My Top 10 Latin [Dance] Songs

My brilliant, funny (and much younger) cousin Wendy does a weekly Facebook post in which she reviews a song – usually after having a glass of wine – that’s meaningful to her in some way at that specific moment. I’d point you to the posts but they’re only for her friends and she doesn’t know you that well. (I have threatened to repost her articles on these pages, since she refuses to blog them, due to some excuse having to do with raising three young sons or some such nonsense.) Anyway, I’m inspired by her to start doing some more music blogging, and I’m starting south of the border.

I’ve always had a fondness for Latin-flavored music, but it’s been intensified over the past decade during which MLB and I started dancing. The Latin dances – primarily cha cha and rumba, but also samba and salsa (although we’re not very good at them) are our favorite ballroom steps, and so we have a corresponding attraction to the music.

So, the following are the ten songs I’d take with me to a desert island with a dance floor located off the coast of Mexico (or somewhere in the Caribbean; my net casts pretty wide), in no particular order.

• Accion y Reaccion by Thalía: Sometimes referred to as “the Queen of Latin pop,” Thalía is a Mexican singer, songwriter, and more. This song is a celebration of what we have in common, regardless of our cultural differences. If this catchy song doesn’t make you want to learn to speak Spanish, nothing will.

• Smooth by Santana and Rob Thomas: Some of the songs in this list might be unfamiliar to you, but this won’t be one of them, unless you’ve been living in a cave in the Ozarks for the past twenty years. According to this Wikipedia article, Smooth is the second most successful song in history (trailing only Chubby Checker’s The Twist, which isn’t Latin, AFAIK), as ranked by Billboard. It’s also an absolutely flawless rumba/cha cha number.

• Radio Sol by Mo’ Horizons: You know what I like about Mo’ Horizons (besides their musical talent)? They’re not Latin, or from the Caribbean…they’re German. You’ll often find their tracks on those funky cardboard-enclosed “world music” CDs in little shops in Santa Fe and Marfa, and they’ll invariably bring a smile to your face. I don’t know what Radio Sol is about; heck, I don’t even know what language it’s in. And, of course, I don’t care, because it evokes great memories of dive trips to the Lesser Antilles from back when international flying wasn’t such a royal pain.

• Tango by Jaci Velasquez: If you’re thinking that name rings a bell, it may be that you know Velasquez from her very successful career as a contemporary Christian musician, where she’s received seven Dove Awards. But she’s also a successful Latin crossover artist, singing in both Spanish and English, and this is one of my favorites (so much that I used it as the soundtrack to a video I created and posted here four years ago). But, even though the title says otherwise, this is not a tango; it works better as a slow cha cha.

• Malagueña Salerosa by Chingon: This is a seventy year old song made more popular by its inclusion in the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s 2004 movie, Kill Bill: Vol. 2. Texas musician and filmmaker Robert Rodriguez scored the movie, and also played guitar in the all-star band he assembled primarily to create music for movie soundtracks. The song is the epitome of dramatic, passionate Latin music, and it’s especially meaningful to me because we got to hear it performed live by Del Castillo in Fredericksburg at the Crossroads Saloon. Basically, Del Castillo is Chingon, with the addition of Robert Rodriguez. (More about Del Castillo below.)

• Dance in the Moonlight by The Mavericks: I have a love/hate relationship with this catchy little samba. I hate it because every time I hear it, it becomes an earworm that I can’t shake for literally days. This is another song that we got to hear performed live when The Mavericks came to Midland a couple of years ago. It was a terribly frustrating concert…because there’s no place to dance, and it’s difficult to sit still when the musicians get wound up.

• So Nice (Summer Samba) by Bebel Gilberto: This is another older song (it was written in 1964, which doesn’t seem that old to me, but I realize it’s ancient history to some of you); this version was recorded in 2000 by the Brazilian singer Bebel Gilberto. This is another song with a misleading title; it’s a bossa nova, not a samba, which is perhaps a distinction without a difference to most of us. Regardless, it’s chill in every important sense.

• I Never Cared for You by Del Castillo with Willie Nelson: Willie Nelson wrote and recorded this song in 1964, but he says that this version recorded with Del Castillo in 2006 is his favorite. The Del Castillo brothers (one of which, by the way, was a biomedical science major at Texas A&M) provide the intricate guitar stylings that reinforce the Latin flavor, and Alex Ruiz – who is no longer with the band – shares vocalist duties with Nelson. (Ruiz is also the singer on Malagueña Salerosa, listed above.)

• Quizás, quizás, quizás by Andrea Bocelli and Jennifer Lopez: Again, we reach back in musical history to retrieve a classic. This song – the title to which translates to “perhaps, perhaps, perhaps” – was written in the 1940s and has been covered many times since. Doris Day did a winsome English version of the song in 1964, but there’s just something about the Spanish version that elevates the romance factor of the rumba beat. Bocelli and J-Lo bring exactly the right mix of emotions to a classic.

• She Bangs by Ricky Martin: We don’t need to dwell on the irony of Ricky singing this particular song; we only need to focus on the insistent driving beat that makes this a cha cha that inevitably results in a sweat-soaked, oxygen-deprived post-dance glow. Well, just take my word for it.