The salsa’s hot at the Autry

The Autry Museum’s “Sizzling Summer Nights” concert series is in full swing again, running every Thursday through Aug. 13 with live salsa each night. Now in its 15th year, it is quite an event.

Once you step through the entrance, the central courtyard is a swirl of dancers, hundreds of them, in front of the bandstand or scattered elsewhere wherever there’s an open patch of floor. The best of them move with grace and style, thoroughly contemporary yet hearkening back to the frantic dance floor of New York City’s Palladium in the 1940s and ’50s. And further back than that even, to the ’30s when Mario Bauza first brought Latin rhythms to the United States and El Manicero (“The Peanut Vendor”) blared from a million radios. And back even further to Havana’s turn-of-the-century salons where elegant couples stepped lightly to danzons.

All that music and dance history blends seamlessly, couples dancing classic salsa moves, others do the cha cha cha, some managing to dance the merengue to everything, and some just free-styling it. It must be the most joyously cosmopolitan dance floor in all of Southern California.

These events can draw an astonishing 1,200 patrons, or 800 on a slow night. And there aren’t many slow nights. But there is ample room, with seats and tables tucked out of the way, and the crowd spills out into the adjacent lawn where picnickers leisurely dine, children frolic and the music is clear and audible.

It’s audible across the street in the L.A. Zoo parking lot too, where people begin dancing as soon as they’re out of their cars. And you can hear it in the café, which is remarkably tasty for museum fare and has lately stocked wines for people to fuss over.

You can hear the music in the gift shop, which does a bang up business, and even in the upper galleries of the museum itself, one of the most underrated museums in the city. There, the contrast between the tropical sounds seeping in from outside the doors and the sweeping western vistas on the walls is jarring but somehow perfect.

You know you’re in Los Angeles when the two blend. Where else could this possibly happen but the Autry Museum in Griffith Park on a Sizzling Summer Night?

Each Thursday features a different band (or orqesta), and they vary from really good to great.

Yari More, the Bugulu Assassins and Peruvian salsero Octavio Figueroa played the first three weeks. Upcoming on July 23 is Chino Espinoza, whose band ranges from hard Fania style salsa to cha-cha.

On July 30 is the great Son Mayor, one of L.A.’s very best salsa acts, who pack the dance floor. On Aug. 6 is Colombian Latin Soul, one of the newer acts around town, mixing cumbia and vallenato with salsa, bachata and merengue.

And finally on August 13 Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca finish the series, mixing Afro-Cuban tunes with African soukous and samba. An outstanding band based in Los Angeles, they spend a good part of the year in Africa and Europe — so this annual appearance at the Autry is always a treat.

Admission is $10 ($6 students and seniors), though members get in free. Music begins at 6:30 and ends at 9 p.m. Parking is available in the museum lot and across the street at the zoo. There’s a full bar and food available. And as a bonus, there are free salsa dance lessons between sets.

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BRICK WAHL is a Los Angeles music critic.

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FOR THE RECORD

July 21, 2015, 11:23 a.m.: A previous version of this story misstated the day of the Autry Museum’s “Sizzling Summer Nights” concert series. The series runs every Thursday through Aug. 13.

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