Harlem River Drive

The Harlem River Drive used to be a highway; concrete, solid, unchanging. lts function was to skirt Harlem, an area no one wanted to really see for very long. Move fast enough and you couldn't hear the hungry baby crying. Drive fast enough and you wouldn't have to see the junkies' painful faces. That . . . was the first Harlem River Drive.

Now the HARLEM RIVER DRIVE is a different trip. Eddie Palmieri, a renowned progressive Latin artist, heads an impressive list of Latin and Black Musicians who together create an all new road, one that doesn't skirt anything: a road that goes right to the heart of the transplanted third world. Eddie Palmieri's "Harlem River Drive" is a look from the inside.

The reality of the music of "The Harlem River Drive" is the reality of the people who created it and the people for whom it was created. It is Latin music, combined with Black Soul, Jazz, and Electric Rock, a synthesis as true as the sounds of the streets where lies its roots.

"The song poetry comes off like it was forced out of non-poets by some crisis on the city streets. "Harlem River Drive" says it straight that the ship is sinking and that in desperation they are trying to move us to action through music, their strong card. And moving it is. - N. Y. Times