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Search Results for: Latin
We welcome Patricio Angulo from Rumbaché to ISM
The San Francisco Bay Area, California, has a lot of talented artists, many of which we have had the privilege to interview in this section to learn all kinds of details about the Latin music scene in this area of the United States. This time, we managed to have an interesting conversation with Patricio Angulo, leader and founder of the orchestra Rumbaché, who kindly answered all the questions we had.
Rumbaché is one of the most important salsa and timba bands in the Bay Area and has a varied repertoire of salsa and contemporary Cuban music that enchants any audience that hears the group perform.
The following are some of the most important issues related to this Latin band and its history.
Patricio Angulo’s beginnings in the music world
Patricio has had a long interest in music, which he developed by himself, since he did not have family musicians to encourage these activities in the little boy.
He started playing violin and trumpet, but it was not long before the young boy found he liked drums and orchestral percussion better. He also played some classical music and learned a lot about instruments used in this genre.
When he went to high school, there were several music programs from which Patricio could choose to develop this branch of art depending on his tastes and finally decided on a jazz group with which he started learning to play congas and timbales. This group wanted an extra Latin touch in their music and the boy was chosen for the role.
The musician was very inclined to Latin Jazz at the time, but then, he was listening to other Latin genres until he discovered Cuban and Caribbean Salsa, which would be very important in the musical future of the artist.
Recruiting talent for Rumbaché
For years, he group Rumbaché, previously called Quimbombó, was forming from musicians Patricio considered played well, since for him this is most important.
However, he emphasized that each orchestra has its own needs and highlighted the vocals as an example of that, as they are very necessary for dance music like the one they play. Likewise, professionalism and experience are two aspects taking into account by him when evaluating a candidate.
In another order of ideas, the musician considers that Latin roots are not a key element in playing salsa or other genres of this type very well, since there are many singers and musicians who have never had contact with Latin genres or instruments can learn to play them without any problem. It is a matter of effort and discipline.
Origin of the name Rumbaché and the Yoruba Religion
From what we have read about Rumbaché, the origin of the name and its relation with the Yoruba religion caught our attention. Rumbaché is a combination of the words ”rumba” (This word can mean ”party” and ”celebration”) and ”ache” (in the Cuyuní language, ”ache” is something very good and pleasant).
Something that Patricio wanted to clarify is that the music of his orchestra is not religious and has nothing to do with the Yoruba religion beyond some choruses and words as there are in many Cuban songs. In fact, they try to have a varied repertoire so as not to bore the audience.
Rumbaché’s activity in clubs
Rumbaché has featured heavily in festivals and renowned clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area such as Sausalito Seahorse, The Cigar Bar & Grill, Rassela’s Jazz Club, Moe’s Alley, Blue Note, among others. It is undeniable that the group has ample experience in performing in these types of venues.
That is why we took this opportunity to ask Patricio how the movement is going in these places when it comes to hiring orchestras in recent years, to which he replied that the presence of orchestras in local venues has decreased dramatically in recent years, especially after the pandemic.
Likewise, because of this same situation, there were many clubs that began to close their doors indefinitely, making it very difficult for Rumbaché to play live regularly.
Once the pandemic was relaxed, Patricio says that a few venues survived, but there were too many orchestras for the few available stages. This led them to opt for festivals, concert series and private shows.
Every night there was a pen club, but that has changed radically and Patricio and the other members of Rumbaché have had to adapt to the circumstances.
Oye Productions
In addition to Rumbaché, Patricio also has his own entertainment company called Oye Productions, with which he is responsible for providing live music for all kinds of events. Obviously, he gives priority to Rumbaché, but he also offers the services of guitarists, trios and all sorts of musicians.
What the company seeks to focus on is providing musical entertainment for private parties such as a business meeting or something more personal such as a wedding.
He always tries to hire musicians who play all kinds of instruments and genres to perform varied shows for each event. He also seeks to look for artists he knows beforehand and who he is sure will do an excellent job.
