Alex “Apolo” Ayala, Afro-Puerto Rican Jazz Review

By Jeff Becker

Alex “Apolo” Ayala emerges from San Juan’s vibrant musical environment, where bomba and plena pulse through every street corner, to stake his claim in New York’s competitive jazz scene. On his sophomore release, Afro-Puerto Rican Jazz, Ayala focuses on the dialogue between his Afro-Puerto Rican heritage and contemporary jazz idioms. Partnering with Miguel Zenón’s Miel Music and PMC Records, this album is a follow-up to Ayala’s 2022’s Bámbula. Afro-Puerto Rican Jazz underscores Miel Music’s commitment to elevating fresh voices in modern jazz.

Afro-Puerto Rican Jazz is music born in cultural and sonic exploration. Ayala merges the rhythms of bomba and the hypnotic cadences of plena with the improvisational daring of modern jazz and the textural openness of avant‑garde jazz. The resulting jazz interrogates the points of tension and release inherent to each tradition, carving new musical terrain.

“Río Piedras” opens the album with a buoyant bass and saxophone tutti, as Ayala channels the effervescence of his hometown river’s flow and drive. His lines ripple confidently with Fernando García’s drum figures, while Victor Pablo García’s hand drums punctuate each phrase with the primal heartbeat of bomba.

“Agonía Suite” unfolds in three movements. “Reckoning” launches with a hip groove-oriented bass line before a cadential unison between Ayala’s bass and Andrew Gould’s alto saxophone. “Hopelessness” surrenders to a folk‑like melody over a layered rhythmic bed, as the ensemble interacts back and forth to ornament the feel and character of the song.

“Uncertainty” wavers between 5/4 and 7/8 meters, mirroring the instability of unpredictable times; Ayala’s pizzicato work here has a resolute connection to the drum melodies. “Ngudi” pays tribute to Ayala’s late mother, weaving Kikongo phrases into its refrain. The interplay between soprano sax and requinto drum, handled by Nelson Matthew Gonzalez, imbues the track with a sense of ancestral invocation.

“3D Plena” reimagines Ray Santos’s classic “3D Mambo” through a modern jazz lens: rapid horn runs soar over syncopated plena rhythms, showcasing Ayala’s facility for turning afro Puerto Rican material into fresh modern jazz statements.

“Bomba Pa’ Ana Luisa” and “Sweetness” form a heartfelt diptych to Ayala’s wife. The former unfurls like a courtly dance, its melody draped in melodic elegance; the latter ventures into avant‑garde jazz territory, Ayala’s melodic sensibility bleeding into extended expressive passages.

“Cuembé” closes the album on a celebratory note, exploding in high‑spirited tutti passages that merge regional bomba variants into a kaleidoscope of polyrhythms, an apt finale for an album so dedicated to fusion and festivity.

Ayala surrounds himself with intuitively responsive collaborators. Andrew Gould’s alto and soprano saxophones cut through the percussive textures with crystalline lyricism, while Fernando García and Victor Pablo García anchor the groove in unmistakable Afro–Puerto Rican feels. Nelson Matthew Gonzalez’s requinto drum adds color on “Ngudi,” deepening the album’s pan‑African resonance. Throughout, the group navigates shifting meters and complex polyrhythms with the ease of long‑standing rapport, demonstrating a collective fluency in both tradition and exploratory improvisation.

Miel Music’s decision to release Ayala’s work, the label’s first non‑Zenón recording, signals a pivotal broadening of its mission to champion emergent artists. The production, overseen by Zenón himself, captures the visceral energy of each performance: drums and percussion are miked with warmth and presence, while Ayala’s bass sits robustly in the mix, never overshadowed by the horn lines. Subtle reverbs lend atmospheric depth without sacrificing clarity, an engineering feat that balances raw rhythm with studio polish.

Afro-Puerto Rican Jazz is a dynamic project that brings to the foregrounding bomba and plena within a jazz context; Ayala invites listeners to explore these rhythms beyond surface‑level “Latin” veneers, emphasizing their structural and expressive potentials. The album amplifies Puerto Rican voices in the global jazz narrative and, in doing so, preserves and evolves the island’s rich musical lineage for future generations.

With Afro-Puerto Rican Jazz, Alex “Apolo” Ayala delivers an album that is as emotionally resonant as it is adventurous. He has crafted a work that honors his roots while charting broad harmonic and rhythmic territories.