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Opening of the 28th edition of…

Tempo Latino Social Club presents:

Ana Tijoux,

ANA Tijoux, emblematic figure of Latin rap, joins us at the opening of the festival! A strong and committed French-Chilean artist born in her native Lille to Chilean parents exiled by the dictatorship, ANA has bult her musical style on the fundamental rhythms of Rap and the Chilean folkloric colors of her origin.

Her background, influences and temperament give her an indomitable stage strength to tackle political issues wildly. From Europe to Latin America, singing in Spanish with humor and rebellion has led her to consolidate her presence in the international scene of the Latin Rap wave and win Grammys.

After opening for Iggy Pop, the iconic Stooges figure said that “she knows what she’s doing!”

The Tempo Latino Social Club welcomes her into their circle of shared values with proudly and respectfully.

Tempo Latino

The Conga sets the TEMPO!

Between psychedelic palm trees, tropical white sand and the first day’s frenzy, we’ll meet at 19h on the Conga stage to embark on the 28th edition.

Imagined in 2022… the Tempo Latino Social Club*, born from our associative, voluntary and committed structure, brings us together to share our values of cultural and musical mestizaje…

*This evening does not cover the pass for the Tempo Arena concert.

Tempo Latino

Immediate boarding for the Tempo Latino 2023 ¡El Único!

THANKS
Public… Artists… Technicians… Partners… Professionals…
Tempo VOLUNTEERS

Europe – March 2023

Tata Güines known as Manos de Oro, Cuban rumbero and percussionist

Known as Manos de Oro, he modernized the tumbadoras and played with the most important musicians of the island of Cuba.

He was born in Güines, Havana on June 30, 1930, in the bosom of a family of musicians, son of Joseíto “El tresero” and Niñita, who from a very young age used to play a boot-cleaning box in the corner of the Chapel of Santa Bárbara, in the legendary neighborhood of Leguina, where so many congas and bembés have been made and will continue to be enjoyed.

Artistic trajectory

Saying Federico Arístides Soto Alejo may not say anything to some music neophytes, but when you say Tata Güines, things change radically and everyone thinks: That is the tumbadora made soul and flavor.

Tata Güines conocido como Manos de Oro, modernizó las tumbadoras y tocó con los más relevantes músicos de la isla de Cuba

He became attached to percussion instruments, especially the tumbadora, which, as a Cuban, groaned under the effect of his prodigious hands. Under the influence of Chano Pozo, whose touches bewitched him and gave him the key to create his own style.

He was formed as a musician among the drums and the religious festivities of his neighborhood. He adopted his nickname as a child -el Tata-, and as a surname the name of the town where he grew up. Music was in his blood: his father and uncles made music with their hides.

He played double bass in the group Ases del Ritmo. He was part of the Partagás group, led by his uncle Dionisio Martínez, and later founded the Estrellas Nacientes orchestra and performed with the Swing Casino orchestra in Güines.

In 1946 he performed in his hometown with the Conjunto de Arsenio Rodríguez.

Tata Güines, rumbero y percusionista cubano

}In 1948 he moved to Havana, where he was a member of the orchestras La Nueva América, led by Pao Domini; La Habana Sport led by José Antonio Díaz, Unión, led by Orestes López, La Sensación led by Belisario López, and in 1952 he joined Fajardo y sus Estrellas, with which he traveled to New York in 1956.

He joined Los Jóvenes del Cayo, with which he appeared on the radio station La Voz del Aire; later he performed with the ensembles Camacho and Gloria Matancera.

He accompanied the trio Taicuba as a bongo player, and worked with Guillermo Portabales, Celina y Reutilio, and Ramón Veloz. He participated, along with Chano Pozo, in the comparsa Los Dandys de Belén; also, Los Mosqueteros del Rey, Los Mambises and Las Boyeras.

He recorded with Arturo O’Farrill (Chico) and with Cachao y su Ritmo Caliente, Frank Emilio, Guillermo Barreto, Gustavo Tamayo and others. He was part of the Quinteto Instrumental de Música Moderna (later Los Amigos), led by pianist Frank Emilio; Guillermo Barreto, timbal, Gustavo Tamayo, güiro, Israel López (Cachao) and Orlando Hernández (Papito), double bass.

