Masterminds Nick Van Eyck and Serena Wong of Salsa Vale Todo (video below) at the 2012 festival.

Here's this year's full schedule. Thursday night is a welcoming party featuring Bay Area timberos Team Bahía, followed by three fully packed days of workshops and performances. Among the highlights are Mayito Rivera's first California show since leaving Los Van Van on Saturday night, backed by Timbalive, who play their own show Sunday night, Roberto Borrell's Finding the Clave course on Saturday, The Bay Area Timba Salsa All Stars on Friday night, and dance performances by troupes from around the world each night in the main ballroom. For tickets and reservations.

Mayito Rivera

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Ok get ready for MAYITO!! "El Poeta de la Rumba" will be in San Francisco SATURDAY February 15 with Timbalive at the 2014 SALSA RUEDA FESTIVAL. This is at the Hotel Whitcomb downtown SF. After that you can catch him with Jhair Sala and Sebastian Natal and their crew LA TEMATI-K in Woodbridge, Virginia at The Palace Nightclub ( 703-490-3814 ) on Friday the 21st and in Elizabeth, New Jersey at Mi Tierra ( 917-459-0014 / 908-422-3088 ) on Saturday the 22nd.

While Mayito heads over to the East Coast, the West Coast keeps the party going with the first of a series of GRAMMY® Award Grammy celebrations. The PACIFIC MAMBO ORCHESTRA headlines the Santa Rosa Salsa Festival this Saturday February 15 at the Flamingo Hotel.  After that you can catch them celebrating at Terrapin Crossroads on Saturday, March 1 in San Rafael.

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Issac is back in Cuba and has an exciting new band with three members of the original NG La Banda: pianist Rodolfo "Peruchín" Argudín, trumpeter Elpidio Chappottín and saxophonist/arranger Germán Velazco. On synthesizer is Yusef Díaz of Klímax fame. Click continue reading for a larger version of the poster.

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Israel Rojas - director and lead vocalist of Buena Fe

I believe it is safe to say that Israel Rojas is one of the busiest men in Havana, and I want to thank him for inviting me to the show "Motivos Martianos", which took place at Teatro Mella on January 21, 2014 and for taking time from his schedule to talk to Timba.com. The interview is in video format and in Spanish. I haven't had time to subtitle or to transcribe and translate. Hopefully I will be able to get around to that soon, but for now I have so much video from my recent trip to Cuba, that it is keeping me quite occupied. Meanwhile, for those who don't speak Spanish let me just mention a few key points.

Israel mentioned that in the first quarter of 2014, the band will launch it's new official homepage buenafe.cu. Up to now, the various homepages the band has had have been in domains outside of Cuba. The band has not always had access to the sites, on ocassion they have been hacked and the domains have been stolen, but above all, Cubans have not had access due to the rquirements for broadband. The new page will be a simpler design, but will now be accessible to all their fans, including Cubans with access to an internet connection.

At the beginning of March, probably in conjunction with the band's 15th anniversay, Galician singer/songwriter Andrés Suárez will perform with Buena Fe at Teatro Karl Marx where he will present his CD "Moraima" (highly recommended!). As for tours, the band plans to tour the US in April and Venezuela in May. They are also trying to arramge a major tour of Latin America for the second half of 2014. This is still in the development stage and we'll update you with more information as son as we have it.

For the rest of the interview we talked about the "Motivos Martianos" project and show, about what it was that caused Israel to become such a devoted follower of José Martí (part of which he attributes to the  Cuban special period) and how he views the art of songwriting.

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