For more than 50 years, New York City’s East Harlem neighbourhood has been a crucible for Latin music. Better known as Spanish Harlem, or simply El Barrio (the ’hood), this community gave rise to boogaloo, Latin soul, and the hot salsa that conquered the world’s dance floors with the songs of Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Rubén Blades, and their peers. The 13-piece Spanish Harlem Orchestra is dedicated to bringing back the vintage salsa dura sound of the ’70s, and taking it further.

“The essence of this music had been lost for 15 years or so,” says the SHO’s pianist and bandleader, Oscar Hernández, on the line from Los Angeles. “It became pop-salsa, mass-produced and featuring just the singer.…Some of the music was really well produced, but devoid of the raw organic sound that existed earlier.…Our arrangements are made by people with their fingers directly on the pulse of this sound: Gil Lopez, Sonny Bravo, Angel Fernández, José Febles, and myself.”

The spark for SHO came circa 2000, when Latin-music record producer Aaron Levinson called Hernández with the concept for a band to bring back the sound of the days when salsa was king. Hernández pulled together a dream team of musicians. “Salsa dura means strong, hard-core, full of energy—not the slick, glossed-over salsa. We’ve got guys who played in the greatest bands, with people like Ray Barretto and Eddie Palmieri.”

Although the recording was a stunner, SHO’s debut got shelved for 18 months during a record-company shuffle. When Levinson eventually released Un Gran Dia En El Barrio in 2002 on Ropeadope Records, it was hugely successful and netted a Grammy nomination for best salsa album. By then, the band was already burning up the stages at home and abroad.

SHO bagged a best salsa/merengue album Grammy in 2004 for Across 110th St, and its third CD was also nominated at this year’s awards for best tropical Latin album. United We Swing mainly features original material, a response to remarks that, according to Hernández, missed the point of what his band is all about.

“We were criticized for not producing our own songs, which is kind of ridiculous,” he says. “We can easily do that. I just think it’s important for us to take songs that were done before and rework them. We don’t do them the same way.…These guys really know what salsa is all about…and they’re familiar with the legacies of all the musicians that came before. We’ve created an incredible machine worthy of bearing the name Spanish Harlem Orchestra. We swing—and so will you.”

Spanish Harlem Orchestra plays the Commodore on Friday (February 15).