Carriers of Son Torch Make for Must-See Show

Cuba has had a rich, roiling musical history for much of the 20th century, even though its sociopolitical isolation in the past few decades has kept it out of the global mainstream. That reality-based obstacle hasn’t kept the music from filtering off the island, feeding various strains of Afro-Cuban rhythmic styles into the jazz world and disseminating the infectious pulse of salsa music around the world.

At the moment, Cuba is a musical hot spot for a more archival reason, via the style known as son, a more refined and rural idiom compared with the steamy urbanity of salsa, which son predates. Last year, the album Buena Vista Social Club, produced by Ry Cooder, brought global attention to a group of veteran son musicians.

And then there is the bold group Sierra Maestre, carrying the son torch for the past two decades and then some.

A mostly unplugged, tradition-conscious ensemble, it’s passing through the area on only its second U. S. tour, stopping at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall on Tuesday, and it’s a must-see occasion for Cuban music fans anywhere in driving distance.

For its 21st anniversary last year, the group released a song set called “Tibiri Tabara” on the British-based World Circuit label, which also put out Buena Vista Social Club. Juan de Marcos Gonzalez Cardenas, Sierra Maestre’s leader and an eloquent performer on the indigenous stringed instrument called the tres, also had a helping hand in making the Cooder-produced project happen.

“Tibiri Tabara” nicely boasts the group’s strengths, the spirited ensemble vocals, intricate percussion matrices and heated trumpet interjections of Barbaro Teuntor Garcia. The album also serves as a tidy primer to the varieties of rhythms and styles under the son umbrella, including the guaracha of the title tune, the montuno rhythm and a taste of Afro-Cuban jazz on the closing tune, “Anabacoa.” Also featured is the song “Yo soy Tiburon” by Arsenio Rodriguez, a blind tres player and bandleader in the 1940s and ‘50s who is considered a national Cuban musical hero.

Sierra Maestre began as a roots-rediscovery crusade for a talented bunch of engineering students at the University of Havana in the mid-70s. Today, they’re in the bustling center of an older musical style pumped up with new fervor and embraced by a new audience. On the Cuban scene, there is life before--and now after--salsa.

TROMBONELINESS: The skilled and iconoclastic trombonist Mike Vlatkovich has been making interesting music on the fringes of the Los Angeles music scene when not fulfilling day gig duties with Peggy Lee, the Brian Setzer Orchestra and other mainstream work. He showed up last year in Ventura with a trio of ‘bone, bass and drums.

Tonight at the Daily Grind, he returns with a trio of a different, brassier ilk, with Jeff Kaiser on trumpet and Jill Torberson on French horn.

True to Vlatkovich’s natural creative instincts, the music will veer from his own contemporary chamber music-like structures to all-out improvisation. Given his track record, it should be a sound worth checking out, provided the listener has open ears and mind.

DETAILS: Sierra Maestre, Tuesday at 8 p.m. at UCSB’s Campbell Hall. Tickets $12-20; 893-3536.

The Mike Vlatkovich Trio, tonight at 9 at the Daily Grind in Ventura. Free. 641-1679.

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* Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com.