Afro Cuban jazz festival leaves crowd tapping

On the same stage where proud Tufts actresses had given their impassioned Vagina Monologues one week earlier, stately Afro-Cuban women in colorful dresses and headscarves danced and shimmied last weekend to an audience full of Tufts students and Latin Americans from the surrounding area.

The women were part of a Puerto Rican Bomba group called Celia Ayala y su Ballet Folklorico Cultural, one of Boston's leading exponents of Puerto Rican bomba, and its members span three generations of lead singer Celia Ayala's family. Ballet Folklorico was the first of a three-part music festival that featured Cuban and West African traditions.

This first performance proved the most outstanding of the three, despite the fact that the group is based in Boston. Three drummers and four vocalists accompanied Ayala as she sashayed about the stage, barefoot as the women dancers around her. Her seven and a half year old granddaughter could shimmy and wiggle her hips as well as any of the other women onstage, and was often given the spotlight.

While I was struck by how quickly Cohen's stage was transformed into the site of a street festival, thanks to the bright costumes and the lighting, the atmosphere would have been greatly enhanced were the audience allowed to dance along. Despite encouragement to clap from the dancers onstage, the house lacked energy and the darkness wasn't helping.

A fellow audience member remarked that this festival was to appreciate the culture added to our music by West African slaves, and the audience was not able to participate in the dancing. This dancing, which involved holding water jugs at some points; told stories at other points; and was geared visually toward fellow dancers as well as to the audience, seemed out of its element -- even exploitative -- on an auditorium stage.

The second two acts were easier to watch without my feet or idealism itching. The first was called Joel Larue Smith and Mambo Libre, a combination of Cuban music and New York jazz that had the perkiness of Salsa and the muffled smoothness of a Manhattan jazz club. Smith is an accomplished and talented piano player, who happens to be lecturer of Music/Jazz and Jazz Theory in the Music Department music faculty here at tufts. He led his band in an energizing performance.

Feeling a little less inhibited now that the fantastic shimmiers were no longer onstage, a few friends and I decided to be our cultured selves and dance at the back of Cohen. No one joined in, but hey, at least we tried. And these musicians, particularly the electric bass-player Smith, certainly deserved our most valiant efforts at expression.

The third set was Tango from Argentina, sung by the Katie Viqueira Group. Katie Viqueira is a prominent Argentinian figure in the Boston Latin music scene, but her deep voice, impeccable expressions, and suggestive pelvic activity weighed more heavily than the Globe review quotes listed in the program. Her love for performing was obvious, not only during the songs but in her descriptions of each song before she sang it. Unlike most of the other performers, she did not speak all in Spanish, and so I was able to appreciate the song introduction in which she claimed the lyricist was telling her own story because the song was about "a South American who fell in love with New England." She paused for effect, then emphasized, "New England." The audience chuckled appreciatively while she took another sip of her Dasani and flipped the page of her music.

The concert's attendance was impressive, due most likely to the fair number of flyers that advertised the event around campus. The event was organized by Joel Larue Smith, and was sponsored by a broad range of departments as well as the president, provost, and various deans of the university. I would declare the event a success, but my toes are still a bit itchy. Next year, perhaps, it should be in Jackson Gym.