Cuban Salsa from Dallas Texas: Havana NRG

By Elisangela Martínez Medina

In spite of the end of January night winds of about 35 degrees, Havana NRG packed the house with southern California salseros. The eight-piece Cuban orquesta came all the way from their current home in Dallas, Texas and played with a big, tight sound at the lovely Granada ballroom in Alhambra.

Over the past four and a half years, for bizarre reasons that are more political than about good music, Cuban artists like Los Van Van or Charanga Habanera to name a few, have been denied access to obtaining visas to perform in the US. Salsa has been an important musical genre for decades in the United States and American audiences do like it Cuban-style. The nearly one thousand people at the Granada for Havana NRG made that clear. It’s a wonderful thing that promoters are bringing us recent Cuban émigrés and / or orquestas that play Cuban salsa.

Mariela Suárez, musical director for Havana NRG, plays violin, piano and sings coro. She graciously spoke with me at length during a set break. Mariela is from Havana, Cuba, the Vedado district. Other band members are from various parts of Cuba that include La Havana, Holguin, Pinar del Río and Matanzas. In addition to the Cubanos in Havana NRG, one band member is from Peru and another is from the United States.

The Cuban musicians in the band attended Cuba’s highly acclaimed music conservatories and spent some time playing with other bands in Cuba’s red hot timba scene. While living in Cuba, members of what is now Havana NRG played as the opening band for Charanga Habanera on a few occasions and in 1995 shared an award with Manolito y su Trabuco for best new band. Later that same year, Mariela and some of her colleagues who had played together in Cuba were given a gig in Monterrey, México where they played for a few years. While in Monterrey they met up with other Cuban musicians, later relocated to Dallas Texas, and in 2002 officially founded Havana NRG.

Havana NRG creates a fusion of timba, salsa, meringue, and the more traditional grooves of charanga and son. They’ve brought this rhythmic cocktail to audiences all over Texas, as well as New York, Miami, Albuquerque, and San Francisco. They have also played internationally in Japan, Italy, Germany, Portugal and Israel.

Mariela said that Cuban style music has suffered “An almost intentional lack of promotion in the United States while it’s well accepted all over the world,” she reminds us that it just depends how you promote a musical genre. “We’ve educated the salsa public in Dallas, Texas and they do accept and like contemporary styles like timba.” As for audiences in places like Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Tel Aviv and beyond, “They do have open minds and really enjoy all different types of Afro-Cuban music,” Mariela said.

Mariela discussed the band’s recent CD, Camino al Cielo. “Our main focus, even though we are Cubans, is that we show we’re ready to play any type of music. People at first had doubts about us doing ‘too many styles’, but we, as a band, stuck to the positive feelings we had about the versatility of our CD, which even includes Bachata, and our desire to do this with good quality.” Mariela and the band are pleased with the new CD.

When you hear it, it’s easy to agree with the hundreds of people packed onto the dance floor for Havana NRG at the Granada night club, dancing everything from rueda de casino, to salsa on one and on two. Yes, as Mariela explains, it is a mixture and a tasty one at that. The CD starts with a couple of smooth salsa tracks with that unmistakably Cuban spice. There are a couple of merengues, one being very romantic that dancers can float across the floor to, another with a heavier, funky beat for all those shimmies and tricky turns. There are a couple of elegant charangas with soulful Cuban rhythms. There’s a cool Latin jazzy mambo track that can be enjoyed by dancers who like their salsa on 2. There’s a nice Bachata for dancing with that special someone, and a salsa-hip hop song that younger audiences will like.

The last track on the CD is perhaps the best in terms of heating up the dance floor with the energy of all types of dancers. “Con Güiro, Clave y Bongó” is distinctively Cuban, the beat and the vocals, it packs a punch and is sure to make dancers, who can, do the big moves, and everyone else smile and feel the groove.

Camino al Cielo is on NRG records and
was recorded in Dallas in December 2003.
Havana NRG can be contacted at
P.O. Box 452182
Garland, TX 75945
214-597-1970
 

May 1st, 2005
Annual Cuban Music Festival
Havana NRG, the Machito Orchestra, Orquesta Broadway,
Perico Hernández and La Timba Cubana,
with DJ Saoco
Edward Vincent Jr. Park (Formerly Centinela Park)
700 Warren Lane, Inglewood, CA
See www.atpevents.com for ticket information.

Tell us what you think! Send your comments HERE

 

This page was last updated on 31-Dec-2007

All editorials and letters to the editor on SalsaPower.com are personal opinions of those people who write them and do not necessarily reflect the position of SalsaPower.