Pedro Conga

Though many of salsa and Latin jazz music's most successful bandleaders have been congueros and percussionists, the majority fell from public notice when the salsa market waned in the mid- to late '80s. Pedro Conga, however, experienced the very height of his success at a time when other salseros were packing up and going home. His landmark album, No Te Quites la Ropa, hit number two on Billboard's Tropical Salsa charts in 1989, well after the U.S. salsa boom of the '70s had subsided. Born in Humacao, Puerto Rico, Conga got his start backing up the vocalist Justo Betancourt, w...