He roped salsa into conversation with jazz, rock, funk and even modern classical music. “A new world music,” one critic said, “is being born.”
Eddie Palmieri in the early 1960s.Credit...Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty Images
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By Giovanni Russonello
Eddie Palmieri, a pianist, composer and bandleader whose contributions to Afro-Caribbean music helped usher in the golden age of salsa in New York City, and whose far-reaching career established him as one of the great musical masterminds of the 20th century — not to mention one of its fieriest performers — died on Wednesday at his home in Hackensack, N.J. He was 88.