Activities outside Rumbaché
Patricio also indicated that one of his most important occupations outside Rumbaché was teaching congas, timbales and drums. He also teaches drums to children once a week.
These activities bring happiness to the musician and he always looks for the opportunity for these youngsters he teaches to have some knowledge of Latin percussion and get to know our music much better.
Read also: René Latin Soul and his journey into music from his home country
Lengaïa Salsa Brava is killing it in Montréal
Latin talent can be found where you might least expect it and, this time we found it in the city of Montreal, Canada, a place that is cultivating an increasingly large and vigorous Latin music scene. On this occasion, we were thrilled to be able to talk to Giany-Frantz Huyghues-Despointes, who is the leader and founder of the orchestra Lengaïa Salsa Brava.
Lengaïa Salsa Brava is a 12-member salsa orchestra that was created in 2012 by Giany, who was also a trombonist and had some experience in the world of music before daring to create his own group.
The effort of all its members has enabled them to collaborate with great performers of the genre and win important awards such as the Canada Latin Awards in the category of ”Salsa Group of the Year” in a row in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Lengaïa Salsa Brava has also performed approximately 30 concerts a year since its foundation and has participated in important festivals such as Toronto Salsa Festival, Festival Nuit Blanche de Montreal, Nuits d’Afrique, among others. The group was greatly helped by the fact that its members come from different countries such as French Guyana, Cuba, Colombia, Peru, Quebec, Spain and Venezuela.
This interesting journey shows us how hard this group has worked to achieve a place within the industry and all the potential they have to achieve much more than what was obtained. Today, Giany, its founder, shares a little more about himself and his orchestra Lengaïa Salsa Brava.
Giany’s beginnings as a musician
Although the trombone is the instrument for which Giany is known, he started playing the trumpet from 10 years of age, which is when he began his interest in this branch of the art.
An important point is that in French Guyana, the country where Giany was born, salsa is not a predominant genre, since the most played by the French Guyanese is the mazurka, which is very similar to the Haitian compas. In the case of Giany’s family, they listened to a bit of everything, including salsa.
A turning point for the artist was watching Celia Cruz singing on tv one day. The musician had never heard the Cuban singer before and it was an incredible experience for him, as her deep voice, colorful outfit and wig caught his attention at the time.
Because of her deep voice, he thought she was a man, but his mother explained to him who Celia was and, months later, took him to a concert to see her live. That performance of ”La Guarachera de Cuba” marked him so much that he would begin to lean towards music in the future. Today, he says that Celia is a spiritual mother to him, as she was his great inspiration.
Along with being a fan of the Cuban singer, he wanted to learn to play instruments and initially opted for the piano and the guitar, but that changed when his Spanish teacher at school gave him a trumpet and he discovered that he really liked to play it.
Some time later, he graduated from the national school of music in his country and, by the time he turned 18, Giany noticed that his musical skills excelled more with the trombone than the trumpet. This is how he decided to choose the trombone as his main instrument and so it has been to the present time.
He started playing classical music with that instrument but soon discovered that he wanted to return to the genre that captivated him when he was just a child, so he dared to create a group in France, where he studied aviation. The thing is that he went to live in Canada six months later and had to abandon the plans he had at that time.
Founding of Lengaïa Salsa Brava
Giany arrived in Canada with the vision to create another group in his new country of residence, but he did not know any musicians yet, so he moved into action and started placing ads on social networks and other virtual means to communicate with artists who were interested in joining his project.
The results were amazing and there were many musicians who contacted Giany because of their interest in the concept proposed by him. With this group, he started assembling the orchestra in order to give form to what Lengaïa Salsa Brava is today. The orchestra has six years with the same staff and format it presents to the public today.
Huge number of nationalities in Lengaïa Salsa Brava
As for the large number of nationalities living in the orchestra, Giany has said that all ”are part of a big family” hinting that national origins have not been a problem for the smooth development of the group. In addition to that, the salsa brava is a genre widely known worldwide, so the members of the orchestra knew in advance what they were getting into.
