We have updated Orlando "Maraca" Valle's tour section. As usual Maraca's schedule is rapidly filling up so if you want to book you should get in touch with Celine soon. Fans, take a look at the schedule and find a concert near you.

The band has some exciting additions this year. While young soneros seem to be an endangered species, Maraca has added both Alexei Sánchez "El Nene", and Lester Ciarreta to the group. You know Alexei "El Nene" from Azúcar Negra and Elito Revé, where he both composed and sang several of the hits on the "Se sigue comentando" CD. When El Nene left Azúcar Negra it was actually Lester Ciarretta who filled his place, moving over from Salsa Mayor. Well now both these young sonero/timberos are together in one band under the leadership of one of the most sucessful young bandleaders in Cuba today. French DJ Jack El Calvo informs us that Maraca even has other new musicians including a new trumpet player, from Klímax. Stay tuned for video of the new Maraca line-up!

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Yoshi's Oakland - Friday, June 18    ***  June 19-20 Sierra Nevada World Music Festival

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New to our Schools/Escuela section is Don Skoog's Contemporary Music Project. Don, a top Chicago percussionist, was a veteran of the Cuban music scene before timba.com came along. In fact, Don was one of the tour guides  on the fateful two-week Caribbean Music & Dance trip that led directly -- and immediately -- to the loss of my sanity and the founding of this website.

For some reason, a lot of books which having been being written for decades are all coming out at once this year and "Batá Drumming" is one of the absolute highlights. It's a gorgeous, glossy, hardcover coffee table book with color photos and a meticulous history of batá drumming ... and then the real fun begins with a beautiful and detailed transcription of the Oru Seco. It's easy to read, very methodical, and best of all, Don takes on the toughest aspect of the batá subject -- the extreme differences between the many styles of batá drumming in Cuba. Instead of beating his head against the wall in frustration, he embraces the differences and sets out to explain just how it turned out this way and how they all stem, ultimately, from a common source. As comprehensive as the 202 page masterpiece is, it's only the beginning of what Skoog has planned, and batá is only one aspect of his school's activities. They also take students on regular trips to Mexico to study with Havana masters such as Roberto Vizcaíno.

As with all of our sections, you can see when CMP has been updated by looking under "New Stuff/Lo Nuevo" to the right of the post, or you can access the site directly by typing timba.com/schools/cmp.

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Welcome to Kay Torres of Curuyé in LA! Curuyé in LA can be found under Reports above, or better yet, just look under New Stuff/Lo Nuevo, directly to the right. Whenever there's an update to any of our reports it will show up there. You can also simply type timba.com/reports/la into any browser for the latest Cuban events in SoCal.

The LA scene is really picking up, with Charanga Habanera, Van Van, Rumbanquete, and others scheduled in the next couple months.

Our goal is to eventually have a section like this for every city, so it's a great step forward to finally have Los Angeles covered.

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