Favorite son

La Timba Loca are their own social club

by David Ritchie

As the music community becomes, more and more, a global culture, the boundaries between styles are blurred beyond

recognition. In 1930s New York, Cubans Mario Bauza and Machito forever transformed the jazz of folks like Dizzy Gillespie. This sharing of information doesn't just occur in Latin jazz, of course, it's behind practically every innovation in music history.

Ry Cooder's 1998 Grammy-winner, Buena Vista Social Club, and the accompanying documentary by Wim Wenders have called Stateside attention to the beautiful Cuban son style (itself a fusion of African and Spanish historical styles). But the songs are quite old, and soneros like Compay Segundo and Ibrahim Ferrer, so prominently featured on Cooder's CD, were all but forgotten before he resurrected their careers. But when Cuban borders open up to the US (as they surely must), the sound we'll hear won't be Buena Vista Social Club, it will be something newer called timba.

A style that's developed in the past few years, timba is so infectious precisely because it incorporates a little of everything: from traditional Cuban son and rumba to the salsa that was developed by Latin musicians in New York to funk and hip hop. And the only band currently playing it in the Northeast is Boston's La Timba Loca, who appear this Saturday at the Latin American Festival. Trying to explain it, vocalist Alex Alvear calls it salsa on steroids. "It's very flashy. If you pay attention and watch one person, it's simple. Everybody's playing syncopated parts -- it's just the layering. Funk is like that. In Latin, you multiply it by 10."

La Timba Loca are an eleven-piece band: four horns, bass, piano, violin, a singer, and three percussionists (four if you include Alvear, who sings and handles the guiro and claves). And the rhythm drives everything. Given the length of their extended jams, the band will be lucky to squeeze five songs into their hour set at the Worcester festival. In a recent performance at Ryles, in Cambridge, they power-shifted through an energetic evening as the horns introduced repeated figures and the bass player jumped in and out of a funk groove; the band repeated chorus after chorus in a call-and-response style underlined by insistent Latin rhythms and infectious and repeated melodies that drove the dancers into a frenzy.

Bandleader Gonzalo Grau explains that timba isn't a specific rhythm, but more a whole concept that can be added to other styles, whether traditional or contemporary. "It's a more open and free way of playing salsa, and has a lot more interaction with the audience. Salsa is more like the band's show, and that's it -- the performers and the dancers. But in timba, at a certain point, they start talking with the audience and telling a story and try to involve the audience with the performance. And that's part of what timba is, it's more open."

One thing that sets La Timba Loca apart from other timba bands is their reliance on older material. Grau arranges all of the songs for the band, drawing from classic Caribbean songs (from the '30s through '50s) he had played in a more traditional group as a youth in Venezuela. "I loved those songs, and I wanted to play them again, but rearrange them in my own style. Then three or four years ago, I started discovering this timba and all these new styles, and studying at Berklee with a lot of jazz influence -- plus all the funk and the pop and many different things. So I decided, why not give it a try . . . use the very old songs that are the essence of Latin music in this newer style of timba, which is very energetic and very powerful."

Grau put La Timba Loca together about a year and a half ago with other energetic young musicians who, like him, had come to Boston to study at Berklee. Manolo Mairena, of Worcester's Trio Alma de Barrio (who will play their own variety of Caribbean dances and romantic ballads at the festival in a noon, August 22, performance) is especially impressed with the knowledge and the talent of the individual players in La Timba Loca. "They have the roots, the traditional things of Latin music of Cuba, blended with new ideas from Gonzalo. I think the old music is the best music, not because people are now doing less things -- it's just that the old music had more feeling. I guess that's why Gonzalo went that way. Old music blended with new ideas and fresh things, keeping the roots. I think he's on the right track."

The next step for Grau will be writing his own songs for the band, but he'll also continue arranging standards (perhaps even something from Buena Vista Social Club, since they are so popular right now). Currently La Timba Loca perform a mix of songs from Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and even one from a New York group. "I have many ideas right now, but one thing that I like from this project is that I can really stretch these songs out and experiment and do a little theater play in every song." Timba, above all, involves the audience, but it helps that the musicians around him are also into it. "We're very close friends, and we're having such a good time playing this music. So I can say that's my first, or one of my most important, motivations that makes me write more. The people I'm playing with really like what I'm doing, so that keeps me going."

THE 1999 LATIN AMERICAN FESTIVAL

This year's Latin American Festival, sponsored by Worcester's Centro Las Americas and held in the Worcester Common (behind

City Hall on Main Street), features great food and great bands. The two-day event runs Saturday from noon to 9 p.m. and on Sunday from noon to 7 p.m. For information Call (508) 798-1900.

Saturday, August 21

Noon Carilan Jazz (Latin jazz)

1 p.m. Local talent showcase

2 p.m. Los Soneros de Borinquen (Puerto Rican jibara)

3 p.m. Opening ceremony

3:30 p.m. Xuchipilli (Mexican dancers)

4 p.m. Grupo Scorpio (cumbias)

5 p.m. Grupo Chévere

(bachata and merengue)

6 p.m. La Timba Loca (Cuban timba)

7 p.m. Paquito Guzmán (salsa)

8 p.m. Viti Ruíz (salsa)

Sunday, August 22

Noon Trio Alma de Barrio

(various Latin styles)

1 p.m. Local talent showcase

2 p.m. INCA SAPI (Andean music)

2:30 p.m. Afrorico

("afroantillana" poetry/drums)

3 p.m. Joao Marcos Band (Brazilian)

4 p.m. La Tradición (salsa/jazz)

5 p.m. Pleneros La Vecindad (bomba)

6 p.m. Robertico y su Merengada (merengue)