CANADADIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS | ||
UNITED STATESDIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS | ||
CALIFORNIA | FLORIDA | ILLINOIS |
MICHIGAN | NEW JERSEY | NEW YORK |
OHIO | PENNSYLVANIA | TEXAS |
VIRGINIA | WASHINGTON | |
JUNE 2024 FESTIVALS | ||
CANADADIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS | ||
UNITED STATESDIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS | ||
CALIFORNIA | FLORIDA | ILLINOIS |
MICHIGAN | NEW JERSEY | NEW YORK |
OHIO | PENNSYLVANIA | TEXAS |
VIRGINIA | WASHINGTON | |
JUNE 2024 FESTIVALS | ||
CANADADIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS | ||
UNITED STATESDIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS | ||
CALIFORNIA | FLORIDA | ILLINOIS |
MICHIGAN | NEW JERSEY | NEW YORK |
OHIO | PENNSYLVANIA | TEXAS |
VIRGINIA | WASHINGTON | |
MAY 2024 FESTIVALS | ||
3rd Baila Tampa Latin DanceMay 02 / 05 2024 Hilton St. Petersburg Carillon Park | ||
Bachateando Miami Dance FestivalMay 22 / 27 2024 Eden Roc Miami Beach | ||
World Dance Festival BaltimoreMay 09 / 12 2024 Hilton Baltimore | ||
WORLD SALSA FESTMay 24 / 26 2024 MARRIOTT HOTEL BURBANK | ||
Portland Salsa CongressMay 31 2024 – Jun 03 2024 Sheraton Airport Hotel |
Singers, dancers, musicians and artists in general are usually the first thing the public sees during any type of event, but very little is spoken about the companies, producers and promoters that are in charge of managing all the logistics behind these shows, so we wanted to talk to Guido Herrera-Yence, founder of Yambu Productions, which is an important music production company based in Los Angeles, so he could tell us a little about all these subjects.
Many years before Guido even thought about the idea of forming a company, he began to establish himself as a radio host on the popular public radio station KXLU 88.9 FM, specifically on the show ”Alma Del Barrio”, which is about to turn 51 years on the air in October. In Guido’s case, he has been hosting the show for more than 30 years, bringing the best Latin music and artistic news to all his listeners.
The also producer confesses that he did not really like locution and that he was simply in the right place at the right time, resulting in the career he has built in this type of media. What it does say is that he was a frequent listener of several radio shows and a voracious music collector, which led him to meet certain personalities who saw potential in him to belong to ”Alma Del Barrio”. When a show was opened, he was the leading candidate for the job and accepted immediately.
Guido did not have any kind of experience in radio, but his employers trained him and taught him everything he needed to know to carry out his tasks properly. 30 years later, Guido is still one of the main hosts of the show and a reference in terms of Latin music radio.
In 1995, one year after having joined ”Alma Del Barrio”, a friend told him that Chucho Valdés was going to the United States after many years and proposed him to make a show together with the artist as the main attraction. When Guido accepted, they began to look for artists to accompany the Cuban that night and some of them were Alex Acuña, Justo Almario, Luis Conte, among others.
The results were so good that Guido was left with the desire to keep experimenting with this field of the industry, so he continued to produce events of all kinds on a small and large scale since that year.
As the years went on, he realized that he would need a bigger and more elaborate structure if he wanted to continue to work on this, so the idea of founding a music production company began to take shape in his mind.
On the creation of Yambu Productions, something that Guido highlighted is that, in the United States, ”everything must be done very formally”. In light of the obligation to declare the income from his musical activities, Guido saw the need to create a company that would facilitate the procedures related to taxes and issues of this sort in order to cover his back.
Regarding the name ”yambu”, the businessman was inspired by a song by the Cuban popular music singer Carlos Embale, who was one of his favorite artists, so he wanted to honor him in that way. Taking this detail into account, it is not surprising that Cuban music and its exponents play a fundamental role in the events and groups that Yambu Productions seeks to promote, but it is not limited to nationalities or genres.
The company has set up events for Los Papines, El Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba, Chucho Valdés, Los Van Van, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Tito Nieves, José Alberto ”El Canario” and the list goes on. Guido is very proud that Yambu Productions was the one that produced the only concert given by Los Van Van Van and El Gran Combo in the United States, which was in the year 2029. He says he is a fan of both groups, so this was a dream come true for him.