To what we must add that these guys work or have worked in other salsa brava orchestras, so they were pretty much steeped in everything related to this beautiful music.
Giany says it is very easy to work with his musicians because they always know how to perfectly interpret what he wants.
Origin of the name Lengaïa Salsa Brava
When Giany was looking for a name for the group, he wanted something different and not very Latin sounding. He also wanted people to ask what the name meant, so we have fallen into the trap.
The musician explained that he wanted something that refers to how explosive, energetic and aggressive his music is, so he chose the name inspired by a Tanzanian volcano called Ol Doinyo Lengaï that spews black lava. ”When you see a volcano exploding, you imagine something explosive and aggressive at the time. That’s what we want to reflect with our music”. Also, the fact that its lava is black is something different from other volcanoes, as is the group’s orchestration and technique,
Activities outside Lengaïa Salsa Brava
Giany wanted to emphasize that all the members of Lengaïa Salsa Brava have other jobs and work activities outside the orchestra. In his particular case, he works as a commercial pilot, but in his spare time, he devotes himself as much as he can to his great passion which is music.
So far, Giany and the other members of the orchestra are unable to live solely on music, but they do their best to keep the group together and are there to fulfill Lengaïa Salsa Brava whenever necessary.
Although the orchestra has been a second employment option, it is undeniable that this is their great vocation and the engine that moves his life, so there will always be space for it.
Four nationalities united in Ladama
Talent can come from the most amazing and unexpected origins and more when we are talking about music, a branch of art from which always emerges people with a lot of potential who can completely break our schemes. This leads us to introduce the topic of a group of four young musicians and singers who joined their skills despite their apparent differences. They are the musical group Ladama.
Ladama is an alternative Latin music band composed of four members of different nationalities: Venezuelan Maria Fernanda Gonzalez, Brazilian Lara Klaus, Colombian Daniela Serna and American Sara Lucas.
Three of the four members of the group spoke exclusively with International Salsa Magazine and this report will show some of the topics covered during this pleasant conversation.
Origins of Ladama as a group
The conversation was started by Lara and Dani, who explained a bit about the rise and concept of the band. The group was created in 2014 while the girls were doing an artistic residency known as OneBeat, which was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. They were selected to represent their respective countries, which led them to socialize with each other and discover the great chemistry between them because of the language and genres they played.
Since OneBeat was an initiative towards cultural exchange between artists and offered the necessary technical equipment to record music, they took full advantage of this space to get to know each other’s styles and see what they could do together.
Once the month-long residency was over, each went their way, but they kept in touch via Skype a year after having met. The motivation to create a project that would encompass a musical band and teaching classes to minority communities remains intact.
They wanted to create an initiative in which community, creativity, social impact and cultural exchange would be the fundamental pillars of Ladama. It was always clear that they not only wanted to make music, but also do something that would positively impact upon society and they think they have succeeded so far.
As for the name Ladama, it is simply a combination of the first two letters of the names of each one: ”la” comes from Lara, ”da” comes from Dani and ”ma” comes from María Fernanda. At the same time, ”La dama” in Spanish means ”The lady”, which also refers to the fact that it is an all-women group.
How did these different origins coexist in Ladama?
We were very impressed by the fact that all Ladama members came from different countries, so we wanted to know how this impacted the group. Lara answered that the only thing they needed was the desire to play together and move this initiative forward, which means that the origin of each one was not a problem to found the group.
Just like every other band, each one had her own ideas and they discussed them together to know which one to choose or not.
Their major test was given during the Rec-Beat Festival in Brazil. They arrived only a few days before the event, so they could barely rehearse and set up the repertoire. Despite the haste, they feel that everything went very fluidly, as they spent time meeting with each other and writing some songs for an occasion like this.
