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Title: Carmen Rivero's Cumbias - Not for Hispanics Only
Review: I can date my love for Latin music back to the night in 1966 when the East Texans at a dinner party my parents were hosting had drunk enough wine to dance and my father put this record on the hi-fi turntable. My parents had come of age during mambo/cha-cha dance "crazes" of the '50's, so the arrival of the cumbia must have struck a chord in their thrity-something psyches. I was seven when the distinctive clarinet section of the Rivero Conjunto woke me up. I still have the cassette of it that I took with me to college. A few years later I was working in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where cumbia is a secular religion. But when I put this tape on, the Guayaquileños would readily admit that no band was ever hotter. This should be a cornerstone of any Latin music collection.
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