El Progreso

Roberto Roena’s tenth album with his Apollo Sound group ended the group’s classic run. Slicker and more polished than their earlier work, it was still as stylistically wide-ranging as ever, with the punchy jazz-rock horn section that was their trademark. The title track is a version of Brazilian singer-songwriter Roberto Carlos’s song addressing environmental concerns. Roena slathered it in strings, but kept the salsa rhythm propulsive. The album’s social consciousness didn’t stop there; “Lamento de Concepción,” written by Tite Curet Alonso, dealt with the hardships endured by poor workers in the city, much in the spirit of Willie Colón and Rubén Blades’ Siembra, released the same year.