El Palmas Music rescues a hidden gem of Venezuelan salsa.
With the vinyl reissue of En La Conquista del Mundo Latino (1979), by the Salsa Suprema Orchestra, it pays a fair tribute to Larry Francia.
“Larry Francia’s work deserves nothing less than transcendence,” says Miguel Álvarez, the Venezuelan musical collector and archaeologist who one day came across with this Salsa legend from his country without planning it and knew it was fair and necessary to spread this magnificent work.
Born in Barlovento, an Afro area of Venezuela where the drum rules, Larry Francia grew up in San Agustín del Sur, a Caracas neighborhood that is salsa territory par excellence. When he was barely 12 years old, Víctor Piñero, one of the most popular orchestra singers in Venezuela in the 60s, summoned him to record choirs. An early initiation that marked Larry forever and at the same time revealed his indisputable talent.
“His driving force is singing. If you’re talking to him, he often stops talking to sing” says Álvarez. “He was a man who never stopped being a musician, even though his living conditions were never the best. And the legacy of Salsa Suprema is key to Venezuelan popular music.”
When that orchestra stopped working (there were no producers who supported their tours, their records were pirated in Spain in the 80s), Larry suffered an emotional breakdown and even gave up devoting himself to music for a few years. He was someone who undoubtedly lived for and through music.
Larry Francia left this world in 2023, but we are left with a fabulous album like En La Conquista del Mundo Latino, recovered from the chest of memories by Álvarez and the Suicide Diggerz collective, specialists in rescuing hidden gems. “It is a collector’s item of the most exquisite and least known Venezuelan salsa” he defines.
The El Palmas Music label – created by musician, DJ, designer and cultural agitator Maurice Aymard, whose base of operations is in Barcelona – has been committed since 2020 to making known the best and least visible of the rich heritage of the popular music from Venezuela. Now he is pleased to present the reissue of this fundamental album as a posthumous tribute to an artist with capital letters: the great LARRY FRANCIA.
Tracklist:
SIDE A: 1. Papa Upa – 2. Contribuciones – 3. Para Pareja – 4. Porque Llora – 5. Que Corto Es El Amor
SIDE B: 1. Estamos En Algo – 2. Que Voy A Hacer – 3. Tamborilero – 4. Nieblas de Riachuelo – 5. La Negra