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Verse 3 - A Concert Against All Odds - by Bill Tilford

Story and photos by Bill Tilford, all rights reserved
(para leer en español oprima aquí)

When Saturday arrived, I knew that I wasn’t going to try to do the VIP “Meet & Greet” with the fans. For one thing, as a writer, I have learned over the years that it really is better for my own blood pressure to let the regular fans have their own time at those things. For another, I had no idea where and when it would be. (I later learned that it was in the Rooftop 760 section of the club complex.) 

I did want to see the sound check, and after some effort and assistance, I was able to get into the club around 5 PM.  (There was still no noticeable poster outside the entrance to the club. Did someone decide that the event was top secret?)  I saw a few microphones and an engineer who was eagerly awaiting musicians and instruments. No musicians, no disc jockey, no sound, no sound check, just an engineer and equipment eagerly awaiting something to happen. As 6 pm approached, things didn’t look much different. Since the show was supposed to start at 6, this was not a good thing. More time passed. No real crowd was coming in either. One of the club’s staff, a brave young fellow named Denis, finally decided that there really should be music one way or another. By his own account, he was not a disc jockey and knew nothing about Cuban music but did know how to operate almost all of the equipment in the club including the DJ equipment. Heroically, he began assembling a downloaded playlist in the booth so that the audience would at least have something to dance to until the bands came in.  By this time, there was no escaping the fact that this concert was going to start – sometime - without a sound check by the engineer standing near me.  Bad sound can ruin even the best bands and sometimes has when bands from Cuba have performed in the United States, so I began mentally preparing myself for an impending disaster.    

...Testing, zero, zero, zero...

As the crowd began trickling in, music began playing from the DJ booth.....click HERE to read Bill Tilford's full report on the New York Timba Mega Concert

De La Habana a New York Concert Review - by Rosy Estrada

June 16, 2012 - Despite a very late start, mass confusion about the VIP tickets, and technical sound difficulties, the only thing that saved De La Habana a New York from becoming a Mega disaster was the pleasure the audience drew from watching the pure raw energy pour out of the musicians.  Bamboleo, Pupy Pedroso, and Manolito delivered an engaging performance in a rare appearance of all three groups at the famed Copacabana in New York City.

As the Washington, D.C. Timba.com correspondent and organizer of Distrito Cubano, DC's only Cuban social group, it seemed quite logical for me to organize and encourage a group of Cuban music followers/friends from our nation's capitol to travel to NY to soak in some live Cuban music.  What I didn't know was how much the lack of communication from the concert's organizers would affect my overall enjoyment of the concert.  Having attended both very successful Cuban concerts from visiting artists and others not so well promoted in the DC area, I still haven't been able to properly discern the root causes of what seems to be developing into a pattern and practice of over-promising and underdelivering when it comes to U.S. timba concert peformances.

In our case, we ended up purchasing the VIP Meet and Greet tickets....click HERE to read Rosina Estada's full report on the New York Timba Mega Concert

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Tonight Maykel Blanco & Salsa Mayor continue their outstanding Summer 2012 Tour with a show at the reknowned jazz club New Morning. Maykel has promised that the band will play their new hit "Bembé" from the upcoming album! If you're in Paris, don't miss the show! If you are somewhere else, check their tours page for the concert nearest you. And once again...a little taste of "Bembé"!

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Yoel Páez with Julio Montalvo & Rafa Sulbarán
during the filming of his new DVD "El Arte de la Independencia 360º"

Yoel is known to timba fans as one of the top percussioninst in Timba. He was part of some of the most important groups of timba during their greatest moments: Paulo F.G. y Su Élite & Issac Delgado. Kevin explains Yoel's style in the following words; "In addition to being a virtuoso and a groove machine, the defining quality of his style is his musicality. He never plays a "rhythm pattern" for its own sake. Everything he plays seems directly linked to whatever is going on musically in the arrangement at that moment." For more about Yoel check out his musician page here at Timba.com.

Over the past 10 years Yoel has been playing with important bands in Spain, and has been busy giving Masters Classes all over Europe. But now he has filmed a DVD called "El Arte de la independencia 360º". He says that he and trombonist Julio Montalvo (Paulo F.G., Pachito Alonso, David Bisbal). Julio produced the DVD with him. 

Yoel says that the idea was to do something different from other products in the market. His DVD goes through more than 10 different types of sets. And the 360º is because the course was shot from many angles and with many instruments such as drums, batá, congas, bongos, timbales, cajon, djembe, etc. Here is a 15 minute video that Yoel has uplaoded to YouTube. For more info contact Yoel at facebook http://www.facebook.com/yoel.paezgonzalez

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Verse 2 - The Road To The Concert 
(para leer este reporte en Español oprima aquí)

Story by Bill Tilford - All Rights Reserved

In the first verse, I mentioned that there was a lot of skepticism about the concert among potential ticket buyers from the very beginning, but the promised lineup was exciting enough that many people were prepared to attend from all over the country anyway. Unfortunately, many others  wanted to wait until they were absolutely certain that the concert was legitimate, and quite a few people asked me whether this concert was real, so I made it a point to learn as much as I could about the details, and I did my best to reassure them that to the best of knowledge, the concert was the real deal, and I was planning to attend personally.   