This year, Yambu Productions was about to hold the Cuban American Music Festival on 2 June this year, but it has been suspended due to multiple factors, but the main one is that Guido feels that many things have changed in the entertainment industry after the pandemic such as demographics and the public tastes. This has caused the producer to rethink many things, as he is not quite clear what will be the path to follow by the company, so he prefers to wait.
In addition to the above, Guido is focused on his own restaurant that opened just six months ago and needs to dedicate all his time and effort to this new project, so it is very possible that the previously festival will be back better than ever for the year 2025, when he will be clearer about what he wants to do with this event.
However, he said he does not want to be away from live music, to which he attaches a great deal of importance in his work, so with the support of one of the most important jazz clubs in California, Catalina Jazz Club, he rolled up his sleeves and organized the Salsa Meets Jazz Concert Series for 26 April this year (at the time of publishing this article, the concert must have taken place). In this way, Guido wants to recreate that golden era of Latin jazz and salsa in New York, but in his own way.
The Salsa Meets Jazz Concert Series is expected to pay tribute to a different artist who has contributed to these genres each edition and this year it was the torn for Tito Puente. In addition, Catalina Jazz Club proposed Guido to hold events of this type several times a year, so tribute concerts to Ray Barreto and Andy Gonzalez are also scheduled before 2024 is up. He maintained a close friendship with both musicians, especially with Gonzalez.
When Guido plans to hold an event, the first thing he should do is to find a venue that complies with the requirements for the type of show he plans, analyze the costs involved, find the best talent for the show, hire sound engineers, recruit the people who will be in charge of the logistics part, among other things. It is an arduous work of at least six months before the event takes place.
An example of the above is the Cuban American Music Festival, which has always been held in May, so he should start organizing and planning for it since November or December of the previous year. This in order to have every detail ready on the day of the festival and to avoid any unforeseen problems that could put those involved down.
On this subject, Guido said he feels lucky to be able to have so many friends in the world of music, to stay on ”Alma Del Barrio” for so many years and to know people like Nelson González, Johnny ”Dandy” Rodríguez, Genaro Rivera and many others who are always ready to come to Yambu Productions events without even asking about payment, since they know that Guido and his company are very responsible about these issues.
”Everything falls on me. I believe that I have the capacity, knowledge and experience to know what the public wants. It is for the very reason that we will not be making the Cuban American Music Festival this year, since the pandemic changed everything in the industry and I have to accept that what sold yesterday is not the same as what sells today” said Guido when asked how he chooses the talent he wants for his shows. He also added that ”I’m still debating with myself on which way to go with the company after quarantine”.
What Guido will never do is let go of live music because, in his words, ”it feeds his spirit”. As long as he is dedicated to music production and Yambu Productions is still operating, live events will always have a highly important place in the activities carried out by the company.
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There are many Venezuelans who, due to the economic and political crisis that has affected their country in recent years, have had to set off for new horizons and leave their homeland to look for a better future for themselves and their family. Such is the case of the businesswoman and founder of Arepas Latin Cuisine Joanna Torres, with whom we had the pleasure of conversing with recently.
This talented young woman has a fascinating history of success and is a true inspiration to any Latino wanting to open paths in the United States or anywhere else in the world. That is why, from International Salsa Magazine, we decided to contact her and share her journey in the land of opportunities.
The first American city where Joanna arrived was Miami and her goal was to do a master’s degree, since she had studied her undergraduate career in Venezuela. Once there, she realized that she had a lot of trouble learning to speak English and there were few opportunities to practice it, since all with whom she interacted with spoke Spanish.
It was then when a friend suggested the idea of moving with her to the city of San Jose, where it would make it easier for her to learn the language and spend time with people who spoke it all the time.
Two years after Joanna arrived in San Jose, she began working in a clinic and, together with her experience in administration and accounting, she learned everything she could about medical coding and the way medical procedures were coded. This gave her enough experience to dare to open his own medical consulting firm which has more than 22 years of operation and a total of 150 employees in Venezuela.
The entire staff of the consulting firm residing in the South American country speaks English and takes care of serving all customers in the United States. Joanna even took it upon herself to provide her workers with their own fiber optic internet by contacting some telecommunications engineers, since this service in Venezuela is extremely poor.
