Fenster writes:

Ruben Blades’ Primogenio.

1.  The opening section is clever, splendid and musical–especially at higher volumes when the bass and percussion come in.  The piece starts with bagpipes and sounds almost, but not quite, that it is going to be played straight in Celtic fashion.  Then–boom!–it reveals itself in its underlying Latin glory.  The continued interplay between the Latin rhythms and the almost Scottish theme is quite nice.

2. There’s a side of salsa-style singing that almost feels like a recitative, with the singer looking you directly in the eye and talking to you.  Blades is particularly good at this, especially in the call-and-response middle sections.

3. It is nice to see kind of music that Americans think of as ethnic adopt a world pose.  The lyrics to the song are a kind of ode to Africa in terms of human beginnings, but it is less an ode to Africa per se than a celebration of human connectedness.  On the one level, it’s a multicultural thing.  One another, it is Blades making a forceful statement that Latino culture is large enough, and self-confident enough, to do its own appropriation thing.