Festival de la Isla / Vacaville Reporter Feature: On island time, Puerto Rican-style

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Good morning friends:

It is happening tomorrow, Solano County's largest celebration of Puerto Rican music and culture.  We have to thank the Northern California media for helping us get the word out.  Check out the feature story below from Thursday.  Very cool story by Richard Bammer, entertainment writer with the Vacaville Reporter. 

Tickets are still available.  What better way to enjoy Saturday than with your favorite salsa dance partner at Pena Adobe Park.  The park is located just outside of Vacaville.

Hope to see you all there,

James Barrera - Publicist, FDLI

 

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On island time, Puerto Rican-style

Ray Sepulveda, Orquesta Bakan top Festival de la Isla in Vacaville

By Richard Bammer

Posted: 08/13/2009 02:30:34 AM PDT

Orquesta Bakan includes vocalist Fernando Wilkins (from left), vocalist Victor "Cafe" August and band leader, singer and bongo player Jose Guaman. (Orquesta Bakan/Courtesy)

As you might imagine, the Festival De La Isla, Solano County's premier salsa dance and music festival, will swing, swing, swing -- and then swing some more.

"I'm a big band guy and I've always been a big band guy," Jose Guaman, who leads the 13-member Orquesta Bakan, one of the festival's headliners, said in a telephone interview Wednesday from his Antioch home.

His band will open the music bill at the all-day festival, which gets under way at 11 a.m. Saturday in Vacaville's Pena Adobe Park.

The annual event, which celebrates Puerto Rican music and culture, is expected to attract thousands of salsa enthusiasts from throughout California and beyond, drawn by the entertainment lineup, which, besides Orquesta Bakan, includes headliner Ray Sepulveda of New York, Grupo Avance and the Salsamania Dance Group. DJ Bosco will lay down music tracks to keep the stage program in the groove.

Ticket are $15 advance, $20 at the door. Children 12 and under are free. Call 426-5591 or visit www.festivaldelaisla.com for more information.

Guaman, a native of Guayaquil, Ecuador, called his band's sound "salsa dura," Spanish for "hard salsa."

He characterized the music as a distinctly "New York style of salsa," owing a debt to two longtime Big Apple-based Latin ensembles, El Gran Combo and La Sonora Poncena.

Like much Latin music, Bakan's approach to salsa is based on 2-3 or 3-2 clave, or "key," rhythms, Guaman noted,

adding, "We just swing with that. That's how we keep time. We just keep a nice rhythm. What we like to do is swing nice. It's all danceable -- if you don't dance, you will come up and dance."

Given the band's instrumentation, it is hard to picture an audience just sitting on its haunches once the band begins, say, a brassy prelude undergirded by a sturdy bass and drums. Guaman, on bongos and vocals, directs two trumpeters, two trombonists, a baritone saxophonist, two other vocalists, a bassist, a pianist, a timbalero and a congero.

The band's first CD, by popular demand, is in the works, finally, after the band plied the club and festival circuit since 2002, he noted.

Guamen, a U.S. sales program manager for Hewlitt-Packard, came to the United States at age 5, his father a professional soccer player who once played with Brazilian soccer legend Pele. At 14, the younger Guaman discovered the Latin rock sound of Carlos Santana, bought some timbales and "started picking it up on my own," he recalled. He eventually joined Orquesta Mojica as a teenager, stayed with the band for three years but gave up music afterward.

One night, at a restaurant, after a 25-year hiatus from performing, he was called to the stage and began playing again.

"I felt it was like yesterday," Guaman remembered, his voice rising at a happy thought.

After being encouraged by his wife and sister to resume performing professionally, he formed Orquesta Bakan.

Festival founder Linda August was excited to book Guaman and his band, asserting that the entertainment lineup is first-rate.

"This is a wonderful way to share the beauty of the Puerto Rican music and culture," she said. "Bring the friends, the family, the distant cousins, your work acquaintances. You will love the foods, check out the arts and crafts, the island fashion show and dance to some of the hottest salsa music talent in the region. This is Solano County's only festival dedicated to promoting and celebrating the Puerto Rican community and their identity as U.S. citizens."