MikePadgett.com

Sierra Maestra in concert

— Perhaps they were jetlagged: a muted performance from a highly praised Cuban outfit.”

Harrogate, that most venerable of stuffy old Yorkshire towns, pulled off a real coup this week by having the wonderful Lila Downs over to do a concert for its International Festival. This weekend, it was the turn of Cuba’s Sierra Maestra, followed by timba band Manolito Y Su Trabuco.

Grupo Sierra Maestra has been around since the late 1970s.It was founded by Juan de Marcos González, the man responsible for bringing together a diverse group of musicians later known as the Buena Vista Social Club.

Sierra Maestra’s members had been students at the University of Havana. In forming the band, it was their intention to revive the old son tradition that had defined the golden era of Cuban music and formed the bedrock for most modern styles. De Marcos left in 1996 to work on the Buena Vista project and his new outfit Afro-Cuban All Stars.

The group probably weren’t at their best. It didn’t help that the sound at the International Centre was decidedly poor and the lighting system appeared to have baffled their technician judging by the rather messy display. But the crowd was easy enough to please, with a number of couples getting up to dance salsa from the front rows.

Timba is a tough style to pin down – it’s the Cuban adaptation of salsa, but aficionados will tell you that timba is significantly different and certainly not a subset of salsa. In any event, the sound of Manolito Y Su Trabuco was rather cloying, delivered by a tight band and three rather daft looking singers. I guess it’s a case of you win some, you lose some.