Latin music is one of the world’s fastest-growing entertainment sectors. Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico are among the countries at the centre of a revolution that has seen artists like Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Carlos Santana sit atop the charts, while the recently established Latin Grammy Awards attest to the importance of the danceable music that has swept the globe. Mexico is the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country, so it is no surprise that its music is pre-eminent in the Latin vanguard. Puerto Rico is a little brother by comparison but has produced its own elite stream of musicians ever since José Feliciano blazed a trail in the early Sixties. Brazil is South America’s largest constituent nation, its cosmopolitan nature and numerous ancestral links ensuring a variety and vibrancy to its music that is unmatched the world over. The samba and the bossa nova are just two of its gifts to music and dance. We feature not only genuine home-grown Brazilians like João Gilberto and Luiz Bonfá but also a raft of Americans like Stan Getz, Quincy Jones and Enoch Light who helped roll out Brazil’s music bandwagon in the early Sixties. The bossa nova literally means ‘new way’ or ‘new style’ and is an understated, easy-listening form of music with a distinctive rhythm and relatively simple instrumentation. It supplanted the samba in popularity in the late Fifties. Luiz Bonfá moved to the United States to record albums for the American market after his contribution to the soundtrack of Orfeo Do Carnaval (Black Orpheus) brought him late-Fifties acclaim. He even penned a song for Elvis Presley to sing in a movie. Pianist and bandleader Sergio Mendes also moved to the States in 1964 and went global shortly thereafter with the album ‘Herb Alpert Presents Sergio Mendes And Brasil ’66’. His popularity continues to this day, his music a staple of hip easy-listening compilations. Cuban music is essentially dance music incorporating African and Spanish influences. The world music and salsa dance craze in the Nineties coincided with Cuba becoming more accessible and ignited interest in its music. The ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ CD and movie, inspired by a defunct Havana music club from the Forties and Fifties, introduced the world to a generation of prominent musicians like singer Ibrahim Ferrer – ‘the Cuban Nat King Cole’, according to Ry Cooder – and pianist Rubén Gonzalez who appear on our compilation. While 20 artists took part in the initial Buena Vista project, it was charismatic Compay Segundo that Wim Wenders’ cameras first homed in on. Resplendent in check jacket and Panama hat, the veteran singer toured Havana in the back of a vintage soft-top car looking for the long since defunct Buena Vista Social Club. At 89 years of age, he was one of many performers whose talents had been overlooked for too long, partly because of poor political relations between the US and Cuba that had included a trade embargo. The Caribbean island half the size of the United Kingdom and with less than half its population is famous for producing great percussionists. Mongo Santamaria enjoyed a brilliant career as a conga player and remained active and influential until his death in 2003. Another Cuban institution is Sonora Matancera, a brass-heavy outfit that started life in the Twenties. The band has had many featured singers over the years including Celia Cruz, who started her career with them and fronts them here. The renowned Queen of Salsa left the island in 1960, just before Fidel Castro came to power, and, after settling in the United States, did much to foster the growth of Hispanic music there. Like Cruz, Pérez Prado, Cuba’s King of the Mambo, is another graduate of the Sonora Matancera, if from a slightly earlier era. He moved to Mexico in 1948 and went on to take the US by storm three years later. We feature such well-known Prado pieces as ‘Mambo No 5’ and his US/UK chart-topping cha-cha version of ‘Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White’ from 1955. ‘Patricia’ has been used many times in the media since its 1958 release, most recently by the UK’s Royal Mail for a series of memorable TV commercials. Latin music proved popular throughout the world from the early decades of the last century, when the socialites of New York and Paris danced the rumba, mambo and cha-cha-cha, to the present day, when its rhythms have enlivened programmes like Strictly Come Dancing. This package of exotic listening will help that sexy sound continue to reverberate – and the good news is you don’t need to speak Spanish or Portuguese to join in the fun. Just let your feet do the talking!