A great weekend of Mexican music
We had a great weekend for music. Three nights in a row at three different venues and three different types of music. We started off at our favorite Italian restaurant run by a truly remarkable woman, Barbara Romero. She took what was a 4 table hole -in -the wall to restaurants in Guadalajara and a 20+ table restaurant in Ajijic, while getting married and having a baby. One of the secrets of her success is her training with chefs in Italy;the other in her careful selection of great local music talent.
Friday night the talent was Old Souls, a 4-piece Americana band made up of a guitarist and lead singer with a punk rock background, an Irish female signer, wo top notch Mexicans on the drums and bass, and pedal steel guitarist from the American south. It worked.
The songs were mostly standards – a couple of originals – but the audience , both Mexican and Expat were singing and humming along over their pasta and tequila. Old Soul’s rendition of “City of New Orlean” almost made me cry – I rode that train before it was cancelled and it brought back memories of crossing the Lake Pontchartrain causeway at sunrise.
Saturday night was a unique treat The Latin Matters Quartet, led by master jazz guitarist Juan Castanon, at a house concert at Castanon’s home, which turns out to be very large with a patio that accommodated the band, the bar, and 40 people, plus an art gallery for his wife’s magnificent ethnic dolls and paintings. The music ranged from jazz standards with a Latin flavor, to a few reinterpretations of popular songs, to marvelous guitar riffs by Castanon and standup electric bass solos by Freddie Adrian. The only glitch was finding the place- Castanon’s house number is 8a- which turned out to be 3 blocks and a lot of umbers from #8 on the same street.
Sunday night was a tablau– essentially, a flamenco party – held at La Cochera Cultural, one of the best local venues for jazz, indigenous music, and Mexican flamenco. The night was billed as a flamenco performance by the renowned dancer and maestro, El Torombo, on tour from Spain. José Suárez Torombo, a Sevillian flamenco dancer with an international career presents a flamenco ‘peña’ (performance)with his own style. He was .backed up by musicians and dancers from Ajijic and Guadalajara – all outstanding bailarines de flamenco with great reputations.
LCC was overflowing, every seat in the spacious patio (which can hold up to a hundred) was filled. We marveled at the astonishing flamenco singing of Soleo Gollas, accompanied by Emelia Galvez on the cajon and Fernando Marinez on guitar. Sofia Arce wowed us with the fastest high-speed footwork I have ever seen in flamenco, She was followed by a huapango band (indigenous music from Veracruz) with a donkey jawbone for a background beat and the zapateado high speed tap dancing for the rhythm. They kicked their set off with “La Bamba”, originally a huapango song that Richie Valens popularized in 1968.
As the sun set on the outdoor venue and the stage lights came on, we were treated to sequential dances by ‘Torombo’s local students and other local dancers (who were very good), a jazz flamenco piece by saxman Chuco Soto and bass player Gilberto Rios (whose new album is due soon) and the rest of the flamenco plyers, and several more dances by the tall, lovely and very fast moving and talented Sofia Arce.
Altogether a great music weekend in Mexico.
banner photo: Latin Matters Quartet house concert
Patrick O’Heffernan
