This page will contain posts all dedicated to the salsa scene in Chicago. I will dish on whose good, who sucks, where to go, where not to go, dancing, and radio, DJs, bands and also Latin Jazz and even some other stuff–sorta, kinda. Take it from me! Cuz I said so.
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LIVE MUSIC @ CUBBY BEAR ON SUNDAYS:
Okay, so I am a little biased because my sound is the New York Salsa sound. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate other styles. While the PR sound is unmatched in its distinction and swing fact remains there are some really good bands here. That said, there are not that many. What there are however (in my fabulous opinion) are really good musicians, some even amazing. Every Sunday in Wrigleyville there is salsa at a bar called Cubby Bear most weeks feature live local bands and occasionally some out of towners. There is a good mix of dancers here if you’re visiting. There are beginner dancers who go to dance studios and use the space (great floor) to practice and learn, there are more advanced dancers some of whom studio dance and social dance and there are a few very good dancers. One thing about Chicago that I’ve noticed in my short time here is that at least in the club scenes there are only a handful of very good dancers who are natural dancers and not psuedo-professional or wanna be ballroom dancers. This is my personal preference as the whole studio scene and ballroom-gotta-go-to-every-salsa-congress-in-the-world dancers get tired and often look unnatural never smiling and can’t hear the music and forget about dancing bolero. Well, so as far as dancing there’s a good mix here on Sundays–go for it–something for everyone, even those ridiculous over the top spinning multi-dipping hand wearing idiot show-offs as well (no names).
As for the Music. Well it really depends on whose playing. Last night 10/25 was a band called Carpacho. It was my first time seeing them. Carpacho consisted of two trombones, Conga, Timbal, Bongo, Singer/Bass, pianist and female choro voice. Perhaps it was an off night but I will tell you that if you come to Chicago DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT see this band. The music was terrible, their breaks were sooooo off, nobody knew the cuts. The bass player was not fluid at all in fact, not in the pocket at all NO SWING WHATSOEVER and while he doesn’t have the best voice, it would have been better to listen to him sing than listen to those bass lines. Anyone who knows salsa (and I’m no musician) knows how important the bass is. I did consider the fact that I had just come back from PR and saw Willie Rosario and Del Sur al Norte live and the quality of salsa I had just heard last week was of a caliber outside the fucking solar system of Carpacho–but that wasn’t it. They were really not together at all. The Conga player has a lot to work on and the timbal player as well. I guess they couldn’t do too well with the bass player being all weird. A cool thing about that band was a female trombone player, you don’t see that too much. She was okay the other trombone player is actually good–or so people have told me–and from the other bands I’ve seen him play with he is good. One of the saddest things for me though are these dance teachers. Unfortunately, many of them know about steps and choreography while few know the music. If they had, their students would be able to discern what is dance worthy or not. I was quite excited to see the band because I hadn’t heard or seen them before since I’ve been here in Chicago but I gotta say I couldn’t get out of my chair I could not even force myself to dance it was so bad. I know my facial expressions must’ve looked pretty bad too–like maybe I had diarrhea but those cuts were messed up as hell. Okay no more ragging on this band. DJ Frankie J was spinning it was average at least the first set. As I said, sometimes a group can just be off one night; I wasn’t able to see if that was the case after the first set I got the hell outta there, couldn’t stand it. But not before a few dances to some DJ music. It was the first time while seeing live music that I was praying for the live music to end and the DJ to spin. We’ll see next time perhaps it was just a fluke…
