Great music comes from all over the world. Since the month of May features Cinco de Mayo, I thought it would be fun to play two songs that highlight the amazing music of Hispanic and Latin-American musicians.

First, we learned to play “Heaven” by Los Lonely Boys, a group of three self-proclaimed “Tex-ican” brothers: Henry, Jojo and Ringo. Their music fuses American blues and rock with Latin-American music, creating a unique sound all their own.

Carlos Santana needs no introduction. Hailing from Mexico, he made a name for himself by bringing his emotive guitar playing and wonderful musical culture to American audiences in the 60s and 70s. His album “Supernatural” featured several hit songs in 1999, proving that his spiritual approach to music and catchy songwriting had staying power.

During the jam, we spent an hour learning how to play each of these two tunes, gradually building the songs, section by section. By the end of the hour, the jammers were able to play through the entire song, aided only by a backing track that included vocals and drums. Everything else that you hear is played the jammers: the guitar parts, the bass parts and even the cajon!

I can’t help but to feel proud of all of the jammers for what they’ve accomplished together. Playing music is difficult, so, to learn a song from scratch and play through it successfully as group is simply incredible!

Check out Madelyn, Dave, Ben, Kelli, Mike Ben and Gene as they play these Latin-inspired tunes! Not bad for an hour’s worth of jamming!

I plan on hosting jams several more times this year, so stay tuned.