One of the most suggestive variations of jazz music is the Latin one, which is the field of Miguel Zenón and Luis Perdomo.
Zenón was born in Puerto Rico and now lives in New York, even though he feels at home in California, having been a member of the San Francisco Jazz Collective for a decade. Perdomo is from Venezuela. He studied with Sir Roland Hanna and has performed with Ravi Coltrane and David Sanchez. He has been a member of the Zenón quartet. They both perform genres such as bolero that draw fully from the most sentimental side of life with great emotional involvement. The geographical area is Central America, the Antilles and Cuba. It is natural to think of Caribbean music as an explosion of cheerful rhythm and virtuosity, but it is not, or at least it is not only that. The mood of this duo is often melancholic Latin existentialism that is prone to dark colors and aware that, most of the time, life isn’t sweet. The repertoire of Zenón and Perdomo, live and in the two tremendous albums “El Arte Del Bolero” and “El Arte Del Bolero, Vol. 2” (the second one won a 2024 Grammy Award), is popular and sophisticated. This music is exotic for the origins but familiar to the audience.
It is evident that the two artists have the home court advantage with this music; better, they are native speakers.
Latin and jazz sounds merge naturally, so much so that this music can be considered “sui generis”, but first of all, it is an excellent example of jazz music.
