Afro Cuban All Stars and Cellar 8 Bar

July 16, 2006

At first I thought I would go to SOS. Then I thought maybe I would take the train this time instead of driving. And then I read about the Afro Cuban All Stars and came to conclusion that they might be worth seeing in live. Then I kept coming up with more reasons – some concrete and some farfetched.

I found myself at Parkers Piece shortly before 6 PM. The place was swarming with people I recognized from Club Salsa. Some people referred to it as Club Salsa on the road or on a tour. I recall seeing at least 42 familiar faces during my walkabout although I only knew the names of 28 of them – 29 now with one correction (alas I forgot two or three names I was told by third party). I suppose I should know more names but it gets awkward to ask for someone’s name when you have seen them around for a very long time whether I knew their name at one point or not. Hmm. I should ask them anyway, especially if I had not asked before.

There wasn’t much intense dancing at Parker’s Piece as I expected. I only saw one attempt at dancing CBL – grass is not particularly suited for spins. Cuban style dancing was more common. I took part in couple of simple Rueda – the calls used were Dame, Enchufe, Evelyn, Pimienta, Sientala, Enchufe doble, Sombrero, Dame dos, Kentucky. There were some more Rueda done with more complex moves, but I wasn’t involved in them.

The band was okay if not spectacular in my opinion – of course I suspect that it would have taken something really special to knock my socks off. For one thing, I would have needed a better floor for dancing as well as many good dance partners. I could say that they were the best Salsa band I have heard live in my life, but this would be saying so little considering that I have heard only three live bands. I didn’t hear du-dum of conga on 4 and 8 very often or a clear 2-3 or 3-2 clave. I wondered if some of the music they played would have been considered Timba, but no one around me was able to confirm or deny this. Finding beat one wasn’t difficult except during the times when there was only 3 or 1 percussionist(s) playing alone. The audience as whole seemed more or less receptive but not overwhelmingly enthusiastic to the music. I didn’t think the musicians were particularly impressed with the audience – I’m sure they were at very least professional about their performance but at no time did I feel that the audience raised level the bar for the musicians.

Couple of people suggested going to Cellar Bar 8 afterwards. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to see the place with my eyes for the first time. When I finally arrived at Cellar Bar 8 around 9:20 PM (I walked around for some time looking for it because I didn’t know its precise location – it is very close (<50 meters) to and to north of Grafton Center and is on Napier Street off Maids Causeway/Newmarket Road.

The first thing I noticed about Cellar Bar 8 was that it is considerably smaller than Nelson’s old venue at Greens. Cellar Bar 8 had four columns placed about one third of the way from the entrance to the far wall. Total floor space was similar to Club Salsa, and the wooden floor was of decent quality.

Music played was all Salsa – at least during the time I was there (for a little under 1 hour). Some of the music was suitable for CBL style although the last song played as I was leaving was almost certainly pure Cuban. Nelson was nowhere to be seen today, and someone named Cynthia (whom I don’t know very well) was the DJ. I don’t know if the music selection was typical – I wasn’t the only person dancing exclusively CBL.

It wasn’t very busy there tonight compared to the times when I visited Nelson’s old venue couple of times last year. I have no idea if tonight was typical or unusual. I did not know if I was going to stay until I spotted few familiar faces here and there including both people I had talked to about coming to Cellar Bar 8 earlier at the concert. For a little while, I was merely talking and looking at photographs and videos taken at the concert earlier in the day. Thinking about it more, I wonder if many people including Nelson went to the after-party for today’s concert instead.

I ended up dancing with three people there for total of 4 dances. I had danced with two of the followers previously at Club Salsa. I had not expected to have many dances because this is the heart of Cuban Salsa in Cambridge. It was good – although it would have been nice to have one more dance (there will be other opportunities of course).

Being able to dance on time to the music was a small recurring topic today. As I was watching a video of people dancing at the concert, a comment was made – “At least you could tell they’re dancing to the same music.” However, by the time I started paying attention and examine what the dancers in the video were doing, the two couples were no longer synchronized. I also observed some people tonight completely out of time – in this case almost certainly because of the lead. It reminded me of an incident several months ago when J stormed off the dance floor in frustration. Also the subject of timing came up for my first dance at Cellar 8 tonight (I had suggested to my partner that she should try to work on listening to the music and to try to stay in time to the music – I don’t remember if I said she should be able to find the beat 1 consistently. In any case, she claimed that she had been working on this, and she indeed was much better despite double dose of difficulty I probably posed to her by dancing CBL at a Cuban venue and by leading more spins and plethora of unfamiliar moves than she probably is used to. She was nice to dance with and probably would be able to pick up most of my moves with little practice – at least ones not involving more than 1 1/2 spins. It also was gratifying and mildly surprising to learn that my suggestion was taken constructively and even found helpful.).