In the weeks before the the original May concert date, it became apparent that not all of the originally-promised bands were actually going to make the concert. A very important and serious mistake during this period was the failure of the organizers to redesign and effectively redistribute  all of  their materials when it become obvious that some of the groups and musicians would not be participating in the concert for various reasons. As the May 26 date approached, the organizers made the decision to postpone the concert until June 16 and change the venue from the gigantic Armory Arena  to the smaller Copacabana. This would have been the ideal moment for them to have effectively distributed  a fully-adjusted talent lineup as well. Many ticket holders, including my two colleagues, assumed the worst after the date change and chose not to reschedule for the June date. From the reports that I have received, the organizers did at least appear to have been forthright and effective with processing the refunds that were requested. They also offered a  free “VIP upgrade” to existing regular ticket holders (more about this later). Personally, I was determined to continue in spite of the astronomical fees for  changing  my flight and the equally horrible hotel room rates for a room close to the Copacabana.   

As the June 16th date approached, the organizers did publish some video from some of the performers confirming the new concert (unfortunately, one of the videos was by Mayito Rivera,  who did not actually appear at the concert due to another commitment on the new date), the New York FM radio station La Mega ran some ads, and Timba.com  (along with a few other websites) did its best to help get the word out about the concert. A couple of nights before the concert, many of the musicians were live on television in Miami.  This was favorably received, and it also had the benefit of proving that at least some of the musicians were actually in the country.  

I arrived in Manhattan the evening before the concert. I had booked a room in the Econolodge across the street from the Copacabana.  I did this in spite of the $200-plus per night rate (In some parts of the country, I think you can probably rent a floor for that)  and various  review website warnings that I would be paying for a space only slightly wider than the bed because (a) I wanted to stay as close as possible to the action, (b) the cheaper alternative, the New York Inn, had a lot of reviews that said “don’t go there”,  and (c) when I tried to go there anyway, they were supposedly all booked up. To my surprise, I had apparently booked the Econolodge version of the  Presidential Suite (or at least what they might offer deposed ex-Presidents from poor countries on the lam).   It was an actual room – the only room, in fact - on the top floor. This left me with some questions about how the reservation website magically steered me to this room while I was making reservations, but I also decided that it would just be too weird to go back downstairs and ask for one of those little shoeboxes that I had originally been threatened with by the hotel review websites.    

As I headed out for the evening, I walked by the Copacabana and noticed that there was no poster for tomorrow night’s concert outside of the club. I was later told that the event was not carried on the Copacabana website either. This probably did not help reassure the locals that everything was OK.   

Photo by Richard Williams (courtesy of Manuel Valera)

Manhattan is much better at Jazz than it is at Cuban music, so I went uptown and caught an absolutely wonderful set by Lenny White ’s quintet at a club called Smoke.  My real motive for doing this was that Manuel Valera and Tom Guarna were playing in this group, but the entire group including Lenny White, Wallace Roney, Victory Bailey, Manuel Valera and Tom Guarna  was excellent.  I had recently reviewed Manuel’s New Cuban Express and was curious to hear him in a more straight-ahead setting.  They did a wonderful tribute to Miles Davis’ Bitches’ Brew period, and Tom stretched out a lot more on guitar than he did on Manuel’s recording.   He will be worth watching in other projects that he gets involved with as well.   I also walked away from that performance with a new appreciation of just how much Miles’ music has influenced many members of the current generation of Cuban and other Latin Jazz musicians. 

...Pedrito, but not this time...

Later, I went over to Guantanamera, the 8th Avenue lair  of the Pedrito Martinez Group. Guantanamera is a very nice Cuban restaurant with very good food, but this is what it is; it is theoretically possible to dance in there, but there is no dance floor to speak of. Pedrito’s group wasn’t there that night,  and when I asked who was playing, I was told “We don’t know exactly who is playing, but it will be Cuban music.” Could this be some of Saturday’s musicians sneaking in to play for the night?  My hopes rose as I decided to stay and find out. As it turned out, the answer to that question was “no”, but there was a nice descarga by some local musicians that I will choose to call Grupo Incognito because they really didn’t want to be named either. (I saw this phenomenon in LA a few times years ago, so I am respecting their wishes.)   

As I went to bed that morning, I realized that things seemed awfully quiet for what was supposed to be the Timba concert of the decade.

CHORUS:   Even little things that look out of place can raise big suspicions. This is an important lesson for the future. 

Coming Next:  3rd Verse -  A Concert Against All Odds

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