5th Annual Festival Cubano Part III
Riis Park, Chicago IL 17 August 2014
Photos and Summary by Bill Tilford, all rights reserved

The fact that a Salsa band from Puerto Rico, El Gran Combo, was the closing act provoked a little understandable discussion in Chicago but not too much because the band does have a Cuban connection from the time of its founding, it is world-famous, and the musical quality of the group is undeniable.   From my point of view, it did what it needed to do:  it helped fill the park, played a great show and hopefully brought new listeners to Palo!, the rising Afro-Cuban Funk band from Miami, which preceded them.    In fact, it took some of the more traditional Salsa listeners in the audience a couple of songs before they started to "get" Palo!, but by the time the band was in mid-set, the crowd was with them - even the people near me who weren't sure about how to dance to it were at least swaying to it.   

The pleasant musical surprise of the day (for this writer, anyway) was the local band Matanzas y su Latin Express, which has Angel d'Cuba on lead vocals and a killer violinist, Ernesto Baz. As is the case with most new bands, this one is playing mostly standards, but it plays them extremely well, and the musicians definitely have the talent to do more ambitious material as the group matures should it choose to do so.  We will be watching its development with interest.   Some dancers from the local Rueda scene joined it on stage during the set.  This scene appears to be growing in Chicago thanks to the efforts of a few instructors. 

After a prior Festival, I wrote about the red conga phenomenon.  At the time, I thought that it might be similar to the red-shirted crew member on the original Star Trek television series - this is the one who always died before the end of the episode, and I wondered if perhaps the musical equivalent was a bad sound board, a bad rehearsal, or both.   I am now convinced that the effect is real because this year's audio victim, Fajardo Jr., also had red congas in the band.   I don't know how much of the rap should be split between the band and the sound man, but I did see a couple of solos that I couldn't hear, which tends to implicate the board.  Bandleaders, i don't know whether you get to pick the colors here, but if you do, it might be a good idea to opt for brown on the congas.    Fajardo Jr.  also decided to do a informal demographic study with the audience - this established that the majority of attendees or the loudest ones, or both, were of Puerto Rican heritage (not a surprise since the Cuban-American population of Chicago is relatively small).  

There was a political moment when Governor Quinn of Illinois signed a new piece of legislation on stage, which was great for the prestige of the festival but also added a "Where's Dylan?"  element to the schedule because the arrival of the entourage and the regular media was rather later than anticipated.  Fortunately, the Festival was able to cover this with some schedule changes.  There were also camel and pony rides available for the kids during the day.  These two topics are completely unrelated except that the camel rides should really be advertised on the festival website next time - if I were a child, I would pressure my parents to take me based on this item alone, and if yours truly had been sitting on one during the El Gran Combo set, he would be sharing more and better photos. Some exhibition dancers from the Chicago International Salsa Congress also performed. 


Matanzas y su Latin Express, Palo!  and El Gran Combo were the musical high points of the day; the culinary high points were a fine paella from 90 Miles and some nice ropa vieja from a caterer that had purchased tent space.   

You can find a potpourri of photos from the day below.  Click on the images to enlarge them