Groundbreaking local band create trad/salsa fusion

The Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@live.ie

What do you get when you cross trad with salsa? Find out when Baile an Salsa play Monroe’s Live on Saturday next August 24. The ten-piece band is made up of lead singer Andres Martorell, Alan Preims (congas), Antonio Aguilar (bass), Michael Chang (fiddle), Frailan Moran (Bata/percussion), Peter Brazier (mandolin/guitar), Ger Chambers (accordion), Brid Dunne (piano) Rags Ferguson (timbales/bodhrán) and Gabriel G. Diges (flute and bouzouki).

Baile an Salsa is the brainchild of Uruguayan native Andres and the singer recalls how the notion came about.

“I had the idea five or six years ago,” he says “We used to play salsa in Massimo’s [on Sea Road], and we used to go to The Crane Bar for a pint on our break. I told Alan and he said it was a good idea, so the two of us started to pick up people from different places. He contacted Mike, and then we called Antonio and different people and we put it together like that.”

“I know Andres from the salsa band,” continues Antonio. “I was playing piano at that time; Alan was also part of the band. When Andres asked me to join the project, I was playing the double bass. I said ‘well, I’ll do that for the band’.

“I’m originally from Mexico, so I’ve played some Latin music in the past,” Antonio adds. “It’s great to be part of this; there are a lot of similarities between Irish traditional music and Latin rhythms. 6/8 rhythms are also very common in Afro-Cuban drumming.”

Alan Preims is Baile an Salsa’s conga player. What challenges does the band present to him, as a percussionist?

“I think the challenges are to choose the right Latin/Afro centric rhythms and not to be, I guess, repetitive,” he says. “You can put something together quickly, but if you don’t give it thought they can kind of neutralise each other.

“I think selecting the rhythms that we put together from the Irish with the salsa is the challenge, to keep the Afro- Cuban elusive, so that it’s supporting the Irish.”

The band started to rehearse last summer, and began working on a four-track EP shortly after that. When did Anders know that band were ready to start gigging?

“I don’t think we are ready yet!” he laughs. “We believe that it’s going to work, but we still have a lot to do. We did the first EP in a bit of a hurry, just to show the music that we do. The first songs we put together were the four songs we put on the EP.

“We have way more things now that, I believe, show the band a little bit better. The EP didn’t do too badly, we’re very happy with it.”

They may have fleshed out their set since then, but the EP gives a good sense of what Baile an Salsa are about. Some bands are overly fussy about their debut recording, but Anders and the band were keen to get some music out there.

“We recorded it in Nenagh, in record time!” he says All the instruments in one day – ten people. In three or four days we had the whole thing done. 

“We had a lot of discussions with the traditional musicians [in the band], because I would consider myself a Latin musician,” adds Antonio.  “Half of the band have their roots in Irish music, so we’re always trying to make this vision work, how to bring certain motifs of Irish music into Latin, and vice versa.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.