by afrocubarico » Tue Jul 24, 2007 8:11 am
Here's my "review" of the new DVD release, Mongo Santamaria En Vivo by Budda's West Side Beat Records. Remember, these are strictly my opinions:
First, I don't think the quality of the video/audio was so bad at all. I expected a lot worse. I mean this is definitely not High Definition quality or 5.1 Surround Sound but considering this was probably recorded sometime in the mid-70's, it wasn't so bad.
I was unfortunately, under the impression that we would get to see live footage of Mongo from different performances at the club Lulu White in Boston. However, it seems all of the performances were shot on the same night. The video was peppered with vintage still photos of Mongo but I don't think any of them were exclusive pictures.
Mongo was looking great and was playing his ass off. He was accompanied by a 7 piece band made up of three horns, piano, electric bass, drumkit (looked like a young Steve Berrios), and a percussionist. Sorry J.C., no Cal Tjader footage here. Sadly, there were no credits listing the names of the band members. The choice of music was quite good and was practically all Latin Jazz.
The interviews were good, especially for me since I've never seen Mongo being interviewed. However, I have to say that the video quality of the interviews portion were quite poor. At times you could hardly make out Mongo's face during the outdoor interviews.
During the short interviews which were shown in between each song, Mongo was asked why he left Cuba. After skirting the question a bit, he then admitted that his reason for leaving Cuba and staying in the US was because he saw the fame and popularity that Chano Pozo had created for himself and therefore, he felt he could do the same. He wanted to reach the same pedestal as Chano Pozo.
Mongo's playing technique is so unique and different from today's congueros. I notice he played with large arm strokes, more from the elbow rather than from the wrist. He had beautiful slap tones. I could be wrong but it looks like Mongo's playing technique was not very refined. At one point he showed his unwrapped hands and they didn't look so good! Makes you wonder how this man played for so long.
They did show him bandaging his hands in slo-mo, of which he always covered the entirety of each finger in band aids. Overall, I would have liked to have seen footage from different performances of Mongo. While I think Mongo fans will probably not be content with this video, they will certainly enjoy this.
afrocubarico
One slap at a time...