CUBANISMO ROCKS SYDNEY! - A touch of Cuba graces Sydney Australia
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by ABAKUA » Tue Mar 29, 2005 5:55 pm
Hello percussion brothers/sisters.
As some may have read here: CLICK HERE FOR EARLIER THREAD
Cubanismo from Cuba recently performed at various gigs in Australia.
One of my bands was fortunate enough to score the support gig for them.
The week started with our Trombone player (who runs a radio program called Cubanisimo) interviewing Jesus Alemañy, a few of us attended the interview and helped in translations. We were invited back to the hotel to meet the rest of the guys.
We ended up going out for a few drinks with the boys from Cubanismo, stayed out till 4am wednesday night! Great bunch of people, havent laughed so hard in a long time as we swapped stories n stuff.
The sax player 'Masa' (who has played and recorded with Charanga Habanera for 10 yrs prior to directing Charanga forever) has an early model Toyota which has been off the road for quite some time in Havana due to there being no engine parts to fix it, he needed a timing belt for his engine (for the second time its off the road for months - same problem) and brought his faulty one on the tour, he has not been able to find one anywhere amongst the countries he has travelled to on this tour, I deal alot with race engines and workshops, so I told him to give me the timing belt and I will see if I can get a replacement for him..
After visiting my contacts, I had 3 new timing belts for him to take back to Cuba.
We then met up the next day with our band and the guys from Cubanismo about 2 hrs before our sound check, Masa was over the moon that I was able to get him the parts he needed.
Once sound check was done on their part, we were up next for our sound check, all the Cubanismo guys stayed around and much to their surprise we rocked! hehehehe They couldnt believe how we sounded and were all saying we sound like a Timba group from Cuba. We were honoured to be compared to some of Cuba's finest.
Their performance was nothing short of spectacular. I took many many pics and video shots with my digital camera.
After the gig, we took them out to a local club that plays cuban music were we partied on till about 3am before heading back to our clubhouse (4 of our band memebers live in the same house so we named it our clubhouse) were we jammed on till about 6-7am with three quarters of the band members from Cubanismo and ourselves and other musician friends of ours from here..
What a week its been!
Cubanismo rocked the motherfu**ing house and blew the roof of the motherfu**er!
Our band and Cubanismo hung out all week, they stayed at our house and it was open jams from dusk till dawn every day!
We had drums, batas, tumbadoras, bongo, bass, piano, flute, sax, trumpets, trombones, chekeres, bells, guiro, Rhodes, singing all going on at the same time, people cooking, and lots and lots of Rum + beer drinking!
They had an awesome time with us during their time in Sydney and we earned their respect as musicians and friends, all of them, including Jesus Alemañy were blown away by our band.
As were we, by them!
They invited us as thier guests to their other performances at festivals here on an island off the harbour, which were sold out!! 8000+ people in the crowd and there I was on stage with Cubanismo! A true highlight and memorable moment so far in my musical journeys over the last 15 yrs or so.
Their line up came from some of the best of Cuba..
My head is still messed up from all the drinking and partying so from memory till my head clears a little we had:
Trombone - from Irakere, Carlos Alvarez
Tenor Sax - from los metales del terror - NG La Banda, Rolando Perez Perez
Baritone Sax - mi pana, Emilio 'Masa' from La Charanga Habanera + Charanga Forever
Trumpet - NG La Banda - Eduardo Rodriguez
Timbal - my compadre "Betun" from many bands, as well as being a Founder with Anga of OPUS 13.
Piano - Peruchin from NG La Banda
Bass- Roberto Riveron great friend, original bassist for Klimax and many other bands
Congas - "Papiosco" from Klimax.
Eduardo Lavoy on bongo
Mi consorte Pablosky Rosales alias "Choko" on Tres
Rolo Martinez, Laito Jnr and Jesus Cantero on vocals
And of course Jesus Alemañy
All up they were a 14 piece line up.
I spent most of the time with Roberto Riveron, Jesus Alemañy, Masa, Betun and Papiosco who is my soul brother, somos uno mentalmente y espiritualmente, much ache pa ti mi hermano.
Great people.
We were up till 7am most nights jamming and drinking.
