OCHO — Número 1: Ay! Que Frío (review)

OCHO — Número 1: Ay! Que Frío album cover Album · 1972 · Afro-Cuban Jazz Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Sean Trane
Ocho is one of those NY Puerto Rican band (would you believe an septet only, in this case) of the early 70’s that played the fusion card in the traces of Santana and eventually with crosstown-rivals Mandrill. Like Santana, Ocho is taking their Latino roots from Tito Puente, but unfortunately fail to do much more of it than Santana did, since they can’t rock it up as hard, neither can they really out-virtuose the San Fran formation, nor can they be faithful to the original spirit.

Not being a fan or an expert of this type of music, it’s relatively difficult to make a judgment of value of such albums, but grosso modo, the music is frankly Latino, Puerto-rican style, but Cuban or Mexican as well, which a bit of a wonder because all 8 are purely black African descent through slavery (look at the terribly WASP names) except for Chico Mendoza. Sooo amazingly enough this should’ve been a mix of soul/funk with some jazz and Latino, but clearly the Salsa/Merengue side wins out very easily in the final balance, in which Ocho is not really aiming at electrified music, as the majority is acoustic instruments.

By the fourth track Montuna, the repetitive nature of the music had me lose all interest, but the excitement is also down from Oriza and Flautira, both highly communicative in their liveliness. Another fine track is Undress My Mind where some thunderstorm sounds interact with much effect on the vibes that rule the trac, as is the closing Coco May May where the jazz side seeps out through some pores through the horn instruments, here a baritone sax. I found the rest particularly boring, but WTF, I’m only some white guy.

While it might be a bit easy to classify Ocho as second-rate Santana, Ocho was also more than that through their jazz sensibilities (when able to pierce through the armour), but little more than an ethnic Latino group like I suspect existed hundreds of them at the time.

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