Two Nights Out

You might assume that I have an active night life, gigging and clubbing to stay attuned to the scene--but you would assume wrong. In fact, I have always been a homebody, though over time I have begun to enjoy going out, and going out alone. Years of business travel taught me how to have a nice time by myself, and my husband and I don't always share the same taste in entertainment, nor are our wallets fat enough to pay for both of us to go out. He's finally stopped telling his ludicrous story of how I like to drag him to the symphony, which happened exactly once more than a decade ago. And I love to share his take on salsa--I did drag him to Cuba, and once we were there on day two he turns to me and says, "You were right! This is the cradle of all Latin American music!" We love to go dancing together but ... it happens very rarely.

Anyway, on Thursday of last week I was sitting at home writing an article that was due the next day (or the previous day) and at 8 pm I get a call from a musician friend asking if I want to go to Cocomo's to see Karabali, our teacher Edgardo's band. I said I was writing but maybe. He said he'd call back at 9:30. When he did, I said "Let's do it!" He offered to come pick me up--hey, this was nice! So we went to Cocomo's (which I have never seen--it reminded me of Rocapulco, which Emilio and I really enjoyed) and I got to dance a lot and hear a great band playing conjunto style salsa (no timbales), with special guest Ray Vega from New York on trumpet.

I only had two dud dance partners, one who had no rhythm whatsoever, and one who liked to "vogue," striking various poses but never actually doing any dance steps. I really hate it when people try to educate others on the dance floor but I did try to help Mister Rhythmically Challenged feel the downbeat by counting "un dos tres" in his ear and tapping on his arm. He said he was from India and had been dancing two months. I said I knew some great salseros who were Indian. He asked if I was from Mexico and I lied and said yes. Might as well keep things simple. Mister Vogue radiated a strange air as he did his weird held partner poses, which I tried to follow, though several involved non OSHA-approved ergonomics and my back was not cooperating. I mean, dipping me is fine, but don't hold my arm straight up in the air like you're trying to dislocate my shoulder while you do that! "The pleasure of dancing with you has been all mine," he said when it was over. He got that right. "I hope you will consider dancing with me again." I smiled while backing away quickly. Later I observed a frenetic ninja salsa dancer and made a mental note to avoid him as well.

However, there was one guy who just the right mix of warm musical interaction and confident leadership, and I was able to follow him quite well both times we danced. My husband doesn't want to go back to this ballroom salsa class we'd been sporadically taking before I twisted my ankle (we both prefer Cuban/club style) but I could see that one advantage was my ability to follow more complex ballroom-style patterns.

The next night, I went out again, this time because my producer called me and said I should really show up to meet the distributors our record label is working with. So I saw a great performance by Wayne's quintet, with again Ray Vega as a guest. They did a gorgeous version of Coltrane's Africa, and Ray sang a few pregones to El Manisero at the end of the night. Ray's solos range from super spare to athletic, always with afro-cuban rhythm coursing through his movement and sound. He's also very funny on stage. Murray Low did some amazing work on the piano, at one point "going to his scary place," as he told me later, with a solo that pulled hard against the time and dovetailed back into the beat brilliantly.

I danced all night, but mostly by myself. I also got to talk with "live music evangelist" Daniel Patrick, who has been running the music event production at the Larkspur Cafe Theater and is about to go independent following a shakeup in venue ownership. He was very kind, and seemed to really take a shine to me after I helped stack chairs between sets. Have I hit upon a new technique for endearing myself to bookers? "You like how I stack chairs, you should see me do dishes!"