Eddie Palmieri

With 36 albums and 9 Grammys to his name, Eddie Palmieri is not just a living legend of Latin Music, but also one of the leading pianists alive today.

He was born in Spanish Harlem in 1936, when it was in the grip of Mambo fever, to Puerto-Rican parents of Italian extraction. At the time, immigrants from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean were beginning to forge a common Latino identity in New York, adapting Afro-Cuban music traditions and creating new urban variations. At the age of eight, Palmieri began to play in orchestras. In 1961, he founded his own: "La Perfecta". At the same time, the Fania Records label turned this characteristic Afro-Latino sound into the Salsa brand, allowing him to experiment with avant-garde arrangements without losing popularity: at the piano, Palmieri dismantled rhythms and chords, experimented with Free Jazz and Funk and played a leading role in the renewal of Latin Jazz. And to this day, he still holds the title “The Wild Man Of Salsa“.

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