or the tired oldies of yesterday.

I think The Latin Jam Cds are the best yet. They take originals like R. Martin's amore, redo the whole thing and when I play them bact to back the Latin Jam version is much hotter with a great base, correct percussion. At comps the get the original Slow it down to meet the tempo range and it sounds like ****. I have all seven, and the Cha Cha CD # 6 is the best. Listen to Bilando Boogaloo and then play the original. No contest Latin Jam has it all over the original. As far as going to a store and blindly buying CD. In the Latin department, well bring a bundle,. I've tried it a few time and wound up with very little strick tempi music. i.e. E.Iglasias , Bialamos(excuse the spelling) is played at competition and has a phrasing problem about 1 minute into the cut. so now everybody is off time, but they still keep on playing it.

Miss Y-Many years ago, my partner and I were dancing in a championship event at the USBC. I was at the time sick to death of Pick a Bale of Cotton. I had told my partner on the flight to Miami that if the DJ played Pick a Bale of Cotton, he would see me marching off the floor, because I refursed to dance to that horrible song.
Sure enough, the paso finished and the jive music started-Pick a a Bale of F+++++++Cotton. The partner gave me the saddest look ever. I gave him the one eye brow look. Then I danced. He owed me after that. It all worked out in the end. But that was my last competition and I never had to dance to that song again.

Any Latin song done by a "ballroom dance orchestra--" they cannot do latin music worth crap!
And anything that gets played more than eighteen times in a 1.5 hour lesson makes me want to shoot the DJ (at the moment, "Oyeme" makes me cringe...otherwise a beautiful rumba though)