Pupi Legarreta

Innovative Cuban violinist, flautist, singer, band leader, arranger, composer Legarreta was a key participant in the early 60s pachanga/charanga craze, mid-70s to early 80s charanga revival and New York descarga movement. As a boy he paid for violin tuition by working as a barber, which his father urged him to abandon. Pupi left Cuba in 1959 and joined the USA's second charanga band, Orquesta Nuevo Ritmo, (the first was a short-lived outfit founded by Gilberto Valdés in 1952) organized in the mid-50s by Cuban conguero Armando Sánchez in Chicago. Nuevo Ritmo's personnel include...