This annual
event held over three weekends every January under the auspices
of the Festival Of Sydney has been covered by DIASPORA since 2000.
It presents local Latin bands and is always headlined by one,
sometimes two international groups. The Australian contingent
this year was represented by Kenny Lopez and Capoeira Brasil.
Kenny and his band who hail from Melbourne play Latin dance music
based on traditional son, while the singer/ guitarist-trecero’s
style is deeply indebted to that of Arsenio Rodriguez.
Their performance was very enjoyable and entertaining and covered
a nice variety of styles. Kenny travels to Cuba at least once
a year to jam with the locals. If the whole group were able to
make the pilgrimage there and stay awhile, I’m sure we’d
hear even more fireworks in the sabor and rhythm departments.
Capoeira Brasil are a regular feature of the festival and their
athletic martial arts dancing and rhythms were quite superb. The
performance they gave lasted about 20 very dangerous minutes,
left the viewer agape at both the grace and athletic power of
it all (a sort of fusion of Bruce Lee and Afro-brazilian dance)
and had the lovely touch of a drummers parade pounding samba beats
and wending its way through the huge audience both before and
after the performance.
Then came the international act, Los Pleneros De La 21. Those
Latino music listeners with their ears to the ground and of course
any puertorriquenos living in Australia may have had the fortune
to hear the recording Puerto Rico Tropical (Shanachie) of the
early 90’s which featured the group on one side. Their most
recent record Somos Boricuas was released in 1996, to delirious
acclaim from tropical music critics and listeners but as far as
I know has never been released in Australia (surprise! surprise!).
The organisers of this annual event must be consulting some genuinely
knowledgeable people because Los Pleneros De La Veintiuna (21)
are without a doubt the leading proponents of traditional bomba
and plena performing today, even though they only have 4 recordings
to their credit. The group were formed in 1983 among the Puerto
Rican community of New York in order to preserve and extend the
roots of these wonderful African flavoured dance musics.
Very briefly plena has a more lyrical melodiously Hispanic sound
mixed with African rhythms while the rootsy bomba takes the listener
even further back across the ocean. When los Pleneros took the
stage the first thing that struck me was the astonishingly complex,
free yet highly accurate interplay between the congas and the
various home-made percussion instruments, yet the distinctive
dance beat pulses out hard and strong irrespective of the surprise
filled shifts of direction or imaginative jazzy flights on cuatro
(Puerto Rican guitar) that peppered the songs at every turn.
The music had a very powerful street jam ambience and as such
should be compulsory listening for any up and coming salseros
as well. Needless to say the vocals and vocal harmonies were tight
as a drum, yet relaxed with subtle improvisatory flair and were
often very adventurous…so that they weren’t just recreating
the tradition but also extending on it in exciting ways. A couple
of Cuban numbers, the afro-cuban classic Yayabo (with la plena
se formo replacing the Yayabo ya llego chorus) and the carnival
conga La Jardinera were given very spirited plena/bomba readings.
In the main though many of the songs were from their own releases
or traditional recordings unavailable here. Last year’s superb
Ricardo Lemvo concert notwithstanding los Pleneros turned in a
performance that refused to leave the hips (and the mind) in peace,
rivalling the best performances of tropical music I have ever
witnessed.
Richard Jasuitowicz (January 2003)
Did anyone take photographs??
