PARA USTED: YOU TOO CAN SEE MARACA NOW!

Postscript to the Concert

I watched this from the archives late last night myself as I was downtown on business earlier. This has been an interesting tour for this band. The repertoire has varied this trip depending upon where they were playing. For the Milwaukee and Chicago performances, for example, they were playing for dance audiences, and consequently the material that they did there was primarily dance material, but they also had some jazz club dates earlier on in the tour and mixed in more jazz as indicated at those venues. This Kennedy Center concert was a pretty balanced mix of material; on the one hand, there were some solid dance numbers like "Preguntale a Mi Mujer" (which, by the way, we have also carried in Timba Radio for a while), but there was also (this being the Kennedy Center) a heavier mix of jazz, some of it from the Havana Calling period of his career, but some of it new to his long-term listeners including some forays into straight-ahead jazz material. SO, if you caught the band earlier in this tour, expect a more evenly-balanced mix of jazz and dance music in this concert, which means (a) it will be a little different than your previous experience and (b) there will be some interesting and pleasant surprises.
Before the Chicago date, some of the locals had told me "we've heard Maraca before", and because of the new mix of musicians and material in this band, my answer at that time was "no, you haven't. Not like this band". I think a similar statement applies to this concert vs. the rest of the tour. Taken as a whole, this will probably include some material you didn't hear earlier unless you have been following them all over the country (in addition to some familiar songs).
Even leaving the music itself aside, in some ways this is an historic tour if only because a video of a full live concert by the band will be available indefinitely on the Kennedy Center website. Limited clips (a song or three) of other bands have been available on YouTube forever, but the full concert thing is new I think, and the quality of the Kennedy Center audio and video is much better than 90% of what hits YouTube (apart from the formally-produced videos).

Posted by: Bill Tilford on Monday, 25 July 2011, 11:22 PM

Excellent news! I will watch it from the archive since 6pm Eastern time is midnight central European time. Thanks for letting us know.

Posted by: Michelle White on Sunday, 24 July 2011, 09:33 PM