Azúcar / Azucar

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the U.S. embargo of Cuba made it illegal for Americans to receive or purchase products that were manufactured in Cuba — and that includes everything from cigars to records, cassettes, and CDs. So under the embargo, Los Van Van's Cuban albums could not legally be imported to the U.S.; if U.S. customs saw an LP that was manufactured in Havana, they would confiscate it. But while American retailers couldn't legally sell a Cuban release, they could sell Cuban recordings that American labels had licensed from Latin American and European labels. One of the excellent Van Van albums that has been available in the U.S. is Azucar. Most of the CD consists of straight-ahead Afro-Cuban salsa; however, it also contains a few cuts that are essentially Latin pop with Afro-Cuban elements, such as the moody "Oh, No." Among American salseros, Los Van Van isn't as well known as El Gran Combo or El Conjunto Classico. But as Azucar illustrates, the band (whose name is Spanish for the Go-Gos, although it had that name at least seven years before Belinda Carlisle's all-female new wave/power pop band) certainly deserves to be.