Three times Cuban Olympic champion and arguably the finest boxer in history, Teofilo Stevenson, sadly passed away this week. He once said 'What is a million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?" after rejecting multi-million pound offers from US promoters to go professional, which would have resulted in history's ultimate boxing match against Mohamed Ali - a match that never happened. This week we pay tribute to a great Cuban sportsman and other great moments linking Latinos to its neighbourly giant up north, the US.
In 2004 the Uruguayan singer-songwriter, Jorge Drexler, won the Oscar for El Otro Lado del Rio, title song for Walter Salles'The Motor Cycle Diaries and the first ever won in the Spanish language. When the Oscar's took the unprecedented move of not allowing Drexler to sing his own song at the ceremony, imposing a rendition by the more famous Carlos Santana and Antonio Banderas, Drexler on winning the award accepted it by singing his own song after all. A big two fingers to the ratings obsessed Oscar organizers.
A much less controversial but no less beautiful moment on US television was Segio Mendes' first appearance with "Mas que Nada' - a song (yes in a foreign language!) that the US couldn't get enough of. It was the first time a song in Portuguese reached the top 5 on the Billboard magazine pop chart. Forty years later the Black Eyed Peas re-recorded it. As good is the original? You judge...
Sergio Mendes (who plays at O2 Indigo very soon) has been called Brazil's Perez Prado, doing for Bossa Nova in the US, what Perez Prado did for Mambo. Here we have MAMBO JAMBO, which the name QUE RICO EL MAMBO was translated into to be able to market PEREZ PRADO in the USA. The phrase became part of US lingo, the beginning of many new American words to come!
Salsa subverts American Football with superbowl hero Victor Cruz
