\n<\/p>\n
Eddie Palmieri<\/a>, the pianist, composer, and bandleader who was instrumental in the creation and ongoing reinvention of salsa, died on Wednesday, August 6, at his home in Hackensack, New Jersey. The news was shared in an Instagram post<\/a>. His youngest daughter, Gabriela Palmieri, told The New York Times<\/em><\/a> that her father\u2019s death followed \u201can extended illness.\u201d He was 88 years old.<\/p>\n Eduardo \u201cEddie\u201d Palmieri was born to Puerto Rican parents in New York\u2019s Spanish Harlem. His older brother, Charlie Palmieri, also a pioneering pianist, led the way for his younger sibling, who wavered between piano and timpani but finally abandoned his role as a \u201cfrustrated percussionist\u201d to \u201ctake it out on the piano,\u201d\u00a0as he once<\/a> put it. The eight-piece he formed in 1961, La Perfecta, steered the mambo scene towards the more complex Afro-Cuban rhythms of salsa, but was so inventive and bloody-minded that it seemed to instantaneously explode out of the genre it was forming. As saccharine salsa rom\u00e1ntica<\/em> became a pop phenomenon, Palmieri skewed toward economical composition and sonic bombardment, his penchant for trombone-heavy setups sparking a movement of its own within salsa. His monumental 1969 album, Justicia<\/em>, combined elements of funk, soul, and psychedelic rock with Cuban dance rhythms and lyrics rallying against racism and colonialism.<\/p>\n Though the genre bears his unmistakeable imprint, Palmieri was always unhappy with the term \u201csalsa\u201d and referred to his music as \u201cAfro-Cuban,\u201d part of a continuum mixing African rhythms with an expanding range of diasporic influences. Going forward, he preferred to play in smaller bands, favoring a conjunto<\/em> format more in keeping with his combustible sensibility. That sensibility translated to his business dealings\u2014he was nicknamed \u201cthe Madman of Salsa\u201d for his confrontations with everyone from mob-backed industry executives to the Inland Revenue Service\u2014even as he embedded in the working musician lifestyle, becoming a regular of the mythic Monday night bills at New York club Village Gate.<\/p>\n Palmieri\u2019s proud status as a working-class insurgent in the music industry never stopped him winning establishment respect, almost in spite of himself. In 1976<\/a>, he became the first Latin person to win a Grammy<\/a>\u2014taking the inaugural Best Latin Recording award for the album Sun of Latin Music<\/em>\u2014and went on to win seven more, including the following year\u2019s in the same category, this time for Unfinished Masterpiece<\/em>. His prestige allowed him to push for the creation, in 1995, of the Best Latin Jazz Album category, which he successfully campaigned to reinstate after its deletion in 2012. His final solo studio album, Listen Here!<\/em>, won the category\u2019s 2006 award, and he continued to release collaborative records and tour well into his eighties. In 2013, the National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master and the Latin Grammys gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n