In 1955 he travels to Caracas, Venezuela, to participate in the carnivals of that city. He traveled to New York with the Fajardo y sus Estrellas orchestra, with which he performed at the Palladium, where he coincided with Machito y sus Afro-Cubans and Benny Moré, whom he accompanied on the tumbadora; he also performed at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where he worked for the first time as a soloist.

He prepared a show and shared the stage with Josephine Baker, Frank Sinatra, Maynard Ferguson and Los Chavales de España, with whom he recorded the piece “No te puedo querer”.

In 1960 he returned to Cuba. Four years later he founded Los Tatagüinitos. He offered a concert with the National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Manuel Duchesne Cuzán, with which he performed his work Perico no llores más. He accompanied the guitarist and composer Sergio Vitier in his work Ad Libitum, danced by Alicia Alonso and Antonio Gades.

International tours

He toured California, Chicago, Miami, Puerto Rico, Panama, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Martinique, Monte Carlo, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Hungary, where he participated in the Jazz Festival; Soviet Union, Finland, Spain.

Musical Validity

Tata Güines was a master of masters of Cuban percussion. His death represents a notable loss for Cuban culture. Nobody like him in Cuba to make percussion an art.

In front of Tata Güines, the leather of the drum seemed the most delicate and expensive silk. He would place his agile hand on the tanned skin stretched by the fire, and with his fingernails he would achieve the saddest of laments as well as the most contagious smile.

Few knew him as Federico Arístides Soto Alejo, but everyone knew that he had modernized the tumbadoras, that he was a master at placing the “loose” beats in a song, as if “carelessly”, but that the piece could not survive if it lacked that imprint of someone who let himself be carried away by the rhythm of the claves, by his very fine ear and by the demands of a body accustomed, since he was almost a child, to music.

He died on February 4, 2008 in Güines, Havana.

Federico Arístides Soto Alejo Tata Güines

Awards and recognitions

National Music Award 2006

Félix Varela Order 2004

Alejo Carpentier Medal 2002

Tataguines Soto Martinez

Javier Cabanillas and his Cabanijazz Project

It has been a privilege for International Salsa Magazine to talk to Mexican bandleader, professor and musician Javier Cabanillas, who told us in detail about his life from the day he started in music until today, when the fruits of all the hard work and great talent are seen.

Interesting beginnings

Javier begins by speaking of his beginnings in the world of music on the streets of Tijuana, in his native Mexico. He tells us that he used to work in San Diego, USA, and Tijuana is a border city, so he had to cross the border every day in order to fulfill his professional commitments.

On his days off, he often went to what is known colloquially as ”sobremesas” or ”tianguis”, which are closed streets where vendors set up their stands to offer their goods to passersby. In those places, he played the conga, as he felt that this was a space where he could freely express his art in front of an audience, although his dream was to do it on stage. What he did not know was that sooner or later it would come true.

Javier did not think he could walking down a red carpet in Los Angeles, since his activity was completely informal. He was just looking to blow off some steam and drain daily stress. I felt very comfortable playing the conga as I did, but over time, I began to professionalize myself in the musical area and that is how I have gradually achieved what I have set myself out to do,” says the artist.

Although it is a long time ago, Javier remembers very fondly those years because that gentle scene and that communication with people on the street helped him to develop the warmth an artist needs to connect with the audience.

Javier Cabanillas and his Cabanijazz Project at the 62nd Monterrey Jazz Festival

How have your Latin roots affected your career in the United States?

As to how his roots have affected his career, Javier says that he had to learn most things on the go, but always ramaining respectful toward all cultures in which his music was involved. He mentions this as his origins are focused on northern Mexico where the typical thing is to listen to norteño and banda music, but he did not choose those genres for his career, but jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms. ”I had a lot of respect for that culture because I felt that it was not completely mine, which led me to be much more responsible and respectful when experimenting with this market,” he said.