Given that Lara, Dani and Maria Fernanda come from Latin and tropical countries, there are certain rhythms that sound so much alike, which they took advantage of to unify them and create completely new rhythms that sound good at the same time. Lara also pointed out that these mixes are in constant change and they always try not to get stuck in the same styles.
In addition to that, Ladama has left traditional music behind a little bit and has focused on alternative music and other genres such as pop, soul and R&B.
Dani addressed the topic of genres by saying that they do not follow a plan in which they have something specific to play or mix. Any of their songs can go from Dominican merengue and Colombian cumbia to trap and reggaeton without any problems. They do not like to limit themselves and always seek to reach all audiences.
Ladama in a Tiny Desk concert series
Playing on Tiny Desk (a series of live concerts organized by the radio program All Songs Considered in the United States) is always a prestige for any artist or group that performs on that platform, which is inviting Latin singers more frequently every time.
The girls were at a festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they had the opportunity to meet the curator of Tiny Desk, who would invite Ladama to record their session in Washington D.C. shortly thereafter.
Lara considers that this was a great opportunity to spread their work due to the large number of people who always tune in to Tiny Desk, in addition to the many artists they knew after their appearance on the platform.
For her part, María Fernanda commented that, on that same occasion, they took the opportunity to bring instruments from their own countries so that the Tiny Desk audience could get to know them. She also stressed that this session will be an important audiovisual document for history that will serve as an inspiration for other musicians in the future.
It was a great achievement after all that hard work.
Music classes for the community
The members of Ladama have also been focusing on music classes for the community at large, mostly in schools and universities. In their four countries, they have given workshops of all kinds related to music in the languages they speak, which are, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
the artist emphasized that they always try to do this type of activities together in the very countries where they offer live performances. They have total freedom to do things separately, but they prefer to carry out these activities supporting each other.
Although they offer classes to anyone who is interested, Latino children are a very important group for Ladama, as many of them often have some problems of identity and adaptation to the United States. When they arrive at school in this country, they often disguise or even hide their Latino roots in order to fit in with their peers, so these classes are an opportunity for them to reconnect with that identity they begin to leave behind.
These workshops and classes also serve as additional income for the group, as they can not only support themselves through tours and festivals. These educational activities are another way to diversify their earnings and have more stable inflows of money.
Legacy of the Cepeda family after eight generations
As all our readers may know, this is a space devoted entirely to the promotion of salsa and other derivative styles, but that does not mean we should leave out other Latin genres that also deserve to be promoted and recognized worldwide. Such is the case of bomba and plena, which we are going to talk about in the next lines.
Bomba and plena are two Puerto Rican musical genres that initially became popular at the local level, but little by little, they have received international notoriety thanks to certain groups of Puerto Ricans who have devoted considerable effort to take their culture to as many places as possible in the world. This is how we get to the theme of the Cepeda family and all that its members have done for bomba and plena.
The Cepeda Family
The Cepeda family is a cultural institution that has been given the task of promoting bomba and plena for eight generations, so that they can be heard and danced all over the world. Don Rafael Cepeda Atiles, a professional musician and composer with an extensive career who has left a great legacy thanks to his hard work during his lifetime, which keeps current thanks to his descendants.
When he married Caridad Brenes Caballero, he involved her in all his artistic activities and became a fundamental support for the musician in his work. The lady became a professional bomba and plena dancer, costume designer, and choreographer, which made her shine with her own light in every project directed by her talented husband.
During his career, Don Rafael created several musical groups and, over the years, he and his wife involved their children and other family members to collaborate in what would become a renowned family business.
One of the artist’s greatest achievements was the development of a cultural movement around the rescue and preservation of local traditions related to bomba and plena, which were thought to be lost. He was also decorated with the Smithsonian Institute’s National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his contributions to music.
All this legacy remained in the hands of Don Rafael’s family and one of the first to do something about it was his son Modesto, who founded the Escuela de Bomba y Plena Don Rafael Cepeda in Santurce, Puerto Rico. This institution was created in order to teach bomba and plena in the areas of dance and percussion.
