Cooking with Trabuco

Yes, Mayami IS wearing a Bart Simpson "cual es tu problema" T-shirt.

Wow. Great Trabuco gig. Two weird things in that sentence, right? That it was great; and that it even happened. If you read the previous instalment, you’ll know that they were completely absent from the Disco Fiesta listings; they didn’t play a song and mention the matinee, didn’t mention it in the gig guide; nada. I rang Galiano a couple of time and got no response and was pretty convinced it wasn’t happening. When Yarima and her friend Daisy came round about 6 I thought I’d call bajista Chino anyway just in case. I said, I guess you’re not playing today. He said, no, we are! I said, OK, nos vemos entonces. And off we went.
As you’d expect with nil promotion, it was not busy at all - less people than for Pupy last night. I know - or have been led to believe at least - that you have to pay to get in the radio listings, but surely it’s worth it to get a few more punters in?
It had been an cool-ish overcast day with some patchy rain and I totally underdressed for the Galiano air-con, shivering in my seat, the reggaeton not making me feel like getting up and warming up. The DJ switched to Blu Cantrell’s Hit em up style, which was a bit odd, then that old reggae number The circle song. Completely bizarre. Next up: merengue, to the absolute delight of the couple at the next table who leapt out of their chairs and dashed to the dancefloor. I was staggered. Who hangs out for merengue?
Trabuco didn’t keep us waiting. They started about 7 with the brisk uptempo number from the last album, the name of which eludes me. Three mics were set up but Pepitin was missing for reasons that weren’t clear to me. (Amaray talks pretty fast.) Quite frankly I think this was one of the reasons the show was a cut above the previous weeks. Both Amaray and Mayami have better command of their voices than he does of his and Manolito cooked up a pretty solid set, albeit one with Control in it. The Alexander song was up early and I love it more and more with every listen. If I were Amaray, I’d be a bit pissed off that Mayami got it. They also have another wicked number that’s kind of New York-ish in the steady groove it perpetuates but it slowly generates a real force. It’s the kind of track that could be a foreign DJ’s best friend, appealing to Cuban music aficionados and those other people at the same time. The coro was something about “dejala que corra”. Now somebody is going to write and tell me it’s some ancient song of theirs I have overlooked. (Please do if that’s the case.)
They did La cuenta no da (candidate for most irritating mambo ever) and the housework song, but also Caballo grande and El aguila. Three cheers!!! Also A medida, the slow swinging track of Mayami’s I dug last year. They also have this weird samba thing and I don’t know if it works or not. I’ll have to get back to you on that. They closed with Locos por mi Habana as always, which they do hilariously fast now - they must have played it, how many hundreds of times? And it seems like they’re all, OK, we’re in the home stretch!
I still maintain that Trabuco lack that sense of joy between the musos that a lot of bands here have - and that Trabuco used to have in spades - and is one of the things that makes seeing bands here so special. I don’t know what changed for them. I know what changed for me.
But I had a great time tonight. Andy is still with them on drums. If Riveron has pneumonia again, I guess he isn’t getting better any time soon. That makes me so sad. I mean I guess he will get better, but you know.
Andy was great as usual. Horn section were swinging. Everyone sounded good. There were some hilariously over the top girls in the audience, including a couple who got up to dance in Control: one got behind Mayami to gyrate and he pushed her away. When she tried to do the same in front, he did it again. Very, very funny. She didn’t look impressed.
A friend told me that last week she went to Miramar on Tuesday expecting to see HdP and got Trabuco. Apparently there was a pila de gente that had done the same and the place was packed, and Manolito acknowledged that. She said a good time was had by all nevertheless.

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Tuesday update: Seems the reason Trabuco didn’t promote Monday’s matinee is that they wanted to go crazy promoting Tuesday’s Miramar matinee. It was on Disco Fiesta every two seconds this morning. I’m not going to push my luck. Rather go out on a high; and rather not go out to Miramar. Gonna wrap things up here at the abode in preparation for my early flight tomorrow.
This is Yemayá signing off from Havana.
Hasta la próxima vez.