Yet Another Good Time at "Twilight in the Park" with Charlie Chávez y su Afrotruko: A Hot Night of Salsa August 15

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2024 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Thursday, August 15) I went to the “Twilight in the Park” concert at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park to hear a quite good salsa band, Charlie Chávez y su Afrotruko. They played 11 songs, more or less – I say “more or less” because some of them blended into each other – and I had to use the Google song-identification app this afternoon to figure out what they had played since all the singing was in Spanish. Two of the songs even threw Google: one they played midway through the set which I guessed was called “La Rumba” because that’s the word I heard most often in the lyric, and their encore, which turned out to be a piece by Tito Puente (that I was able to make out from their announcement!) from 1958 called “Mambo Gozón.” I’m not sure which of the males on the stage was Charlie Chávez – though I think he was the heavy-set, fully bearded timbales player who periodically emerged from behind the timbales (the two small standing drums that are essential to Latin music) to make song announcements and introduce the other members of the band. I also particularly liked the guitar player, who’s going to return to “Twilight in the Park” on Wednesday, August 21 for a tribute band to Carlos Santana called, almost inevitably, “Santanaways.” The songs I was able to identify via Google were “Naci Moreno,” their opener; “Una Verano à Nuevo York”; Célia Cruz’s “Dos Jueges”; a quick cover of “Happy Birthday to You” in honor of a woman who was apparently celebrating her birthday yesterday; Willie Colón’s “Ché Ché Colé”; “La Rumba” (or whatever its title may be); “El Ratón”; “Baila que Baila” (another of those maddening dance songs that instead of making you feel like you want to dance, makes you feel you’re being ordered to); “Quitate Tu”; “Cinco de T” (that’s what Google said the title was!); and “Mambo Gozón” as the encore.

The show was yet another good-time party at “Twilight in the Park” – for the most part the organizers have gone for bands that deliberately play to the crowds and invite them to have a good time – but the Afrotruko are also a band with a wide variety of instruments and sonorities. At times they threw the sound people at Dave Wave quite a bit; they played a three-song sound check before the formal concert began and they still didn’t get everything nailed down to their satisfaction. Throughout their set they were asking for adjustments in the balance level of their monitor speakers (the speakers that point away from the audience and are there so the band members can hear themselves and each other). They are a very large ensemble, consisting of a heavy-set woman vocalist, two guitar players (acoustic rhythm and electric lead), a five-piece horn section (two trumpets – both of which are played by long-time members with Anglo names – two trombones and a baritone sax that added a formidable bottom to the sound) and lots of Latin percussion: timbales, congas, bongos. Overall the band created a lot of infectious grooves even for people who don’t speak Spanish and therefore had little or no idea what the songs were about. I suspect there were a lot more people who don’t speak Spanish at this concert than there were at Mariachi Continental’s on August 6; certainly I heard fewer people singing along last night than I did then. But the organizers counted the crowd and announced at the end that 660 people had attended, which was very nice – and quite believable, given the crowds I saw. Overall I had a lovely time at the event and got into just the right sort of fun, jolly spirit the band members and concert organizers were hoping to create.