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Mixing together the incendiary influences of several styles of music, Bronx River Parkway is a collective of players from New York who all come with arm-long resumes. With that kind of experience, you know the sound is going to be explosive. On their debut album, the band went to San Juan for some of these recording sessions, and teamed with salsa musicians there known as the Candela All Stars, who’ve performed with all-time greats like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz and Ray Baretto. The results sound like a meeting of like-minded souls who spur each other on to even greater heights. There is such funkiness to songs like “Nora Se Va” and “Me Toca” that it appears Bronx River Parkway is in the middle of inventing their own hybrid. The group, twenty strong here, have been set free to go down any number of avenues, and while everything stays in an explicitly fiery Puerto Rican groove, there is plenty of room around the edges for other flavors to seep in from the United States, West Indies, Africa, Dominican Republic and Cuba. That’s the real beauty of cross-pollination, and the secret of almost all timeless music: mixing and matching the wildness from different territories in a way that spurs everyone towards an original zone. What to tag it? How about just calling it fun and turning up San Sebastian 152 to twelve. A great summer (or anytime, really) stunner.
