Kinito Méndez

• Éxitos de Kinito Méndez [J & N, 2005] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Éxitos de Kinito Méndez [J & N, 2005]
In my tireless search for adults who know the difference between getting silly and acting the fool, I bring you a Dominican hit-maker who's so little-known in Anglophonia that the only Web info I could actually make sense of was some well-meaning afropop.org stuff about voudou and Afro-Dominican repression. Which is probably true as far as it goes, but misses the bucolic jocularity that jumps off every polka-like old-school merengue. For once I was grateful for the DVD, which hung some imagery a Yank could half understand off three tracks: little kids dancing, eightysomethings dancing, dentist looming, housewife sweeping, a nun, a hula hoop, lots of muggging, and Méndez's men doing their unacrobatic steps. I also learned that what I took to be single blasts on a baritone sax actually emanated from a truck horn. When I get somebody to translate, I bet the words make me chuckle too. A-