More than 20 artists collaborated from home on an updated rendition of “La Fiesta de Pilito,” a classic from El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico.
Members of Making Movies, Flor de Toloache, Williamsburg Salsa Orchestra, percussion heavyweight Bobby Sanabria, Latin Grammy-winner Jorge Glem, and Nuyorican spoken word artists Caridad de la Luz (“La Bruja”) are just a few of the faces you´ll see on this project led by Grammy-nominated record producer Jeanne Montalvo nand her husband, Peruvian singer-songwriter Erni Lu.
“The holidays can be tough to navigate in any regular year, so having a song that already evokes a sense of nostalgia in 2020 is a no-brainer. Once everyone signed on, we sent out a demo and had everyone record their parts and send them back to us. Since we’ve been producing and recording remotely most of the year, it didn’t matter where you were. It was more work to make sure everything fit together, but it was amazing how the synergy between all these amazing artists came together to make something great when they weren’t anywhere near each other,” said Montalvo, who also works at Futuro Media, the company that produces Latino Rebels.
“With the opening line —Si el año pasado tuvimos problemas, quizás este año tengamos más— the lyrics of La Fiesta de Pilito seem to make more sense now than they did when the song was originally written. It just made sense to revamp it, respecting its Salsa DNA, but giving it a twist with some new textures and parts,” Lu added.
They enlisted video editor Luis Salazar to handle the post gathering everyone’s home footage, and what resulted was 4:30 seconds of “hip-hop, bomba, salsa, ¡Navidad!” that will uplift and have you playing the song on repeat as you dance around your home.
AMIGXS ALL-STARS is:
- Mireya Ramos – voice/violin
- Jorge Glem – cuatro venezolano
- Enrique Chi – voice/electric guitar
- Erni Lu – acoustic/electric guitar, voice and production
- Diana Gameros – voice
- Yasser Tejeda – voice
- Diego Chi – bass
- Gianni Mano – timbales/congas
- Juan Carlos Chaurand – congas
- Jorge A. Simmonds – bongos
- Victor Rendón – piano
- Julie Acosta – trumpet
- Nadav Nirenberg – trombone
- Andy Averbuch – electric guitar
- Renee Goust – voice
- Mai-Elka Prado – voice
- Sonia de los Santos – voice
- Elena Lacayo – voice
- Alea – vozice
- Bobby Sanabria – buleador, primo/subidor, maracón, cuá, clave, shekere
- Audry Funk – rap
- Caridad de la Luz (“La Bruja”) – rap
- María José Montijo – backing vocals
- Jeanne “J-Mo Sound” Montalvo – engineer Bomba interlude, audio editing/mixing and production
- Luis Salazar – Video editing
- Oscar Zambrano – Mastering
