Grass-Roots Latin Music From Mexico, El Salvador

Call it a favor between brothers.

When the members of El Salvador’s Los Hermanos Flores couldn’t get their visas in time to play their scheduled concert on Saturday at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, founding member Tito Flores traveled instead with his new band, the Orquesta San Vicente.

Of the approximately 1,500 people who were dancing the night away during the marathon show at the hotel’s California Ballroom, nobody seemed to mind. After all, the two orchestras are practically interchangeable, offering an eclectic mixture of cumbias, merengues and the occasional bolero.

The Salvadoran band, together with Mexico’s venerable Sonora Santanera, offered a strikingly different view of Latin music from the one that is being publicized these days.

Although both orchestras belong to the broad genre of “tropical music,” they are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the bravado and technical complexities of your average salsa band. Instead, they approach dances such as the mambo, the guajira and the cumbia with a mature simplicity that is steeped in tradition. It was like listening to the Buena Vista Social Club, but without the slick production and the artsy record covers.

The night belonged to the bolero, that most tender of genres. Listening to Sonora Santanera perform gems such as “Perfume de Gardenias” and “Fruto Robado,” you felt transported to another era.