Before Papiosco left, myself and one of our singers (who is alsoa percussionist) gave him a few presents for himself and for some of Cuba's musicians, including a snare drum belt and skin, some brackets for mounting bells and cymbals, a few conga skins, some conga lugs, a mini replica conga, some white clothes, mosquito repellant and a second hand full sized Meinl wood Tumbadora to take back amongst a few other things...
At the end of the year once our band finishes its Australian/Asian tour, a few of us are going to visit Cuba again for a few months, I will be staying with Papiosco and Betun as they were fighting over who got to have me during my visit hehehehe. It was an honour to be in their company, and I was honoured when they took me aside and said that my conga playing skills are right up there with some of the best from Cuba, and that when I went back to Cuba to be prepared to play with and meet/study with the very best over there.
We have been left with withdrawel symptoms, as friends and musicans who couldnt go to the concert ask me 'how was Cubanismo?' Im still replying "Me volaron los cesos!" (They blew my brains away!)
Some highlights of the week apart from the jamming and music:
*Translating for Papiosco as the ladies tried to pick him up
*Going for a walk with Jesus Alemañy to the drug store to find something for his sore throat and cold and having a great conversation about music with him
*Playing domino with los metales del terror
*Seeing Masa's face as I gave him the engine parts he needed (was like a small child with a birthday present hehehe)
*Taking the guys sight seeing around Sydney
*Playing congas with Cubanismo during their soundcheck
Ah what the fark! The whole week was awesome! If I had to write everything we did, I would be here all night!
If Cubanismo is coming to a town near you, get tickets straight away! They are great people and a truly awesome band!
I cant wait to head to La Habana to meet up with them again.
I have a shitload of photos and video footage on my digital camera, I will try to get someone to host the pics for me and I will post them up as soon as I can.
If anyone here can host them for me please let me know and I will email them to you.
Edited By ABAKUA on 1112119467
As some may have read here: CLICK HERE FOR EARLIER THREAD
Cubanismo from Cuba recently performed at various gigs in Australia.
One of my bands was fortunate enough to score the support gig for them.
The week started with our Trombone player (who runs a radio program called Cubanisimo) interviewing Jesus Alemañy, a few of us attended the interview and helped in translations. We were invited back to the hotel to meet the rest of the guys.
We ended up going out for a few drinks with the boys from Cubanismo, stayed out till 4am wednesday night! Great bunch of people, havent laughed so hard in a long time as we swapped stories n stuff.
The sax player 'Masa' (who has played and recorded with Charanga Habanera for 10 yrs prior to directing Charanga forever) has an early model Toyota which has been off the road for quite some time in Havana due to there being no engine parts to fix it, he needed a timing belt for his engine (for the second time its off the road for months - same problem) and brought his faulty one on the tour, he has not been able to find one anywhere amongst the countries he has travelled to on this tour, I deal alot with race engines and workshops, so I told him to give me the timing belt and I will see if I can get a replacement for him..
After visiting my contacts, I had 3 new timing belts for him to take back to Cuba.
We then met up the next day with our band and the guys from Cubanismo about 2 hrs before our sound check, Masa was over the moon that I was able to get him the parts he needed.
Once sound check was done on their part, we were up next for our sound check, all the Cubanismo guys stayed around and much to their surprise we rocked! hehehehe They couldnt believe how we sounded and were all saying we sound like a Timba group from Cuba. We were honoured to be compared to some of Cuba's finest.
Their performance was nothing short of spectacular. I took many many pics and video shots with my digital camera.
After the gig, we took them out to a local club that plays cuban music were we partied on till about 3am before heading back to our clubhouse (4 of our band memebers live in the same house so we named it our clubhouse) were we jammed on till about 6-7am with three quarters of the band members from Cubanismo and ourselves and other musician friends of ours from here..
What a week its been!
Cubanismo rocked the motherfu**ing house and blew the roof of the motherfu**er!
Our band and Cubanismo hung out all week, they stayed at our house and it was open jams from dusk till dawn every day!
We had drums, batas, tumbadoras, bongo, bass, piano, flute, sax, trumpets, trombones, chekeres, bells, guiro, Rhodes, singing all going on at the same time, people cooking, and lots and lots of Rum + beer drinking!
They had an awesome time with us during their time in Sydney and we earned their respect as musicians and friends, all of them, including Jesus Alemañy were blown away by our band.
As were we, by them! They invited us as thier guests to their other performances at festivals here on an island off the harbour, which were sold out!! 8000+ people in the crowd and there I was on stage with Cubanismo! A true highlight and memorable moment so far in my musical journeys over the last 15 yrs or so.
