It's really frustrating to be a timba fan in California ...

Here's the latest:

1) No Charanga Habanera - May 7 in LA (Sportsmen's Lodge) and May 8 in SF (Cócomo) are both cancelled.

2) Manolito y su Trabuco - who have their visas in hand will play BOTH of those gigs. If you have tickets, you can either use them to see Trabuco or get a refund at the point of purchase.

3) Yoshi's has cancelled Manolito for May 5 and May 6

On a more positive note I strongly agree with Michelle on those Revé tracks - the rhythm section sounds measurably hotter than Fresquecito, which was easily one of the best albums of the 2000s.

Also, the Ned Sublette Lecture at MoAD in SF is still on for Thursday night, April 29.

leave a comment

continue reading La Última

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

leave a comment

continue reading La Última

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.

leave a comment

continue reading La Última

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.

leave a comment

continue reading La Última