The region’s longest running Latin music festival is making a move.
“It’s the 17th at the 17th,” says “Sweet” Lou Hidalgo, the founder and host of The Latin Jazz and Salsa Show Festival, an annual city staple featuring a daylong array of Spanish, Afro-Cuban and Puerto Rican music and dance. On Aug. 31, after more than a decade at Dogwood Dell, the 17th salsa fest (still free of charge) will be grooving at the 17th Street Farmers Market in Shockoe Bottom. The organizers are calling it the “Rumba En La Marketa.”
“We’re not local, we’re not regional, we’re not national or even international, we’re universal,” says Hidalgo, who puts on the festival with a small cast of devoted volunteers. “60 to 70% of the audience is non-Latino. They are just people who love Latin jazz.”
Edwin Ortiz and La mafia Del Guaguanco, considered by many to be the Washington, D.C. area’s best salsa orchestra, will headline the event, augmented by vocalist Vivian Mojica. The Grammy-nominated Ortiz is coming off of several hits on the national Latin charts. “Last year, I heard the releases that they had, and I knew they would be a hit and I called it like a shotgun. I said, ‘I gotta sign you now.’ Those songs are going to be killing it. And they are.”
The festival will also feature the energetic new-style Florida salsa of Edwin “El Calvito” Reyes, who was formerly the music director for the first Latin jazz band in the U.S. Army, and sassy Cuban son vocalist Rossi Lopez from Newport News.
Hidalgo is proud to spotlight local artists too. “This year, we have Friday Love, who has an Afro-Latin soul style, and Shayla V is a Spanish hip-hop artist. We also have Alejandro and his Nephews, who play Latin jazz and funk.” Grupo Ritmo Son will also be featured, a group of retired veterans that play upbeat, rock ‘n’ roll-infused salsa. For dance enthusiasts, there’s Salsa with Boris, which Hidalgo describes as “a Las Vegas-style performance” and Salsa Connection, who will give the crowd a dance lesson.
With the new venue, the festival is also holding its first ever auto show, thanks to the Latin Hitterz car club. “We’ll have four categories and one grand champion; there will be hot rods, classics, modifieds.” In addition to the event’s annual canned food drive, firefighters from Southside’s Fire Station 21 will be on hand to administer blood pressure and wellness tests, and will be given a special community service award from the organizers.
In past years, the Latin Jazz and Salsa Show Festival has attracted more than 7,500 people, a long way from those first years when the event was held for a few hundred in the parking lot of WCLM radio. The annual gathering came out of a Latin Jazz radio show that Hidalgo, who was born in Peru, started at WCLM soon after moving his family and plumbing business from Brooklyn, New York after 9/11.
“I walked out of the station with a contract for what I thought was a 30-second commercial,” he recalls. “My wife said, ‘No, you knucklehead, you’ve got a contract for a 30-minute radio show. So I first thought I’d do a plumbing-type talk show, kind of like the Car Talk guys, and ‘no,’ my wife said, ‘the show should be about what you love and the commercials should be about the plumbing.'”
It was life-changing advice. Hidalgo, a former musician, loved sharing his favorite salsa and Latin jazz, and his “Latin Jazz and Salsa Show” can still be heard every Saturday on WHAP Fox Radio The Point 96.9 FM and 1340 AM. He also built a broadcast studio and started his own online Oasis Broadcasting Network in the back of his plumbing company, Master & Sons, transmitting old and new Latin music 24 hours a day at https://rdo.to/WOBN. “Sweet Lou” is responsible for the playlist. “I love doing it. It’s easy for me.”
While salsa is clearly the predominant style of his radio broadcasts, and the festival, one can also hear rumbas, sambas, the cha-cha-cha and other dance styles within the Spanish tradition. “There is no pure salsa,” Hidalgo maintains. “Salsa is a sauce, and what do you do to make a sauce? You take a little bit of this, a little bit of that, stir it and marinate.”
The 17th Annual Latin Jazz & Salsa Show Festival will be held Saturday, Aug. 31 at the 17th Street Farmers Market, 100 E 17th Street. Noon to 8 p.m. The event is free. oasisbroadcastingnetwork.com
