Mayito and Timbalive with Yussef Breffe at the 2014 SF Salsa Rueda Festival • photo by Tom Ehrlich

Look - nobody loves Los Van Van more than I do, and like most, I was both sad to hear that Mayito had left the group and uncertain that Mayito Rivera would be able to sustain the iconic gravitas of Mayito Van Van. The solo careers of Lele el padre, Israel Sardiñas, Mayito el Flaco, Ángel Bonne and even Pedrito Calvo will always be overshadowed by their work with Formell, but on the strength of this one performance, Mayito has emphatically cast that monkey off his back. It's now clear that Mayito simply had to leave - he's just too much singer to be relegated to two or three songs a night. 

Mayito captured and hypnotized a huge crowd of dancers and connoisseurs from the first note and relentlessly pushed them higher and higher for an hour and a half of non-stop tour de force inspiration. He was clearly excited and emotional but he maintained complete control, hitting perfectly intoned, full voice high As and above on every song without faltering.

By the second song, the night's opening coro, Llegó Mayito Rivera had taken on a much deeper meaning. This was not going to be merely a nostalgic look back at Mayito Van Van. It was Mayito Rivera, el Poeta de la Rumba, who had arrived - a new artist - now with the space and freedom to fully express himself with cadenzas, rubato intros, rumba and inspiraciones and to aspire on equal turf to the greatness of his idol Beny Moré.

I had seen flashes of Mayito's improvising in Havana, sitting in with Issac and Bamboleo, but this was 90 minutes of sustained in-the-moment brilliance. When he called for a rumba dancer, SF's own Yussef Breffe was busily taking photos with a large unwieldy camera and before he could put it down, Mayito had invented a coro about the non-sequitur of a rumbero con cámara? As soon as Yussef started to break out his prodigious moves, Mayito changed the coro to suelta la cámara! and the coristas, highlighted by the amazing Yezi González, instantly harmonized it while Mayito tossed off one incredible pregón after then next. The whole night was like this, and the euphoria on Yezi's face was telling. She kept looking over at the trombonistas as if to say "can you freaking believe this?" The whole Timbalive band was grinning from ear to ear and responding spontaneously to each unexpected bit of brilliance from Mayito.

Timbalive plays their own set tonight, Sunday, with more dance performances.

Nick Van Eyck and Serena Wong's Salsa Vale Todo with Yenek and Karelia • photo by Tom Ehrlich

Mayito greeted a crowd that was already high as a kite on the strength of a really tremendous series of dance performances. Festival organizers Nick Van Eyck and Serena Wong got a chance to perform with their famous teachers on an amazingly spliced audio segment that went in and out of Charanga Habanera's epic Tema introducción twice. The choreography of its mind-boggling polyrhythmic bloque was stunning.

Meanwhile, over at the Timbaversity, Roberto Borrell gave a brilliant preview of his upcoming Finding the Clave course and Umi Vaughan was inspiring and thought-provoking as usual as he elaborated on his first two books on batá and timba, and threw out a few teasers about his third - a history of his mother's famous Oakland dance studio. [Kevin Moore]

Click Continue Reading for more great photos. Full galleries coming soon.

deja un comentario

continue reading La Última

Another amazing Santos/SFJAZZ collaboration, this time with Ernesto Oviedo on vocals. Click here for more great shots.

deja un comentario

continue reading La Última

Miami: Interactivo in concert, Miami Dade County Auditorium, 29th and Flagler Street, Miami FL, March 8, 9PM

This should be one of the concerts of the year in the United States. Interactivo is one of the most progressive and interesting bands in Cuba today; it combines everytthing from Jazz to Hip Hop to modern Cuban dance music, and the most recent information released adds several members of Habana Abierta to the roster along with Gema Corredera, Mayito Rivera and David Torrens. Telmary is also on the roster. We'll post some video of Interactivo closer to the date, but with the additional stars in the show, there are bound to be some musical surprises as well. 

Tickets can be purchased at www.ticketmaster.com
For additional information, see the Fundarte website at
www.Fundarte.us

Click continue reading for much more.

deja un comentario

continue reading Sin Clave No Hay Na

Announcement of the 7th National Changüí Festival

If Cuba is a global reserve of music, then Guantanamo is one of the reservoirs of Cuban music. In this region you can find almost all genres on the island and some that are unique to Upper Eastern Cuba: changüí, nengón, kiribá ... primal musical forms that are only found in Guantanamo and that remain as alive as the first day.

To know and enjoy Cuban music, Guantanamo is a compulsory stop . If you arrive there you will experience the pleasure of feeling the magic of the authentic. - José Cuenca Sosa

The 7th National Changüí Festival "Elio Revé Matos" will take place in Guantanamo from May 29 - June 1, 2014. The event includes music and dance shows of changüí as well as other music and dance styles unique to the province of Guantanamo such as nengón, kiribá and tumba francesa. In addition there are concerts by timba bands such as Orquesta Revé, although note that at this point I have seen no list of participating timba bands for 2014. The festival features contests between treseros, bongoceros, marimbuleros, dancers and singers as well as a more scholarly segment of conferences. This year the topic is "Origins, Parallels and Projections of Changüí". Events will be held throught the city and in changüí areas such as Casa de Pipi in Yateras. The fee to sign up is 50 CUC for foreigners and 50  CUP for Cubans. To participate or for more information, contact General Coordinator José Cuenca or Ernesto Chacón.

Below is a video I put together where Cuenca tells us about the plans for this year's festival and I threw in a little changüí footage from Guantanamo and from a changüí party at Casa de Pipi in Yateras from the 2007 festival.

deja un comentario

continue reading Timbera Mayor