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‘s reputation as the ultimate Latin jazz party bandleader is quite misleading. The guy has been a top conguero since the 1980s, but his sin was growing up in Laredo, Texas, not in Cuba or Puerto Rico. After he won a Latin Grammy (his first major award) in 2000, things began to change. Critics who lived in a jar for two decades suddenly accepted him as a “serious” musician. Too bad Poncho followed up the Grammy victory with an even stronger album, Latin Spirits, which was ignored only for the fact that it was released on September 11, 2001. Damn jihad.
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