Español

Having read and written so much about food, recipes, ingredients and everything else related to food, I decided to take a break from it once a week and write about anything else that comes to mind. I don’t know if this stuff will be read or if it will be appreciated at all, but I loved the idea and wanted to share with you a little bit of everything.So let’s talk about music. Who doesn’t like music? Listen to it, dance to it, feel it. It fills our world and life with intense emotions that we can’t seem to be able to express. OK, so let’s put all that mushy stuff aside and get to the point. Everyone who knows me well knows that even though I listen to many different types of music, nothing makes me happier than listening to vallenato, which is a very particular genre of music that comes from the northern Colombian coast. But during my teenage years I started listening and appreciating jazz music, which was so popular during the 40s and 50s. It all started when I lived in a very small town called Ellenville, which is about an hour and a half from New York City and where the only radio station that could be heard without any static only played these type of old songs from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and many others that had that particular swing. At first I hated it because I wanted to listen to bands like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and everything else that was popular back then. But I couldn’t do anything about it and I was pretty much forced to listen to music that was only popular during the time that my father was still a teenager. And what do you know? I ended up loving it and to this day I love listening to anything that has that particular swing.Then about a year or two ago one of my Facebook contacts recommended a new Colombian band that was different from the rest. It’s a young band with very talented musicians who blend Latin sounds with the kind of swing, jazzy music I was talking about earlier. The result of this fusion is very hard to describe and that’s why I have decided to share with you their wonderful music. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. I present to you, Monsieur Periné.