Timbalive, one of the best US-based Timba groups,  has just released a new single, Estoy Como Que Loco, which is available on I-Tunes. We listened to it earlier this week, and it's worth having.   As with many Timbalive numbers, it opens with some fusion passages  early on and then settles into a solid Timba groove for the rest of the song.  You can find it at
 http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/estoy-como-que-loco-single/id546686441

leave a comment

continue reading Sin Clave No Hay Na

Issac Delgado is scheduled to appear  in Chicago Illinois as the closing act on August 5, 2012 for the 3rd Annual Festival Cubano, which takes place Saturday, August 4 and Sunday, August 5. Issac has been around for a while, so those of you who know his work may be wondering what he sounds like these days.  Well, thanks to Michelle White, here's a taste from a live concert in Denmark earlier this year...

     
 and......

  
Now, as we said, this is a two-day festival chock full of a wide spectrum of talent from the traditional to the current. For complete information about the festival, visit the website at http://thecubanfestival.com/

leave a comment

continue reading Sin Clave No Hay Na

In February 2012, Los Hermanos Arango appeared live at the Berklee Performance Center in a killer concert that was streamed globally on Berklee's website.  For those of you who missed that as well as those who saw it but want a second helping, the Berklee Interdisciplanary Arts Institute's YouTube Channel later posted five video clips from that concert.   This one, El Barracon, is a must-see...

leave a comment

continue reading Sin Clave No Hay Na

Story by Bill Tilford, All Rights Reserved 
(para leer en español,  haga clic aqui)

Photo by Bill Tilford, all rights reserved

For better and for worse, this concert comes on the heels of a few earlier failed attempts by other promoters in other cities.   But unlike those earlier fiascoes, this time a concert really did take place.  It wasn't exactly the concert that was originally advertised, but it was a concert, it had more stars in the room than we have seen together in the United States before, and it was  a lot better musically  than I expected it to be after everything else that went wrong before the concert even started.   I was able to watch a lot of this story unfold, and towards the end, I actually wandered into some of it in ways that I never planned to do. This is a story that needs to be told, and hopefully we can all learn some things from the experience.    Hopefully one of those lessons will NOT be "Don't hire Timba bands",  but we will all need to learn the other lessons to prevent that from happening.

1st Verse -  Was this really a good idea to begin with?

It was only a year before this that the even more-sprawling Fuego Cuban Music Festival evaporated in South Florida.   In Echo Park (Los Angeles), a planned May 2011 Cuban music festival was cancelled due to funding issues.  (The LA Cubafest that did happen later in July 2011 featured Cuban-American bands, and attendance failed to meet expectations.)
In the meantime, some other tours by single bands from the island like Los Van Van encountered various problems that shortened or in some cases cancelled all or parts of their tours.   The result of all of these earlier problems was a new and understandable level of skepticism on the part of ticket buyers and venue owners.   For many of these people, the New York concert sounded too good to be true even before any of the real problems actually started.   Based on what I was hearing from Timba fans during the months before the New York concert, I'm really not sure whether ticket sales would have met expectations even if the promotion had been much better than it was.   
Nevertheless, the announcement was made - New York would have a Mega Timba Concert at the Armory in May 2012 with an historic collection of bands from Cuba. How could my colleagues and I NOT be excited about this?  Three of us made preparations to go and cover the event.   I was a little concerned at the time that the ticket-purchase website said "From Havanna to New York Non-Stop Timba Concert", and the artists included Puppy & Los Que Son Son.   and I mentioned to some colleagues at the time that it would be nice if they would spell the English version of Havana correctly, even better would be to get Pupy's name right.    This didn't inspire a lot of confidence in the people administering the concert.   Still, we were hopeful.   
When you add the usual and customary visa issues and consider the fact that individual bands all have their own agendas, it was probably too ambitious to try to bring this many full bands together in one place at the same time.   I think it would have been better if the promoters had planned and promoted a unified All Stars concert from Day One.   This was what was finally delivered, it was an excellent musical product, and most of the bad will generated by the project could have been avoided if it had been advertised this way.  Even more important, it is this reporter's opinion that the next few Timba concerts in the US should probably keep it simple:  one band - maybe two - from Cuba, if more music is needed, pair it with some suitable US talent.  It will be a while before there is enough confidence to try to repeat a concert like this one.   

Chorus:   In my opinion, the organizers tried to accomplish too much with too many bands. It is difficult enough to do a successful event with multiple bands using purely US talent. Once you go international, it becomes even harder.  This isn't just a Cuba thing - even European musicians have visa problems, and there are reasons why multiple groups from there don't do US tours together.  A much simpler concert could still have been a great success if advertised properly.  

Coming Next :  2nd Verse - The Road To The Concert 

leave a comment

continue reading Sin Clave No Hay Na