Saturday at the Burleigh Academy wasn't a great night out. I was relieved when Andy turned up with his CDs as I couldn't take any more easy listening music. I started off dancing with Helen, who did an excellent job of staying upright and keeping smiling on a skating rink: the new floor was very slippery. Unfortunately when the band came on they didn't play much salsa and didn't play much that was danceable. At one point it became surreal: they announced "We're going to do the salsa" and an old man in a tropical shirt and straw hat led a kind of conga line while the band played "Everybody Salsa" (which isn't a salsa song).
They played a couple of chachacha numbers which got a few people on the floor, and then there was an interval while Andy did another lesson and then we got to dance to his CDs again. Nice to dance with Liz and Teresa who I hadn't seen for ages. A couple of songs into the interval they started on "Mambo Bueno" so I thought somebody - me and Liz - should dance, but it was a bit disconcerting to get the spotlight turned on us (fortunately it not for long). That was pretty much it for danceable tracks, and very soon everyone headed for La Tasca which was a lot more fun. Shame, because the venue has a lot of potential.
I heard that Pontyclun on Friday was great. Irene's running a Christmas party there on December 22nd.
There's also a Christmas party at Tiger Tiger on November 30th with Nigel Maye, organised by Tammi.
1 comment:
Hi Tom,
I'm a musician in Descarga Cubana and I played at this gig at Burleigh Hall. I agree - we may not have played salsa all night, but to be fair to us we told the venue when we were booked that we were not a pure salsa band, we are a Latin jazz / latin pop / salsa outfit. They chose to advertise the evening as Salsa.
We would welcome help and advice on playing the right numbers and rhythms for dancing - we are all very competent musicians who are very very keen to play to please. I wonder if there is any way we can communicate on this and improve our set to suit dance groups such as yours.
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