Desde la Bahía - área de la Bahía de San Francisco; representación de música latinoamericana - TT: From the Bay - TA: San Francisco Bay Area, California; Latin American music performance - Columna

Latin Beat Magazine, April, 1999 by Jesse Varela

DOS DIVAS Y UN REY: It was one of the year's most anticipated dances at the end of February when Celia Cruz --The Queen of Latin Music-- was joined at a Caribbean Ball at the San Francisco Concourse by La India and youth sensation Elvis Crespo. To call Crespo a king was a stretch in my opinion but after seeing the once member of Puerto Rico's Grupomania perform, he is definitely in the running for royal status.

I arrived early to hear César's All Stars and was not disappointed. With a band of solid ringers like timbalero Gibby Ross, trumpeter Julius Meléndez, and the ageless Johnny Nelson on vocals, they took me to old school heaven with blazing descargas on jams like Adoración and Bilongo. Led by Bay Area pianist and Salsa pioneer César Ascarrunz, longtime owner of the Mission District landmark - César's Latin Palace - the band was on mark with tight charts and well seasoned musicianship.

Yari More and his band came next, and presented a tight set of original material with a glitzy gleen. It was early in the evening and unfortunately they served largely as a musical backdrop for attendees wandering in, although they did get many couples to the floor.

But it was Elvis Crespo who ignited the fireworks and set the place into an immediate spin. Knocking out track after track from his Grammy-nominated Sony Tropical release, Suavemente, Crespo came across like a seasoned showman, pacing his set with impressive athletic prowess. With a youthful 15-piece ensemble that included four background singers, they were visually stunning with choreography as well as superb basics, like intonation and delivery. With two giant video screens on each side of the stage, and several hundred chicas jamming the stage barricades, the scene was larger than life with a pop enthusiasm.

I do have to acknowledge that the Puerto Rican style merengue as Elvis presents it is really a rich fusion --or at least feels like it-- of merengue intertwined with bombay plena. It was a delightful groove with a high energy and suave lilt. Crespo's sonero skills were on mark, talking to the crowd with his inspiraciones and dancing up a storm. Blessed with a strong tenor voice, he popped life into lovey dovey lyrics and at times sounded stylistically like the great Ismael Rivera in timbre and articulation. The guy doesn't have a wide vocal range but uses his register well. It was when he went into his Grupomania stuff and a medley of meren-house goodies that he and his crew set the house on fire. It was a sensational show and mark my words that this Boricua Elvis may someday be called a king.

I should have left then. But I had to hear Celia, who fizzled. The orchestra of Yari More fell short in accompanying the diva and never clicked with her. Outrageously out of tune, it was just one of several musical train wrecks on stage. It was a sad experience to see the divine Ms. C and her glorious legacy reduced to disappointing mediocrity. Even her duet with India lacked the magic the two garnered early on in RMM caravans.

La India's set also suffered as a result of using the same back up band even though her voice is so crystalline and powerful she can captivate you with just one note. The problem here was her chatter in between songs as she droned on about lost love monologues. Somebody yelled, "Shut up and sing," and the show lost momentum as a result. Next time book her on Rickie Lake, Forgive or Forget, Christina, or Celebrity Deathmatch to get her feelings out before wasting the time of an audience that shelled out $40 in advance or $50 at the door to see two disappointing divas and an explosive prince who, with his band, made it all worth it.

PUCHO & THE LATIN SOUL BROTHERS: "Excuse me a minute, my granddaughter is eating my pigsfeet," says Henry "Pucho" Brown from his Middletown, N.Y. home, interrupting our talk prior to his upcoming one-night only gig March 25 at the Elbo Room in San Francisco. Sternly he yells, "Get away from my pigsfeet."

"We just got back from Puerto Rico, London, and Ireland," he continues as he returns to the phone, "and everybody loved my music. Now we're going to the Conga Room in Los Angeles and the owner there is worried because my music is not typical tropical Latin music. The same thing happened in Atlanta. Club owners don't understand our sound but basically what Santana did with rock is what I did with funk."

For Pucho & The Latin Soul Brothers, the late '90s have been a period of resurrection thanks to the Ubiquity subsidiary Cubop Records, who put him back on the map with a sound he honed in the '60s that fused Latin, jazz, and funk styles.

"Michael McFadden, the president of Cubop Records, was into this a long time ago in Europe and knows what he wants to do with it. He reissued my two albums -Super Freak and Yaina- that I did for Right On Records, and put them into circulation in the acid jazz market. I imagine he's made his money back with my records because I've made a little bit too."

Between 1966 and 1969, the young timbalero from Harlem put out a whooping eight albums for Prestige Records. With the boogaloo craze at its peak, Pucho was in pocket with contemporaries like Mongo Santamaría and Willie Bobo.