Los Nombres

Los Nombres may be one of the few Latin Soul/Funk bands of note that owes its existence in large part to a U.S. foreign aid program. In 1948, in response to growing poverty in Puerto Rico, the United States government established Project Bootstrap, a joint effort by public and private interests to reshape the Caribbean nation's faltering agrarian economy into a more stable industrial-based model. As American firms brought manufacturing to Puerto Rico, a growing number of citizens gained greater industrial skills, and the S.G. Friedman Agency, a firm based in Philadelphia that ...