My most recent project, Zemog El Gallo Bueno, is a celebration of the sometimes harmonious and sometimes dissonant marriage between Latino and American musics, culture, language and values. Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol’s early Latin Jazz experiments such as “Caravan,” Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo’s Afro- Cuban jazz odyssey,“Manteca,” Machito and Mario Bauza’s “Tanga” are three very different early examples of previous investigations into the potential of this cultural marriage. From these masters and others such as Sun Ra, Cortijo, Hector Lavoe and Eddie Palmieri, I have learned that the most important aspect to writing music is knowing your roots yet making them your own as an individual, a mirror of your own times and your own experiences. Having lived in rural and urban Puerto Rico, various realities in the U.S.A, and Peru I can’t claim “traditional” or musical purity. I incorporate Puerto Rican, Cuban, Peruvian, and American Jazz traditions into my music but also tinges, drops, colors and echoes of Santana Rock’n’Roll, Devo New wave music, Public Enemy Hip Hop and Lyrics, Metallica Heavy Metal textures, Huun-Hur-Tu Tuvan throat singing, and Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, and Jim Hobbs Free Jazz. These echoes are there not to create a post modern pastiche but to give an accurate representation of the my Latino-American experience since 1972.

The band Zemog, El Gallo Bueno that has slowly and organically assembled is a combination of musicians that are well versed in Latin music as well as jazz. The group started as a trio with Venezuelan percussionist Luis Blanco and Chinese/Welch cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum. Blanco had collaborated in my last project the avant-Latin punk band Jayuya. Bynum's experience included work with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor and the Fully Celebrated Orchestra. I was playing a baritone electric guitar and singing. A year later I was given one night a week to play afro-beat music at a local salsa club. I had assembled a large band to improvise in the afro-beat style, but my two guitar players did not show up. So I got out my guitar and had the band play my own compositions. Slowly Zemog, El Gallo Bueno developed, as a regular crew of musicians came every week and what became a live rehearsal. These musicians included Venezuelan guitarist/ percussionist Daniel Moncada, American Jim “Mondongo” Messbauer (the best salsa trombonist in New England), Argentinean Latin jazz specialist Santiago Greco on bass. Puerto Rican composer/guitarist Gian Carlo Buscaglia, and baritone saxophonist /bass player Timo Shanko who plays contra-bass with the Joe Morris trio and the fully celebrated Orchestra came every week to do a live rehearsal (Shanko has done 38 volumes of John Coltrane transcriptions). When the opportunity to record came about Zemog, El Gallo Bueno was ready for the challenge.

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Zemog, El Gallo Bueno Pioneers Salsa From a Chicken CoopThe ...
Song Explanations
Abraham Gomez-Delgado’s Artist Statement

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