Biography
In the closing years of the 1990s the veteran Afro-Cuban percussionists Candido Camero, Carlos "Patato" Valdes, and Giovanni Hidalgo united under the name Conga Kings. Each musician already possessed a formidable body of work across Afro-Cuban traditions and jazz, with Camero and Valdes in particular viewed as senior figures in Latin jazz and the broad category salsa—an umbrella label commonly applied to son, cha cha, mambo, guaguancó, danzon, and the numerous other rhythms that originated in Cuba. Camero, born in Havana on April 22, 1921, relocated to the United States in 1945 and subsequently performed alongside Tony Bennett, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, and Machito. Valdes, likewise a native of Havana, entered the world on November 4, 1926; after settling in the U.S. in 1952 he collaborated with many leading artists in Latin jazz, hard bop, and salsa, among them Gillespie, Art Blakey, Herbie Mann, Kenny Dorham, and Quincy Jones. Hidalgo, the trio’s youngest member and its sole Puerto Rican, was born in San Juan in 1963 to percussionist Jose "Manengue" Hidalgo and is therefore young enough to be a grandson of either Camero or Valdes. Among the jazz figures who have featured him as a sideman are Dizzy Gillespie, Paquito D’Rivera, Flora Purim, and her husband, the percussionist Airto Moreira. The three musicians formed Conga Kings in New York during the late ’90s, signed with Chesky Records, and issued a self-titled debut in 2000. Their second Chesky album, Jazz Descargas, an extroverted and hard-swinging Latin jazz recording, was captured in 2000 and appeared the following year.
Albums
Singles
