REVIEW: Louie Vega at the Jazz Café on 10 Mar
The third night, a packed cafe - an extra date due to demand.
And after a three tune warm up from singer / songwriter Selonius,
Vega and the Elements Of Life Band entered the stage to a considerable fanfare. Vega was in a pin stripe suit wearing a black hat - a kind of De-Vito-cum-Bob Hoskins figure (only much cuter, my girlfriend thought) - he was our conductor for the night and as such spent most of the proceedings with his back to us - working his band in with flailing arms. I don't know quite what he was doing, but he had the crowd hanging on the rhythms. A funky Latin number worked us in, setting the pace for the excellent
'You Can Do It Baby' with Raul Midon - a blind guitar player and vocalist whose skills just got better as the night progressed.
In fact Midon started to steal the show as he sang 'A Better
Day' and then 'Cerca da Mi', the latter combining vocals in both Spanish and English. However Vega ensured some of the highlights came from within the family by bringing his other half, Anane, on stage. A rather voluptuous Cape Verdean lady, she caused a bit of uproar with her cooing and breathy vocals in 'Jungle
Fever', and more so when she sang 'Nos Vida' in her native tongue.
While her performance of 'Trunco de Vida' was less good, her radically different take on album track 'Mon Amour' was very fine - while the Gallic charm was dropped the house beats that replaced it worked well. But if you thought the night belonged to Mrs Vega - well - then came the real musical magic -**Jocelyn
Brown**, who belted out the numbers with larger than life vocals,
'Lights Over Egypt' easing us into 'I Feel it' - a classic MAW tune - and then one of my all time favourites, 'Black Gold Of
The Sun', performed absolutely brilliantly with a 4hero percussive backdrop to cap it all off. Magic Brown left the stage to rapturous applause leaving Raul to tackle Blaze's vocals on 'Brand New
Day' (he did a fine job) before a finale performance of 'Elements
Of Life' with Lusito Quintero (aka the Octopus) beating the timbales and other percussion as if there were no tomorrow in a two minute breakdown, next to his uncle on drums. And as if all that wasn't enough, Vega then did a DJ set for a good hour
- with housey Latin numbers all the way. A really special night
- if they are in town again soon DO NOT MISS OUT. PV