When talking about learning to play an instrument or genre that does not belong to his culture, he said that there are always some limitations because musical language will always vary. In his case, the kind of musical language comprehensible to him is that of mariachi or banda music, making easier for him to identify certain elements. When he went to live in San Francisco, he spent time with musicians from all nationalities and could realize that they were not able to do many of the things that were not proper from their countries of origin. This makes learning more complicated, but not impossible.

In that sense, Cabanillas says there are some useful techniques to learn to play instruments and rhythms we did not grow up with, so there is a revolution of percussionists and musicians who have managed to break that mold. The Internet has played an extremely important role in all this, as artists of all kinds can access content that helps them improve and develop professionally. In his particular case, YouTube and these online tools did not exist, so he could only count on his ear and imitate what he heard to learn.

Cabanillas' music is based on jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms — Cabanillas’ music is based on jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms

The Grammy

One of the great victories in Cabanillas’ artistic life was the Grammy he won with the Pacific Mambo Orchestra. Since the members of the group did not have the necessary funds to produce an album, they turned to other financing options supported by the community through an online fundraising campaign. The intention was that anyone could make a donation or even buy the album in advance.

30 days later, they achieved their goal and recorded the album. Javier was one of the 36 musicians who participated in the production and his role was to be in charge of percussion with his congas. The orchestra was not supported by any major label, so they did everything independently. This gave them more control over what they wanted to offer to the audience, since they were not subject to what any management wanted from them. This meant that the process of preparing the material was very organic and spontaneous.

When the album came into competition in the ”Best Tropical Album of the Year” category, it managed to be among the five best nominees along with Marc Anthony, Carlos Vives, Los Ángeles Azules, Sergio George, Oscar D’ León and many more. Three of them were working with Sony Latin Music, so they had great chance chances to win because they worked with such a big label, while Pacific Mambo did not have all that machinery behind them, not even close.

Javier Cabanillas with the Grammy he won with the Pacific Mambo Orchestra

That’s how we were invited to Los Angeles, walked down the red carpet like the rest of the artists and took a huge surprise to win the Grammy in our category. At that moment, I felt that all my effort was worthwhile” the conguero said excitedly. He confesses that he and his orchestra fellows did not expect the win because they were the least popular nominees in the category. Fortunately, the judges focused their attention on the quality of their work and not on their popularity at the time.

Cabanijazz Project

As noted, the name of the group is a play on words between the artist’s last name and the word ”jazz”. The whole idea came up in Tijuana, where he was clear that he wanted to start a project in which he would not limited to a single rhyming scheme. He did not want to use something as generic and worn-out as ”Javier Cabanillas Y Su Orquesta”, so he started to play with other elements to obtain an original name that would capture the essence he wanted to show. This is how the name ”Cabanijazz Project” was born.

The project started as a quintet that played in several festivals and events, achieving some success in a short time. Later, he added more musicians until having eight. When he started working in San Francisco, he began studying more and absorb the culture around him for a few years. Some time later, he restarted his project again with Bay Area musicians and started uploading his material to music platforms such as ITunes and Spotify.

Among the instruments used by his group, the trombone, the tenor saxophone and the baritone cannot be left out. They are the three largest wind instruments in the brass range, so they were the ones that achieved the sound Javier was looking for in his orchestra.

Another important detail is that the music they play is entirely original and they only change their repertoire a little when they play live.

San Francisco Salsa Festival 2023

One of the group’s upcoming performances will be at the annual San Francisco Salsa Festival to be held in March 2023. Cabanillas says that one day he received an email from the event organizers informing him that Cabanijazz Project was the choice to play there. They were recommended by several of Javier’s friends and colleagues who assured the organizers that the band was the best choice for its quality.

They have already played three times at the festival before the pandemic resulted in the suspension of the event, so the artist and his musicians already have a lot of experience entertaining the tough Bay Area audience. Cabanijazz Project will be the opening band for the festival and will perform along with two other local groups that will also offer their talent to the attendees.

