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DIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS
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DIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS |
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DIRECTORY OF NIGHTCLUBS | |
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| ASIA FESTIVALS IN NOVEMBER 2023 | ||
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Nepal Latin Dance FiestaNov 16 2023 – Nov 19 2023 United World Trade Center Katmandu, Nepal, 44600 |
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Salsa Bangkok FiestaNov 02 / 05 2023 Quaint Bangkok : Brasserie Bar Venue 23 soi sukhumvit 61 Klongton-nuea Wattana Bangkok, Thailand |
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| Correct link to the site | The “Excel link” will take you to a general promotions page, not the local one. | |
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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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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”
Recorded in New York at Electric Lady Studios, the album was released by Coco Records on Wednesday, September 18, 1974.
The album featured vocals by Lalo Rodríguez, who was only 16 years old at the time.
It includes: ‘Nada De Ti’, ‘Deseo Salvaje’, ‘Una Rosa Española’, ‘Nunca Contigo’, ‘Un Día Bonito’, ‘Mi Cumbia’.
Eddie Palmieri
The sun of Latin music
MP, 1990. MP-3109 CD
Recorded in 1975
The Sun of Latin Music was a controversial album. It was too far from the easy formula of the middle salsa boom – what César Miguel Rondón calls the “mtancerization of salsa”.
“Ahead of its time” was one of the comments; “a piece like Un día bonito, had to be mutilated” with a 6-minute piano intro just to be able to play it on the radio; a danzón (Una rosa española) with lyrics by the Beatles; a cumbia that is not very Colombian, despite the name (Mi cumbia) and the chorus that says “very Colombian…”.
Nevertheless, this album represents the strength of the spirit of salsa: the encounter between the harshness of the street and the majesty of the most sophisticated musical sound.
One of the best albums of Caribbean music ever released.
Palmieri was always in search of something new. The Sun Of Latin Music is the culmination of a phase that began with an earlier album, Sentido (1974).
Ronnie Cuber and Mario Rivera were chosen as the first saxophonists in a Palmieri orchestra.
For many it is Palmieri’s best album, the most experimental and universal. One that borders on academic music, but without forgetting the dancer.
With spices like the violin of Alfredo de la Fe, who contributes his creativity everywhere, the tuba, the penetrating power of the brass, the overwhelming percussion.
Thus, Una rosa española is a modern danzón that later becomes a montuno that revives the joyful Palmerian game with the dignified uproar of trumpets, saxophones and trombones.
But the most amazing thing about this 1974 album is the 14:20-minute track Un día bonito, arranged by Barry Rogers, which would keep even the most trained dancers busy. But Palmieri wasn’t just thinking about leg sets or dance floors.
The piece begins with a long piano interlude, the same structure he used in the track Adoración from the album Sentido, which would mark a new musical phase in his career.
It was more than experimental, it had some electro-acoustic music; no one had ever had the audacity to do that on a salsa album. Palmieri made the leap, he could do it, it sounded more like Stravinsky or Milhaud than Puente or Fania.
Suddenly, back in the piece, the orchestra bursts in, harder and heavier than ever, wishing the city of Los Angeles a beautiful day and San Francisco a “warm greeting,” and it is certain that Keruack and Borrough heard the call.
Eddie Palmieri
The sun of Latin music
Produced by Harvey Averne
Eddie Palmieri: piano
Lalo Rodríguez: vocals
Vitín Paz: trumpet
Virgil Jones: trumpet
Barry Rogers: trombone, tenor tuba
José Rodrigues: trombone
Ronnie Cuber: Baritone Saxophone, Flute
Mario Rivera: Baritone Saxophone, Flute
Alfredo de la Fe: Violin
Eddie Guagua Rivera: Bass
Tommy Chuckie Lopez, Jr.: Bongo
Eladio Pérez: conga
Nicky Marrero: timbales, percussion
Peter Gordon: French Horn
Tony Price: Tuba
Jimmy Sabater: Chorus
Willie Torres: Chorus
Tommy López Sr.: conga
Tracks: Nada de ti; Deseo salvaje; Una rosa española; Nunca contigo; Un día bonito; Mi cumbia
Arrangements by René Hernández and Barry Rogers
One of the most valuable pieces in the exhibition “Rhythm and Power: Salsa in New York”, which will be presented until next November at the Museum of the City of the Big Apple, is the first Grammy in the history of Latin music, awarded in 1976 to Eddie Palmieri for his album “Sun of Latin Music”.
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Also Read: Salsa and its detractors “Caiga quien Caiga”
