Festival Directors Nick Van Eyck and Serena Wong with El Médico de la Salsa

The SF SalsaRueda Festival was really a great event - having 500+ great and enthusiastic dancers in the crowd really seemed to fire up the musicians. Here's Tom's gallery from Saturday - Part 2, covering Sunday, is still to come.

Rumor Central: As per DJ Melao, Arnaldo Jiménez (ex-Paulito, leader of la Cosmopólita) will be Los Van Van's new bassist.

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Coky García, Carlos Caro, Leo García (photo by Kevin Moore)

After backing up Manolín on Saturday, Timbalive closed out the massive and extraordinary SF Salsa Rueda Festival with two burning sets, highlighted by these percussion solos from Los García: Leo, the leader of the band, Coky, his older brother, who played with the original NG La Banda, back when they were called Nueva Generación, as well as Emiliano Salvador, Opus 13, Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Mamborama, their cousin Miguelito, who just arrived, having been a founding member of Havana d'Primera, and guest artist Carlos Caro, the subject of the soon to be released Beyond Salsa Bongó, a former member of Opus 13 and Paulito FG. Enjoy!

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This is a really shocking and tragic development, which we delayed posting in the hope that it was only a rumor, but Manuel "Manolo" Labarrera, conguero of Los Van Van since 1980, has passed. He looked very young and very healthy when Tom took this video of him at Yoshi's SF last year.

Manolo "de la sonrisa amplia" (of the big grin) took over as Van Van's conguero for Joel Drigs, who played on only one album after the departure of founding conguero Raúl "El Yulo" Cárdenas, who, many years later, while a member of NG La Banda, himself died in a tragic car crash. By all accounts, Manolo was every bit as wonderful a person as a conguero and in the latter department he was legendary, playing a central role in the hellacious groove that resulted in Van Van's apodo, "el tren del Caribe" (the train). Manolo is survived by his son Rafael, who sang with Bamboleo and penned such classics at La tremenda and El protagonista. Rafael was residing in Perú when last we heard. R.I.P. Manolo - it will never be quite the same without you.

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Click here for Peter Maiden's photos from Saturday, featuring various dance clinics, and Manolín, el Médico de la Salsa, backed by Timbalive.

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