Bobby Sanabria and Candido CameroLatin Percussion is proud to announce that two LP artists have won
coveted awards attesting to their excellence in making music. Heritage
artist Candido Camero and band leader, and ethnomusicologist for Latino
music, Bobby Sanabria have won the 2008 Jazz Awards.
The awards are conferred by the Jazz
Journalists Association and, thus,
embody the critical consensus of an elite body of American and foreign journalists.
The selection standards are rigid but eventually a group of finalists is
announced by the JJA. The thrust is the recognition of uncompromising careers
devoted to the elevation of jazz. Thus, jazz musicians, composers, producers
and (in the words of the JJA governing body), “activists, advocates,
altruists, aiders and abettors” rise the top, as did Candido and Sanabria when the awards were handed out at The Jazz Standard in New York City Wednesday,
June 18, 2008.
Now in his eighty-seventh year, Candido
Camero is still actively recording
and performing. In fact, recently he won a National
Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master saluting his long term musical vitality. Arriving in NYC in 1946,
Candido was first to employ multi-conga set ups, thereby facilitating heightened
melodic content and raising the profile of the Latin percussionist. In addition,
Candido, who played with virtually every contemporary musician-from Mario
Bauza and Mongo Santamaria to Miles Davis and Randy Weston-has been credited
with urbanizing his native Cuban son, thus spawning what we now term as salsa.
Incidentally, Candido was honored by LP
with a set of signature congas and bongos. And now, well worth the wait, Candido has received the prestigious
JJA Percussionist of the Year.
Bobby Sanabria has advocated, prodded, and taken the stage to demonstrate
the living art of Afro-Cuban jazz. His lineage goes back to the revered bandleader
Mario Bauza and threads its way into Bobby’s many projects. For example,
in Verona, Italy, Bobby Sanabria’s 19-piece band drew such calamitous
applause it, lead the jazz festival head to remark, “This is the most
incredible event this festival has witnessed in thirty years!” Bobby
continues to educate, perform-satisfying purists, excite newcomers and champion
the cause of Latin jazz. And now he’ll always have a place to hang
his hat, with a street in the Bronx named
after him. His awards and proclamations
are many. Joining them is the JJA’s Best Latin Jazz Recording 2008
for Big Band Urban Folktales. “I am honored to win this award,” Bobby
stated. “It is a testimony to the great musicians who participated
in this recording. The award has special meaning in that it was voted by
a group of prestigious jazz journalists.”
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