In his liner notes to Salsa de la Bahia Vol. 3: Renegade Queens, renowned San Francisco Bay Area jazz DJ and music writer Jesse “Chuy” Varela offers crucial context. “As you listen to the music presented here,” he writes, “understand that this compilation is as much a celebration of the Bay Area music community as it is these individual artists.” Of course, the community in question is no one thing. There are metaphorical acres between Haight Street hippies and Silicon Valley oligarchs. The artists featured on Renegade Queens all dwell somewhere in this vast terrain, making music that falls under the broad heading of Latin jazz. Even after narrowing the compilation’s focus to women artists, it’s immense in scope.
It’s curated accordingly. Over 19 tracks, series creator and filmmaker Dr. Rita Hargrave (The Last Mambo) attends to many different styles with the production help of famed trombonist and bandleader Wayne Wallace. The recordings here are mainly from the 2000s. Few of the women in question had access to studio recording before then, notes Varela, but Dr. Hargrave also finds tracks from the 1990s and includes more recent pieces. The message is clear: the Bay Area Latin jazz scene has deep roots and remains vital today, and there have always been women in the mix. While unsurprising, these women have long gone unrecognized, and Renegade Queens rejects this omission.
The music is an eclectic mix. The album begins with “We Were Born to Drum”, a brassy mambo with lyrics by Bay Area poet and multi-hyphenate creative Avotcja. Arranged by Wallace, it’s a prototypical big band piece composed for the record, an uplifting, on-the-nose ode to the women featured in this work. Christelle Durandy takes lead vocals atop an almost-all-female ensemble: “We were conceived in rhythm / Whether we knew it or not / Wanted or not.” It’s a sentimental beam of bright light; the rest of the LP refracts it into a spectrum.
Warmth predominates. Singer Xiomara Torres brings breezy sounds from the Pacific coast of her native Colombia to “Me Quedo Contigo”. Classical guitar makes for the perfect dramatic match to Lichi Fuentes’ voice on “Momento”. Playful synths add retro sound to the Blazing Redheads’ “Cosmo” and Carolyn Brandy’s “Odie”.
Few voices have been so naturally rich as Bobi Céspedes’ on a swaying rendition of “The Peanut Vendor”. Avotcja offers a cosmic recitation on “Matter Is”. The album sometimes leans a bit too far into nostalgia; a few tracks feel slightly cloying. Even so, this is a collection of skilled musicians, no question.
A long time has passed since San Francisco’s apparent artistic heyday. The Salsa de la Bahia series is a good reminder of how much creativity still simmers beneath the technocapitalist surface. Renegade Queens celebrates just a few women who call the region their home base. These are performers who love what they do, embrace and embody it. Even as they push against the masculine grain of the music industry, they sound like they have found a spiritual freedom in the loose confines of the Latin jazz world.