Here is a fresh and vital new sound from multicultural Amsterdam:
"Shango's Dance" combines the powerfull rhythms and chants from the Santería & Yoruba religious tradition with the art of improvised music. The programme revives the ancient songs and dances the Cubans used to worship their West African ancestors and gods. The performance includes exciting grooves, harmonies, improvisations, dancing and melodic movement as the main ingredients. However, the secret of the success of the group lies in the fact that the spiritual and trance states of performance give meaning to the empowering atmosphere of music and dance. It is music that evokes images of African rituals as well as impressions of "Big City Life".
'Shango' is the powerfull African god of the Batá drums, dance and thunder, but above all he is a very creative and sucessful womanizer. The name of the band is dedicated to his many guises.
We've made some concert reviews available at this site.
At the North Sea Jazz festival 1997
"Shango's Dance" is the fusion of an Afro Cuban vocal and drum ensemble with the Lotz Of Music quintet led by flutist/composer Mark Alban Lotz. The project is a creative global platform for some of today's finest vocalists and instrumentalists, each representing their own cultural background, but combining them to create something new.
The line up includes singers & dancers, percussion, a family of flutes, tenor sax/clarinets, piano, tuba/bass and drum-kit. "Shango's Dance" features from seven up to twelve musicians. For further information see the biographies of the individual artists.
Iván & Lucumi
International artists associated with "Shango's Dance" are a.o. the legendary Amelia Pedroso, Miguel 'Anga' Diaz, Martha Galarraga (first soloist of the 'Conjunto Folklorico National de Cuba'), José Pilar Suarez, internationally renowned Indian Tabla virtuoso Sandip Battacharya and Thelonious Monk Competition prize winner Marc van Roon.
The 'Yoruba Love Affair' started with the encounter between Lotz and master drummer Javier Campos Martinez in 1996. This unforgettable evening initiated by the musical exchange, resulted in the promise to nurture the seed into a creative work and ended up with CD recordings at the ICAIC studios, Havana, featuring many household names among the cognoscenti of the Cuban Orisha music. Soon people recognised the value of the initiative and Lotz of Music got invitations to attend major music festivals such as The Percuba Festival in Havana and the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Netherlands.
Following on from the improvisations made by Afro Americans in New Orleans at the beginning of the last century, many musical forms have now taken up the art of improvisation. Realising the freedom it gives to explore new boundaries of sound, rhythm, and harmony it has enabled musicians to advance their art at an ever increasing pace. Here we have a good example of the fruits of this quest.
Lotz of great music! All the ingredients fall right into place: creative experiments - an understanding of tradition - very musical interpretations - brilliant performances.(Andy Gonzales, mus.dir. Conjunto Libre, Fort Apache Band)
We represent a new hipe: a truly African - European fusion!(Mark A. Lotz, mus.dir. Lotz Of Music)
Jose, Stefan K., Stefan S. and Maarten
