Category: salsa

The dance!

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cuba raves salsa youtube

Best. Rueda. Ever.


I think, after spending quite some time on YouTube looking for it, I have unearthed a vid of the best rueda ever.

Filmed in one of those shabby, dilapidated-yet-once-grand Havana buildings, it’s easy to miss how great this is (if you didn’t read the title), because of the lack of an audience and the very plain dress of the dancers – just crisp white cotton dresses for women and shirts and trousers for guys.

But watch for more than a minute and you’ll see what I mean. Unbelievably cool, stylish Cuban dancers full of AZUCAR! and SABOR! and incredble choreography.

Watching this, frankly, makes me feel like:
a) I have basically wasted my life so far by not being able to dance like this, with people like this.
b) The rest of my life will be wasted if I don’t drop everything so that I can dance like this, with people like this.

Not saying I HAVE wasted my life, or that I am about to drop anything. I’m just saying how it makes me feel.

If you adore Cuban salsa, you will understand. Also how badly it makes me want to go back to Cuba. WAHHH!

Categories
getting published ice shock raves salsa

ICE SHOCK – proofs are here!

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Well here it is, the final proofs of ICE SHOCK, waiting for me to check through the line edits and maybe add a line or two here or there…

A brilliant end to a wonderful week, which began on Monday with some wonderful news from my agent re JAGUAR’S REALM…can’t be more specific just yet. And a totally cool party at the London Transport Museum to launch the WOW 366 book. Have you bought it yet? Go and buy it, it’s terrific bedtime story material! My daughter and I are reading three per night. My fellow writer, our lead developer for the Alternate Reality Game we are making for  ICE SHOCK and Litopian, Richard Howse was there and blogged about the evening, including a nice photo of my agent, me and Rich.

After the party I went off to the Afro-Cuban Lounge at Buffalo Bar. Word on the street is that this is no longer the top Cuban club night in London (and therefore the UK) – rumour has it that there’s a place on Wednesdays that’s better. But I’m telling ya, this Monday night the Buffalo Bar was swinging. Lots of hunky guys and sexy latino women, all terrific dancers, a friendly buzz. I was even invited to join a rueda. God, how I love salsa.

Then on Tuesday, St Giles Fair – it being the first Monday and Tuesday following St Giles’ Day. I was feeling queazy,  a bit hung-over after my night of drinking and dancing in London until the small hours. So I had to say no to the Waltzer, usually the highlight of the fair for my little girl. Still managed the barbequed corn-on-the-cob at the Jamaican food stand, the fresh cotton candy and hot donuts… And I stood for a few minutes letting the atmosphere of the fair wash over me. Some years it has struck me as grubby, crass, loud and mercenary. This year, however, I felt nothing but the lurve; for carnie folk and good times, memories of being there as a student, with my first daughter and now my second.

Tradition. You can’t beat it.

Then I dropped by the office of our IT company and met no less than five new employees who have joined since I last happened by…wow! See how well they’re doing without me? Also had a good morning talking to Rich about the ARG, putting together a project plan and coming up with neat ideas. This game…is going to be so fun.

Hung out with Susie Day and talked about Blake’s 7, one of the great loves of my life, and probably something to which I owe my writing career, since that’s how I got started – writing Blake’s 7 fan fiction. Hung out with Julia Golding and talked about writing crime fiction for kids. Muhahaha. More on that anon…

This is what I have always enjoyed about work. Hanging out with top practioners and talking about how to get better. In the end it doesn’t matter if the work is science, business or writing. So long as you work with the best in the world, work is heaven. You can’t ask for more.

Went to sleep last night listening to stuff about the Large Hadron Collider, for which, major kudos!

Categories
salsa videos youtube

Belatedly, Oscar D’Leon

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Around six weeks ago we went to see Oscar D’Leon at the Roundhouse in London. Aged 65, he’s one of the top salsa stars in the world. Which means that despite living in Oxford UK, hardly the home of salsa, I have now seen:

Oscar D’Leon (London)
Charanga Habanera (London)
Manolito y Su Trabuco (London)
Maikel Blanco (Havana)
Pupy y los que Son Son (Havana)
Septeto Santiaguero (Santiago de Cuba)
Los Van Van (London)
Buena Vista Social Club (London)
Afro-Cuban All-Stars (London)
Celia Cruz (London)
Jose Alberto (London)

If you’re not a salsa fan this won’t mean anything to you. But it’s roughly equivalent for an indie-rock/pop fan to have seen the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Blur, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Green Day and whatnot.

