Good day dear readers!

Last week, after I published the weekly post, I received a comment from a fellow named Bobby Martin, who told me the story of Son D’Acosta.

Son D’Acosta is a group playing traditional Cuban music from La Habana.
The group was founded by Jose Acosta, and had a fair amount of success.

Over time, Jose felts that the fine tuned and virtuoso group was not fulfilling its full potential, and with a heavy heart decided to defect to Spain.
After some years have passed, Jose moved to miami, (Fllorida, USA), and gathered the band once more.

In this video clip you can hear a medley of traditional Cuban music, representing the group’s style.

Disfruten !

Good day dear readers.

Recently, I came across a very nice album called “Son X Tres” by the wonderful Tresero Pancho Amat.

The album was great, but one song caught my eye, and the name is in the title; It caught my eye because I have been doing photography for 8 years now, with this being my main hobby outside Cuban music & dancing… so the song strikes my right in the heart 🙂

Leonel Francisco Amat, known as Pancho Amat, is a teacher by education, but more importantly a great Cuban tresero, arranger and composer.
His musical career started in 1971 with the establishment of Grupo Manguere, named after an ancient musical instrument of the people indigenous to south and central America.
The group toured over 25 countries.

After 15 years with the group, Pancho went on to a solo career, working together with such artists as Oscar De Leon, Pablo Milanes and Silvio Rodriguez, touring Europe, north America and Japan.
Pancho is also a winner of many musical awards, such as Cubadisco’s national prize (1995) and best traditional music album of the year (2002).

So, have a good time with this wonderful Son composition!

Disfruten!

Good day dear readers.

Usually I post great pieces of Cuban music, but today it’s different – this weekend I will not be accessing the internet or any sort of communications, as I will be busy learning and dancing a variety of Afro Cuban social, popular and folkloric dances at a local salsa event.

For this 3 day \ 2 night event the organizers arranged for the arrival of

Yunaisy Farray & Danger Rodríguez

These are a couple of quite successful professional Cuban dancers \ teachers \ performers currently living in Spain; Yunaisy is from la Habana and Danger from Camaguey.
Both are hugely talented, award winning professional dancer educated in some of Cuba’s best dance schools, academies and dance troupes.

Both are, no doubt, great dancers and performers, but personally I can also say that Danger is a very good teacher; I came to one of his seminars at the 2013 “remeneate” festival in Italy, learned a lot and had a great time.

So, I hope that his blog entry will give you enough motivation not to miss any good and well organized Cuban dance events in your part of the woods, especially if there are international artists involved!
🙂

Disfruten !

Good day dear readers!

As you might have already guessed, my favorite artist \ band is Adalberto Alvarez (y Su Son), with others like the Reve family and Dan Den half a step behind.

For me, this artist has everything there can be in a salsa song; Cadencia (strong rhythm), elegance, sabor (this unique “feeling” of Cuban music you can’t really describe in mere words…), great singing, virtuoso playing and all of this mixing traditional Cuban music and lots of improvisation… I couldn’t ask for more!

Also, Adalberto has been composing since the 1970’s, and has been really doing a great job at  capturing the spirit and events of the times;
This song is from an album of the same name from 2008, a time when “dance tourism” in Cuba (and especially at la Habana, the capital where the country’s international airport is located) was peaking, and multitudes of Europeans were flocking to the wonderful city to learn the secrets of Cuban dancing (this still goes on today, and quite a lot, by the way…) .
The song is exactly about that – an Italian girl named Susanna, that comes to Havana with the dream of learning Cuban dancing.
What happens next? listen to the song and you’ll definitely find out!

Disfruten!