Steffen Kuehn and Christian Tumalan talk about their musical roots and orchestra

Preamble

This time, we are going to talk with German producer, arranger, composer and trumpet player Steffen Kuehn and Mexican bandleader, composer and musician Christian Tumalan. Both are at the head of the Pacific Mambo Orchestra and share the role of co-executive director of Pacific Mambo LLC and Pacific Mambo Records. Also, each has his own record label and separate musical achievements, but unify their skills to make the group they have in common one of the best in the United States.

Both expressed their points view about the orchestra, the work they do in it and what each one has done in music in general. These views reveal that quality, professionalism and adaptability are the main values on which the orchestra they lead is based.

Steffen Kuehn at the Tempo Latino Festival in France

A bit of Steffen’s story

The start of the conversation focused on the beginnings of Steffen Kuehn, who ackowledges having been a musician all his life, since he started playing the trumpet when he was just eight years old. He attended the University of North Texas to start his formal music education and learned to arrange music, compose and specialize more in the trumpet. He now focuses on is teaching trumpet, playing for the orchestra, arranging, selling music for television and movies, among other activities (all have to do with music).

When we talk about his written publications, he mentioned a instruction book to help beginners to play the trumpet some years ago. Today, He is working on a second book and a new record production. What he has planned for Pacific Mambo is to make about 10 songs for its new album, of which two have already been made.

Christian’s musical background

Christian told us a bit about his musical training and confirmed that he studied piano for more than 10 years. He has also played piano since the age of 14 when he was in high school and started much more formal musical training at the age of 15. It can be said that he was already an expert at playing both instruments after a decade of much dedication and practice.

When asked about his roots in jazz, he commented to us that almost all jazz musicians have some training in classical music and direct access to technical elements with the instruments. His goal in learning about classical music was not to become a performer dedicated only to that style, but to gain as much knowledge as possible about music in general and to improve his piano skills.

How do you apply German and Mexican heritage to the music of the orchestra?

As for this interesting subject, both artists pointed out that polka music and Mexican banda music were very similar in terms of sounds and instrumentation used for both. In Steffen’s case, he was always very interested in going to the United States to learn and study about jazz, how and where it originated. He comments that, if he had wanted to study classical music, the best places would have been Germany, France and Italy, as many of its greatest exponents come from there.

Both Christian and I went to the root of how the jazz movement started, how it originated and developed over the years. However, I studied Latin music here in the United States and my Colombian roommate at the time explained to me a lot of things and introduced me to a lot of Latin rhythms I have ever heard before,” said Kuehn.

They both started to introduce jazz and this knowledge to the music of the orchestra. About this, Christian said that the mixture of rhythms was like ”a battle of entities” in which they were looking for what works and what does not work, since not everything can be mixed. ”What I usually do is combine my knowledge in classical music with my own Big Band arrangements,” Christian said.

”The fact that we have musicians from various countries in Europe and Latin America has helped us a lot to see different perspectives. Also, due to the number of musicians we are, we can play in different styles that other groups cannot” added Steffen.

Christian Tumalan and Steffen Kuehn during an interview with Jesse Chuy Varela

Skills they look for in their musicians

Steffen pointed out that the first thing they look for in their musicians is the chemistry we can have with them. In this sense, he mentioned that he has met excellent musicians with whom he does not get along with at all, which makes the work environment very heavy. Therefore, he does not take them into consideration for the orchestra because, if there is no chemistry and an atmosphere of respect, everything else does not work.

Another thing that the performer considers important is the spirituality of music, which many times is not attained by all musicians. When a musician opens up to the spirituality of the music, that’s when the magic happens and the chemistry hits us. We are very fortunate to have so many musicians who share this feeling and have reached that point as we have,” he added.

How do you share roles in the orchestra?

Christian commented that both he and Steffen were very good in different areas separately. Steffen has a quite charismatic way of communicating with people and knows how to earn the respect of others very quickly, while I focus more on the technical and musical aspects of the group. I think that complements us very well”. He also said that the German was very good with information and details such as tours, hotels, flights, names, taxes, among other things.

When Steffen’s came to talk about his partner, he said that he knew a lot about everything to do with music technology, stage direction, tempos, editing, mixing, video, audio and many other things. He confesses that he is unable to do many of these things, so they are left to Christian.