re your spanish, all you to do to revive it is find or *adopt* a mother-in-law who is under the impression that she speaks english, but in fact, does not (g). i owe all of my spanish (except the bad grammar) to the tenacity of mine. (her spanish is very poetic and correct) many times in our marriage, she has spent a few months with us at a time. she never quite got the concept that there were people who actually did *not* speak or understand spanish, so she never gave up on me. spanish is the one language i never studied formally, so i like to say, when complimented on the fact that i can speak it, that, yes, my spanish *is* good, with the exception of the missing grammar and limited vocabulary! (g) oddly enough, it is the one foreign language that i feel totally comfortable using, total present tense and all! german, i'm always double checking case, tense, gender - *before* i open my mouth.

so, dragging self unwillingly back on topic - i checked some of the cds i had at home. *i* liked the following with caveats in ():

elvis crespo (tu sonrisa)
grupo mania (como baila)
melina leon (mujeres liberadas)
celia cruz (bembelequa)
orquesta marecan(enya, actually)a (cali calor)
dlg (dark latin groove) (has some parts with a kind of rap - however, *i* like the songs, and rap is, generally speaking, not even on my radar as anything but noise) (la quiero a morir; magdalena, mi amor - quimbara; juliana)
mdo (used to be the puerto rican boys' band before ricky martin left) (dame un poco mas; baila la rumba; diana; toma mis manos)

completely unrelated to latin music, if you're in the mood to experiment: there's a wonderful group named zap mama. they sing acapella in their cd "adventures in afropea 1." it is a terrific and unusual mixture of zulu, pygmy, rwandan, french, english, and arabic. they have other cds out, but this is the one i know and highly recommend.