Imagen Latina

Imagen Latina is an album by Venezuelan musician Alberto Naranjo, originally released in 1992 and reedited twice in 2002 and 2008. It is the seventh album (fifth studio album) of El Trabuco Venezolano musical project arranged and directed by Naranjo.

Contents

• Personnel
• Guests
• Other credits
• Songs
• References

Trabuco is a Spanish term used in Venezuelan baseball slang to describe an All-Star selection of players. So, El Trabuco Venezolano means "The Venezuelan All-Star Band", in the best sense of the phrase. Naranjo (Caracas, 1941) is one of Venezuela's icons of contemporary music, establishing his prestige as an arranger, conductor, composer and drummer. In 1992 Naranjo produced Imagen Latina. Soloists with an already established career in Venezuela participated in this project; renowned salseros as Canelita Medina, Carlos Espósito, Vladimir Lozano, Trina Medina, Carlos Daniel Palacios and Mauricio Silva; noted folklorists as Simón Díaz, Cecilia Todd and the group Serenata Guayanesa, and also counted with the collaboration of poet Jesús Rosas Marcano, musician Benjamín Brea, pop singer María Rivas, jazz pianist Otmaro Ruiz, and the polifacetic Aldemaro Romero. Most salsa bands are a tightly wound unit that developed their music through years of playing in clubs around their hometown. El Trabuco Venezolano never subscribed to that aesthetic. As the vehicle for the arrangements of Naranjo, his Trabuco defied all salsa conventions in the 1970s. The eclectic body of Naranjo's work shows some debt to Billo Frómeta, Tito Puente and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, preferring traditional guaracha, jazz, bolero, mambo and Venezuelan genres, creating a sophisticated and distinctive sound with accessible melodic hooks, complex harmonies and time signatures, as well as a special devotion to the recording studio. This record was never released outside of Venezuela, and after ten years of relative obscurity, the company Merusa Records of Netherlands introduced it at the international level. One of the songs included in the album, Calipso de El Callao, is listed in the book 1001 Songs: You Must Hear Before You Die.