Desde La Bahia - TT: From the Bay Area

Latin Beat Magazine, Oct, 2000 by Jesse "Chuy" Varela

COOL BREEZE: This Summer I've had the opportunity to review a lot of shows here in the San Francisco Bay Area that have illuminated me to some hardworking and deserving talent passing through our region. In this edition I'd like to share a portrait of three deserving artists who, at a time of great changes underway in music, are staying sincere to roots but expanding the vocabulary and articulation through music that really has something to say. It is music that breathes with conscious and superb musicality. It is music built on tradition but re-interpreted to a new generation with a distinct set of situations and conditions.

LESLIE PAULA: It was Pete Escovedo who first told me about Leslie Paula, a powerful salsa and soul singer from the San Fernando Valley in Southern California. The daughter of 1960s percussion icon Mike Gutierrez, this two-night Bay Area debut at Mr.E's Spotlight on the Square in Alameda in late August showcased her voice supported by a top-notch ensemble that included her father on timbal and conga and brother Ronny on trap drums.

With a potent swing, the group jammed a repertoire of dancehall classics from her father's heyday and Leslie's obvious strong R&B past. The first tune I heard was the Tito Rodríguez gem Llevala Al Rincón. A sax-trumpet-trombone horn section pounded the mambo riffs and sparked excitement for a percussion section that repeatedly stole the show.

Papa Mike took a blazing timbal solo with the finesse of experience that no longer beats on the skins but instead glides over them, creating tonal colors and counterpoints. His stints with the groups of vibraphonist Bobby Montez and pianist Eddie Cano launched him onto the national jazz scene and made him a regional star with sessions for World Pacific Records and others.

Now his daughter Leslie is picking up the torch and she left a strong impression at Mr.E's with a variety of songs that included a beautiful rendition of Happy Birthday. With Las Vegas polish, the 33-year old singer has a grainy timbre to a resonate tenor voice with a three-octave span. The influence of 1970s divas Cheryl Lynn and Chaka Khan is obvious but much of Celia Cruz shines on gems like Primera Rumba, Vamonos Pa'l Monte, Agua De Belén and Cucula.

She also did selections from her latest album Te Quiero (I Want You) for her Marigold Productions. Witty and charismatic, she kept a small but spirited crowd glued to the dance floor, including the nearly 80-year old Les Greenspan, a salsa lover who arrived in Oakland in 1949 and has danced at all the legendary Latin dancehalls in the Bay Area. When Les gives a band or a club his thumbs up, it means something.

JUAN CARLOS FORMELL: From a country where musicians follow generational lineage, Juan Carlos Formell is the eldest son of Juan Formell, bassist and renowned leader of the popular Cuban dance band Los Van Van. Juan Carlos started off as a bassist playing with pivotal figures like pianists Gonzalo Rubalcaba and jazz pioneer Emiliano Salvador. In 1993, he left his homeland, experiencing censorship and harassment as he emerged as a guitar-picking singer-songwriter. Deciding to leave in exile, J.C. Formell underwent a torturous ordeal getting into the United States by swimming across the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande into Laredo, Texas.

Last year he garnered world wide-acclaim for his debut album --Songs From a Little Blue House (Wicklow-BMG)-- and with his band, Cubalibre. Now a U.S. resident, Juan Carlos has established himself in New York City and is carving out a national audience that brought him to the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley on Friday, July 14. With a personable voice and a resonate Collings steel string guitar, he weaved two sets of superb musical story-telling with a jovial Buddah-like smile that drew from his Wicklow release and Cuban classics as well as still unrecorded originals.

A quirky country-blues guitar technique and a shy soft-spoken delivery was expressed as Juan Carlos sang about birds, cows, crabs, guayabas and mangos. There was an organic, earthy quality to his songs filled with a nostalgic longing. Stripped down to their bare compositional essence, the solo date allowed for his poetic sensibility and nuance to be heard.

Phrases like "flowers of my Cuba, roses from a cruel garden" from his song Flores made you realize Juan Carlos had something to say about his experience that also came across on his tune Cuba Será Libre.

There is an entrancing quality to the music of Juan Carlos Formell. The upbeat guaracha son called Domitila showed a fun side to his personality. His rendition of Mango Mangue is one of the most unique I've ever heard; Los Santos, a superb hymn to the deities of Santeria, was equally good. All night he paid reverence to his abuelita (grandmother) and to the classic bolero stylings of Cuban 1950s lounge music called "filin" (feeling).

While he usually performs with a band, in this bare essentials show the sparse audience got to know the 30-something Juan Carlos Formell intimately with an honest portrait of an important emerging talent. His songs were to the point and not overshadowed by long instrumental preludes as on the album. With a shy demeanor he spoke very little to the audience, and only in Spanish when he did. Yet he poured his soul out through his songs. With deeply moving songs, J.C. Formell is a new millennium troubadour with originality and a stylistic stamp.