Their line up came from some of the best of Cuba..
My head is still messed up from all the drinking and partying so from memory till my head clears a little we had:
Trombone - from Irakere, Carlos Alvarez
Tenor Sax - from los metales del terror - NG La Banda, Rolando Perez Perez
Baritone Sax - mi pana, Emilio 'Masa' from La Charanga Habanera + Charanga Forever
Trumpet - NG La Banda - Eduardo Rodriguez
Timbal - my compadre "Betun" from many bands, as well as being a Founder with Anga of OPUS 13.
Piano - Peruchin from NG La Banda
Bass- Roberto Riveron great friend, original bassist for Klimax and many other bands
Congas - "Papiosco" from Klimax.
Eduardo Lavoy on bongo
Mi consorte Pablosky Rosales alias "Choko" on Tres
Rolo Martinez, Laito Jnr and Jesus Cantero on vocals
And of course Jesus Alemañy
All up they were a 14 piece line up.
I spent most of the time with Roberto Riveron, Jesus Alemañy, Masa, Betun and Papiosco who is my soul brother, somos uno mentalmente y espiritualmente, much ache pa ti mi hermano.
Great people.
We were up till 7am most nights jamming and drinking.
Before Papiosco left, myself and one of our singers (who is alsoa percussionist) gave him a few presents for himself and for some of Cuba's musicians, including a snare drum belt and skin, some brackets for mounting bells and cymbals, a few conga skins, some conga lugs, a mini replica conga, some white clothes, mosquito repellant and a second hand full sized Meinl wood Tumbadora to take back amongst a few other things...
At the end of the year once our band finishes its Australian/Asian tour, a few of us are going to visit Cuba again for a few months, I will be staying with Papiosco and Betun as they were fighting over who got to have me during my visit hehehehe. It was an honour to be in their company, and I was honoured when they took me aside and said that my conga playing skills are right up there with some of the best from Cuba, and that when I went back to Cuba to be prepared to play with and meet/study with the very best over there.
We have been left with withdrawel symptoms, as friends and musicans who couldnt go to the concert ask me 'how was Cubanismo?' Im still replying "Me volaron los cesos!" (They blew my brains away!)
Some highlights of the week apart from the jamming and music:
*Translating for Papiosco as the ladies tried to pick him up
*Going for a walk with Jesus Alemañy to the drug store to find something for his sore throat and cold and having a great conversation about music with him
*Playing domino with los metales del terror
*Seeing Masa's face as I gave him the engine parts he needed (was like a small child with a birthday present hehehe)
*Taking the guys sight seeing around Sydney
*Playing congas with Cubanismo during their soundcheck
Ah what the fark! The whole week was awesome! If I had to write everything we did, I would be here all night!
If Cubanismo is coming to a town near you, get tickets straight away! They are great people and a truly awesome band!
I cant wait to head to La Habana to meet up with them again.
I have a shitload of photos and video footage on my digital camera, I will try to get someone to host the pics for me and I will post them up as soon as I can.
If anyone here can host them for me please let me know and I will email them to you.
Edited By ABAKUA on 1112119467
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ABAKUA - Site Admin
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by Juzzi » Fri Apr 01, 2005 4:10 pm
I have a pleasant memory of meeting Cubanismo as well. That's when I first met my bandleader Carlos D'l Puerto. He was touring with Cubanismo after his son left the group. We played in the same festival and hanged out in the backstage. Nice people.
-J
-J
- Juzzi
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by ABAKUA » Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:01 pm
Ivan wrote:Congratulations on a good day Abakua. That is gonna be a great story to tell years from now...
Ivan
Thankyou! It was one of the best weeks of my life!
Im working on getting some pics hosted on the net for me to link up, Im sort of Internet retarded
so bear with me for pics. Will try to get them up asap. 
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ABAKUA - Site Admin
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by ABAKUA » Mon Apr 04, 2005 3:12 am
Roberto Riveron... El mysterioso del bajo!
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ABAKUA - Site Admin
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by ABAKUA » Mon Apr 04, 2005 3:13 am
Hangin out @ Cockatoo Island before the gig
Edited By ABAKUA on 1116237935
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Edited By ABAKUA on 1116237935
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ABAKUA - Site Admin
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