Those who would follow these steps would be Margarita ”Tata” Cepeda, granddaughter of Don Rafael and Caridad, and Barbara Liz Ortiz Sanchez, great-granddaughter of Don Rafael and Caridad. Margarita currently runs the Escuela de Bomba y Plena Doña Caridad Brenes de Cepeda and her daughter, Barbara Liz, runs the Escuela de Bomba y Plena Tata Cepeda in the state of Florida. It was precisely the latter with whom we had the pleasure to talk about this project and the plans she has for the future.
Barbara Liz from the Escuela de Bomba y Plena Tata Cepeda
Barbara Liz belongs to the seventh generation of the Cepeda family and her children, who also dance bomba and plena, would belong to the eighth generation. She says that each family member has tried to endorse Don Rafael’s legacy in their own way. In her particular case, she has spent five years running the Escuela de Bomba y Plena Tata Cepeda in Florida, which she decided to baptize with his mother’s nickname, which is Tata, to pay tribute to her in life.
Although the operation of her school and his mother’s are different, they usually work together in cases that require it. For example, if for some reason a student cannot pursue his education here because he is going to Puerto Rico, he can continue studying at the school located on the Island of Enchantment without any problem.
”We didn’t have a curriculum or educational program to follow to teach bomba and plena, but my mom was responsible for creating one so that we could teach dance and percussion with a clearer methodology,” said Bárbara Liz.
As a result of Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Rican families went to live in Florida due to the loss of their properties and material things, so the students of the school in Puerto Rico became able to enroll in the Florida school instead. It can be said that they are sister schools working together towards the same goal.
Percussion and dance in bomba and plena
Something Bárbara Liz wanted to highlight about this point is that many girls are enrolling in her school to learn to play percussion, something that did not happen very often.
At other times, it was believed that percussion in bomba and plena was exclusively for men and dance for women. In more conservative versions of these genres, women only sang and men were responsible for dancing and playing instruments.
That has been changing over time. Nowadays, there are many guys who are setting their sights on dancing and many girls are having an interest in the percussion part. Every day, the female part is becoming more and more relevant in the different areas of bomba and plena.
In addition to all this, the institution’s teachers also teach quite a bit about the emergence and history of these two genres, so that their students are not just dedicated to playing and dancing, but also know the origin of everything they learn now.
Differences and similarities between bomba and plena
When we wanted to know a little about the differences and similarities between bomba and plena, Bárbara Liz explained to us that both genres were very different from each other. The rhythms, the instruments used and the ways of dancing have many differences in both.
In the case of bomba, this is the oldest musical genre and dance in Puerto Rico and is born from a barrel-shaped instrument, which is one of its most representative elements. It is also known as the ”first sung newspaper”.
Similarly, it is the dancer who sets the pace for the percussionist, not the other way around. The musician should be guided by the footsteps of the dancer, which often gives rise to completely new rhythms.
Plena was born a few years later with certain variants of bomba and is called the ”second sung newspaper”. It was plena that inspired several of the Cepeda family members to create their own groups such as the Grupo Gracimá (a variant of bomba), which originated in the school owned by Margarita in Puerto Rico.
In contrast, Bárbara Liz named her professional group Kalindá in honor of one of the most popular variants of bomba.
Tributes
Something that makes Bárbara Liz very proud is that both she and her mother had the opportunity to go to the Smithsonian National Museum in March to pay tribute to their ancestors and the genres that her great-grandfather promoted so much in life.
At the time, Don Rafael donated some items related to bomba and plena such as barrels, a güiro and barrels However, some bomba costumes were missing to complete the collection, which were given by Bárbara Liz and Margarita to be exhibited in the institution, so anyone interested in learning more about Puerto Rican genres and musical culture can visit the place and cherish these valuables.
Read also: Yani Borrell ‘‘El Elegante de La Salsa”