salsa
Richmond, Virginia
Photo: Mauricio Castro
On the heels of their wildly successful 30th-anniversary shows in 2022, local legends Bio Ritmo are celebrating a hometown reunion at the 2023 Richmond Folk Festival. Although the band’s hard-charging salsa grooves are celebrated by fans worldwide—there are even two bars in Colombia named for them, one for their iconic song “La Muralla”—Virginia isn’t otherwise known as a Latin music hot spot. It’s this very improbability of a salsa band from Richmond that makes Bio Ritmo such a source of RVA pride.
The Bio Ritmo story begins in 1991, when artist and educator Jorge Negron pulled together a group of friends from Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts to provide live percussion accompaniment for an IMAX volcano film at the Science Museum of Virginia. No one anticipated the seismic shift this presaged for the local music scene. That first iteration of the band, which included Rei Alvarez (now the band’s lead vocalist) and bandmate-turned-producer Jim Thomson, coalesced around a shared love for the salsa beats of Alvarez and Negron’s native Puerto Rico. Bio Ritmo also brimmed with the energy and eclecticism that came from the musicians’ diverse experience playing punk, jazz, and much more. Soon the ensemble included Bio Ritmo stalwarts, percussionists Giustino Riccio and Gabo Tomasini, and Bob Miller on trumpet. Together, the band launched a serious study of salsa—listening to albums Negron’s father, a renowned DJ, sent from Ponce, the birthplace of signature Puerto Rican sounds, as well as taking lessons from local percussion master Miguel Valdez. Early shows covering salsa classics gave way to barnstorming international performances of original compositions and over a dozen albums and singles as the band built a reputation among salsa aficionados.
Bio Ritmo’s dance-forward and sometimes-experimental marriage of a formidable brass section with Puerto Rican percussion traditions—bongos, congas, timbales, claves, and guiro—can sound undeniably new. But it’s also the recipe that gave birth to a salsa revival in the New York barrios of the 1970s, when traditional musicians from the Puerto Rican and Cuban diaspora began to collaborate with New York-trained jazz artists. As opposed to the glossy and often commercial salsa romantica that followed, this collision of tradition and transformation was a perfect inspiration for a band hailing from Virginia, where self-invention was the only way to create a salsa scene.
As with any band three decades in, Bio Ritmo has seen changes, but their commitment to building an undeniable dance party on the rhythms of salsa never wavers. With a current line-up that has been together for over a decade, the ensemble now includes original members Alvarez, Riccio, and Miller; brothers Will and Marc Roman on congas and trumpet, respectively; bassist Eddie Prendergast; John Lilley on tenor sax; Toby Whitaker on trombone; and keyboardist and bandleader Marlysse Simmons. At the festival, Bio Ritmo’s shows will feature guest appearances from beloved former member, percussionist Héctor “Coco” Barez, frequent collaborator J.C. Kuhl on baritone sax, and the return from Puerto Rico of founder Jorge Negron. Let’s consider it the start of the next 30 years for this Richmond institution.