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	ˇCubanismo! Braving the elements at Scullers

There are elements outside musicianship that can sink a musical performance. When they came into Scullers a week ago Tuesday, the loud, brassy, 13-piece band ˇCubanismo! were faced with a loud, boxy room with big glass windows. They were also facing a seated club crowd with music made for dancing. That doesn’t necessarily spell disaster, and ˇCubanismo! are a great, crackling ensemble, but it might account for why, in their second set at least, the band weren’t as compelling as they’ve been in past performances.

Perhaps another acoustical challenge was that there were fewer bodies in those seats to absorb those sound waves. In terms of sheer rhythmic force, all the elements were present: piano, bass, timbales, congas, and bongos propelling each piece with clave-centered cross-rhythms; the trombone/two-sax/two-trumpet front line supercharging the arrangements with corkscrewing ascending melodic passages. But Cuban dance music as we’ve come to know it since ˇCubanismo! originated, in 1995 (a predecessor to crossover sensations the Buena Vista Social Club), is as rich in nuance as in thunder. The biting attack of the signature Cuban guitar the tres (with its three sets of double strings) was lost in the din at Scullers. On most pieces, the mid-range warmth of the saxes was also subsumed. (The exception was Coltrane’s "Naima," a solo feature for alto-saxophonist Rolando Pérez.) Timbales often have an evanescent, brassy high-range pop, but José Espinosa’s twin drums boomed relentlessly. Vocal passages of the son-montuno tradition can have a declamatory, erotic urgency that transcends language barriers, but ˇCubanismo!’s two vocalists were reduced to shouting and trying to rouse the crowd with hand-clapping and call-and-response vocals.

That said, the ˇCubanismo! musicians went all-out in their hour-plus set. The layering of precise ostinato figures was in the end irresistible. A few unselfconscious dancers took to the spaces between tables, and for the final number, "Congo Real," bandleader Jesús Alemañy invited everyone to get up and dance in place. Best of all, veteran vocalist Rolo Martínez sang "Congo Real" with a soaring, all-out delivery, his hands extended in imprecation to the crowd.