Category: salsa

nic and mel
Originally uploaded by mgharris

For a little while last night at the Coronet (Elephant and Castle, London), I felt as though we were back in Casa de la Musica, Havana.

Nic and Mel were even there…if you read this blog you might remember that we first saw them in Havana’s famous dance hall on Galiano Street, grooving away with sexy male dancers Bustamente and Yoandy, when I snuck my 14-year-old daughter in to see Maikel Blanco.

Manolito Simonet y Su Trabuco are one of Cuba’s top bands, one of the world’s top salsa bands and like all these outfits, unbelievably tight and accomplished, all 16 of them. The musicianship is quite astonishing. You get used to it but when you listen to a run of the mill live jazz act you suddenly realise just how fantastic these top salsa bands are.

Manolito have a few songs which are currently club favourites, like ‘Marcando la Distancia’ (a song about divorce), ‘Control’ (a reggaeton favourite) and the crowd-pleasing, chorus rousing ‘Locos por Mi Habana’. Apart from that they also mastered cha-cha-cha (latest hit, ‘Se Rompieron los Termometros’), sophisticated latin-jazz instrumentals and even a bolero! (all the above songs titles link to Youtube videos.)

These tickets have been selling at every salsa event we’ve been to for the past six weeks, so there were many familiar faces. A really wonderful feeling, to be part of this loosely connected but joyous community of Cuban salsa fans.

And here’s a photo of me at the concert with my best friend Becs:

Really must buy a good small camera for these things…BlackBerry is not up to the job…

Thanks again to MamboCity for organising this gig!

That’s what Cuban salsa dance teacher Osbanis Tejedo said at breakfast on Sunday morning to the DJ. He was asking him to stir up the music a bit, some bachata, some merengue, some reggaeton.

Well, despite those words, I remember last night being mostly salsa…and the night before and the night before. I think I may in fact be dying from too much salsa. I feel as though I’ve been out on a drinking bender, absolutely shattered. And in the past three days I’ve had no more than one glass of wine.

It must be dehydration. Let me weigh myself…nope, no change there.

Salsa is definitely like a drug. It makes you feel amazing, you forget all your troubles while it lasts. Then you come back down to earth and realise that your problems haven’t gone away, for goodness sakes. They’re right there waiting to be dealt with, how dare they! And what do you turn to for a solution…?

More salsa.

It was great to be with a hundred or so like-minded addicts. How we sweated to get our rumba moves right, to move like the African spirits, the Orishas, how we strove to follow the tiny-but-fiery Damarys in her energetic and outrageously sexy reggaeton routine, how we concentrated on Kerry Ribchester’s wonderful body-movement techniques to move ribcages for Cuban son, and laughed at Leo and Osbanis’s flirty rueda moves.

Last night, you saw it all pouring out on the dance floor. Salsa with rumba, orishas, reggaeton, son, all mixed up. Okay, most people there were Northern European (and I was raised here, so I too started off stiff-as-a-board), but we were beginning to get there.

But man, am I exhausted.

Now, when’s the next salsa thing…?

Fiesta de Los Rumberos
Originally uploaded by mgharris

Rafael del Busto (in the cap) takes everyone through some moves in a warm-up Rueda de casino.

I felt sorry for non-salsa guests at the Arora hotel, Crawley. The music from the party went on until 2am at least and was easily audible in our room on the 2nd floor – enough to sing along with the lyrics.

MG – why were you trying to sleep when there was Cuban salsa? Well for one thing, 3 consecutive very late nights is beyond me. We wanted to be fresh for a long day of workshops beginning with Ariel teaching Cuban son.

Tonight though, we’ll stay until the end. Some friends are kindly taking care of our little daughter so it’s that VERY rare event for parents- a night off!

Just as well. I bet the hotel will get complaints from other guests. But tonight…I want that salsa played LOUD.

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

While researching the Orishas of the Santeria religion I came across this fascinating academic article about the origins and social impact of timba music.

One of the things that I find intriguing about the popularity of Afro-Cuban music and dance in the non-Spanish-speaking world is that the music and rhythms clearly have the power to transcend the language barrier. Watching people dancing away I sometimes wonder – do people have a clue what the lyrics are saying? Does it matter? Are they somehow getting the ache (the spirit) of the song without understanding the lyric?

If you’ve ever wondered, I highly recommend this article, which

“makes the case of timba as a type of non-engaged music which, while presenting itself as emphatically escapist, during the 1990s has in fact become intensely political in the way it has articulated a discourse challenging dominant views on race, class, gender and nation.”

http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans9/perna.htm