Damn I feel lucky. Oscar D’Leon, what can I say? He’s an amazing performer, a formidable dancer and bass player; he sang and elegantly danced his way through a two-hour set without a break, almost without pausing between songs. He can improvise in the most amazing way (but so can all the best soneros I’ve seen).

And he can do reggaeton. Maybe not like a young hipster. But man, he gives it a go.

Here’s a video I recorded that evening – quickly risen to be my Youtube channel’s most popular video. It’s distant – we were far away, but you can sense the energy in the audience. The camera work is a bit shaky for the first 30 seconds because I literally couldn’t stand still, I was so excited.

I mean. OSCAR D’LEON!!!! Jess – espero que te gusta pero MUCHO!

Categories
appearances cuba salsa

Aching for salsa…Edinburgh bound…and maybe Oz too?

I’ve been getting ready for the Edinburgh Book Festival, much excitement, yay!

My event is on Wed 21st – sold out, I’m surprised and impressed to see. It’s a heck of a marketing machine, the Edinburgh Festival. Most of the Schools Events are sold out.

I have been getting my multimedia stuff up to scratch, cutting DVDs of my videos and rejigging my Powerpoint slideshow with one new slide – all about 2012. Apart from that, I have now booked my schedule solid between seeing friends who are visiting the Festival and hanging out at parties and lunches with my lovely publishers.

And I’m flying there! I will feel rather fabulous…

Meanwhile my sister has made us all very proud by giving birth to a bouncy boy, Benedict. I’m seriously thinking of going to his christening, all the way in Australia. Since we all live so many squillions of miles away from each other, my brother and sisters, these sorts of events are starting to be the kinds of excuses we can use to justify the increasingly terrifying expense of meeting up.

But maybe Scholastic Australia would like me to do some book events and schools visits….

That makes it much more justifiable, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile despite some very good news (apart from a new nephew) – which I’ll share in the next few weeks – I’m feeling rather melancholic. It’s been far too long since I went dancing – not since the Oscar D’Leon concert on July 12th. I think the doctor may order a trip to Mambocity soon. Damn salsa for being so addictive! I’m good and hooked.

Listened to BBC Radio 4 last night; Grevel Lindop reading from his book Travels On the Dance Floor – also on listen again. For a UK-based salsera like me his experiences are very familiar. It made me think nostalgically of Cuba. Especially when he played a song which played often when we were in Cuba. Whenever I hear it I feel a kind of desperate, romantic ache for Havana.

Well I listened to the lyrics, searched for the first line on Google and found this video: it’s the late guajiro Polo Montanez singing “Un Monton de Estrellas“.

Very romantic song. And turns out he’s dead – in a traffic accident in 2002, when he was 47. *sob*

I NEED TO DANCE TO THIS SONG SOON OR I WILL BURST!

Categories
cuba salsa

Dancing at Carnival de Cuba 2008

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I finished editing the clips I filmed of the son band playing and people dancing at Carnival de Cuba last Saturday in sunny London. Featuring my friends Becs (in white with turquoise top), Deborah (red cardy, dancing with me), Nicola (white top and trousers, flowing blue-and-white overshirt) and Mel (halter-neck, brown-and white polka-dot dress), all of whom I’ve previously blogged.

Seems implausibly cold now…an artic breeze in blowing through my window at exactly the right angle to torment my wrist, which already throbs with strain from typing and the computer mouse.

I dreamt such a great idea for a story last night. I really should have written it down but as usual I thought it so vivid on waking that I wouldn’t need to. But as ever, an hour or so later and all I remember are fragments. In the dream I was shown a photo of a bunch of people who were known to have been behind the funding of a particular scientific project – a project that later had was found to have sinister connotations. The photo was an unexpected capture of all the suspicious parties together. And those faces were indeed surprising. I could identify some of them from my scientist days. One in particular was someone I hadn’t liked at all. In the dream, I had that delicious thrill of Aha!….followed by hmmmmm…

I’ve forgotten all the details, except the faces of the scientists that I recognised.

That’s right guys. I know who you are. I’ve seen ya!

Ah well, back to the manuscript.