Since the medical consulting firm gave her the necessary experience as a businesswoman, she decided to expand into another area she was very passionate about: cooking. Joanna had been wanting to start a food truck in parallel to her current company for some time and saw the opportunity to do so through a friend and former college classmate who owned restaurants and food businesses. She proposed to Joanna to buy one of her restaurants and partner with her, which she finally accepted and that is how the first Arepa Latin Cuisine restaurant was born.
Joanna was aware that the possibilities of failure of her idea were high, but she told us that her extensive knowledge of finance was fundamental to overcome all obstacles.
She was always clear that she had to look for ways to generate more income within the same company. That is why she and her staff have been responsible for providing lunch to employees from technology companies, making food for events such as birthdays or weddings, organizing pop-ups (temporary restaurants created to promote new menus and specific events) in order to innovate and always earn a stable income in the corporation.
The businesswoman points out that she always tries to innovate, and with regard to this, she said ”I have invented some taco-arepas with which I use arepa flour to make the tacos and give them a different touch, so it would be a combination of both dishes. I always try to innovate and do different things to surprise people and keep them from getting bored”.
”At the San Francisco headquarters, we have chosen the strong liquor license to start offering Venezuelan typical drinks and rum such as Diplomático or Ron Santa Teresa. We are also doing some remodeling in the place to make it much more pleasing to the eye” she continued.
In addition, both the San Jose and San Francisco headquarters offer live music for diners to enjoy good Latin music while tasting their food. There is also a dance floor for those who wish to move to the rhythm of the orchestra of that day.
After taking the required steps, the first Arepas Latin Cuisine restaurant headquarters were opened in October 2021, but it was not easy. This was an effort made over many years in which Joanna did her best to be able to reach that point.
The beginning of everything was her grandmother, with whom the Venezuelan learned everything she knows about cooking. She was a cook, a cooking teacher and taught cookery courses and workshops to support her 12 children because she was widowed at a very young age. Joanna tells us that, at that time, she and her children made ground corn arepas to sell to markets and restaurants.
All this made her an inspiration to Joanna and led her to learn to cook since she was just nine. As a child, she knew that cooking would be important in her life.
Lots of secrets that Joanna learned from her, such as the way in which the dough has to be kneaded, the difference between making homemade arepas and arepas to sell, the amounts of ingredients to be used, the way to prepare the fillings for the dishes, among other things.
Joanna ensures that her recipes have been a boom in California, since there was no authentic Venezuelan food in San Jose, so her project was a pioneer in this area.
The reception her food has got with Americans, Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese and many other nationalities has been truly amazing because dishes from Arepas Latin Cuisine, besides being extremely delicious, were something that has never been seen before.
The taste for food at Arepas reached such a point that the restaurant provides lunch to more than 300 employees in several technology companies such as Netflix, Snapchat and Tinder. It is worth noting that workers who are benefited greatly appreciate being able to enjoy a rich and varied menu every day.
One of the biggest challenges Joanna has faced is to find employees who know the Venezuelan and Colombian cuisine (there are also several Colombian dishes on the menu) as it should be. ”Finding cooks with great experience has been complicated, but with the arrival of Venezuelan and Colombian migrants in California, we have been able to find staff with knowledge in the culinary arena” said the businesswoman on this topic.
For her, it is vitally important to employ people who are very clear about how to cook the main Colombian and Venezuelan dishes, so she takes this into account when recruiting her talents.
In addition to that, Joanna also sells Venezuelan products and has a hard time finding them in San Jose, so she has to bring them directly from Florida in order to sell them in California.
When Joanna was asked to give advice to future Latino migrants who wish to move to the United States, the first thing that she pointed out was that they must work very hard in that country to get ahead. In her particular case, she claims to have had three jobs at the same time, since she was alone in the United States and lived only from what she earned.
She also added that ”you have to make sacrifices to succeed in life and always do things well according to the laws of the country that welcomes you. I think that there are many Venezuelans who confuse ‘native cunning’ (taking advantage or others and the economic, political and judicial system failures to do whatever you want without consequences) with intelligence, which makes them believe that they are above others and make serious mistakes. You have to do things well and eventually the much-desired success will come,” said Joanna on such an important issue.
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