Los Hermanos Arango rehearse in Guanabacoa photo by Patrick Bonnard

Although they were billed at a number of sites, including here, as performing at the Beantown Jazz Festival in Boston this month, Feliciano Arango informs us that due to a great enthusiasm for Los Hermanos Arango in Boston, their trip has been delayed in order to arrange a larger event. With any luck Los Hermanos Arango will be in the US for a full-fledged tour. If you happen to know any promoters in your area, drop them a line and tell them you want to see Los Hermanos Arango live in your city!

Photographer Patrick Bonnard visited the Arangos this spring and told us about how the collaboration between Los Hermanos Arango and Berklee came about. "Professor and saxophonist Neil Leonard brought his students to Cuba last December and visited the homes of Chucho Valdés and Los Hermanos Arango. They returned in May and gave a concert, this time together with Los Hermanos Arango in La Casa de Las Americas." The Vice-President of Berklee College was in attendance and invited Los Hermanos Arango to Boston, which culminated in the current discussions about bringing the band to El Yuma. Here is an article written by Frank-John Hadley in Downbeat magazine about the visit to Cuba.

Although it would have been great to see them this month in Boston, we can console ourselves with hopes of a larger tour  to come. Feliciano also informs us that Los Hermanos Arango will soon release a new DVD featuring a collaboration with the stars of Cuban folkloric music. For this recording they invited five founders of Conjunto Folklorico Nacional who range from 80 - 90 years old. This is the beginning of what they are calling the Guanabacoa Social Rumba, where they will be performing all of the Cuban folkloric genres with the greatest exponents of each genre. This sounds like an amazing and brilliant project and I can hardly wait to see the first fruits!

For a taste of their music check out the Los Hermanos Arango channel at YouTube. Here is a little teaser: a song for Oyá including a bass solo by Feliciano Arango winner of the Timba.com Best Timba Bassist Award. And if you are inspired to delve more deeply into the bass style of Feliciano Arango, check out the book "CUBAN TIMBA: A Contemporary Bass Technique" by Feliciano Arango and Cherina Mastrantones. It is available in both Spanish and English.

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Click here to see the widescreen video - Oprima aquí para ver el video (alta resolución)

RUMBANKETE @ Yoshi's Oakland - Open Dance Floor - Thursday, February 11 2010 
13-piece All Star contemporary Cuban music (Timba) orchestra from Los Angeles
Presenting Sponsor: CUBAVERA® (a subsidiary of Perry Ellis International)
Associate Sponsor: e.K. Clothing (salsa dresses & dancewear) 

Led by master trombonist & arranger Denis Jirón,  RUMBANKETE reigns supreme in the greater Los Angeles area. This new group is the only musical force currently performing contemporary Cuban dance music (timba). The band plays in various formats but prefers to perform with its full 14 piece line-up. Its front line includes singers Gonzálo "Chalo" Chomat (ex Conexión Salsera) and Iris Sandra Cepeda (ex Arte Mixto), both consummate musicians from Cuba who have made LA their home.

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Pupy alumnus Pepito Gómez makes his third trip to the Bay Area tomorrow (Friday) night at Club Antón, right around the corner from Yoshi's in Oakland's Jack London Square district.

Pepito not only sang with Pupy, but wrote some of his best songs, including Un poquito al revés, containing the title coro of Pupy's epic Tranquilo que yo controlo, one of the best albums of recent years. As always, the lovely and talented Ariacne Trujillo will be the pianist and musical director and  this time the rhythm section will consist of Bay Area monsters Carlos Caro and Jesús Díaz. Between sets, it will be Walt Digz, a fabulous timba DJ who always embarrasses me by playing some absolutely brilliant track that I haven't heard, forcing me to sheepishly ask what it is. Let's try to sell this thing out so we can keep shows like this coming! Click here for advance tickets.

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Timba photographer Tom Bauer has shared some more excellent photos with us, this time from Los Van Van in Stuttgart, 7 March 2010. In fact there are 65 pictures from the concert, so I decided to do something a little different. I created a main page with a variety of pictures from the evening and then subpages for the singers and musician sections. If you aren't familiar yet with the new subpage feature, when you go to the main page you will see a Table of Contents to the right of the center frame. You can use this to jump directly to any of the subpages or you can use the Previous/Next buttons at the bottom of each page to navigate between subpages.

Tom was at both the Stuttgart and the Erlangen concerts and says that they did the standard Arrasando Tour playlist, opening with "Arrasando" and closing with "Te pone la cabeza mala". Both concerts were attended by over 800 people. Juan Formell is not on this tour, but bassist Pavel Molina does an excellent job. I just have to say that I love the dress that Yeni wore in Stuttgart!

And before I give you the link to the first set of Stuttgart pictures I thought we'd play a little game: Name That Van Vanero! using three pictures from Tom's collection. It shouldn't be too challenging for Van Van fans, but try to answer who's who before looking at the picture gallery.

Whose feet?                                Whose hands?                          Whose hands?

When you have answered the questions you can go check out the Van Van in Stuttgart picture gallery and see if you got the answer right.

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