Reviews
Reviews for En Vivo El Norte released March 2010
'The huge sound of the Edinburgh-based international touring band has finally been properly captured in a magnificent live recording (by Calum Malcolm) of a concert in Findhorn's Universal Hall at the climax of a US/European tour.
The 14-strong line-up included guests such as Altan's Irish accordionist, a legendary New York trombonist, an Argentinian bassist and Cuban and Venezuelan vocalists, the feral ferocity of the band's built-in bagpipe/banjo/fiddle section added to by sax and percussion. Tight as the warnings of our new chancellor, everyone in the band plays their socks off.'
* * * * Scotland on Sunday - 20th June 2010
'This live recording of the final gig of the 2009 "Salsa Celtica All Stars" tour recorded in the beautiful Universal Hall of the world-renowned Findhorn Community on Scotland's north-easty cost is nothing short of exhilirating. It captures everything Salsa Celtica is: a band of intrepid musicians who create a thrilling fusion drawing on two of the worlds richest melodic and rythmic traditions, shifting from rumba to reel in one song.'
* * * * Songlines - May/June 2010
'El Agua De La Vida turns fiddles into instruments capable of conveying hot, sticky sultriness, while the quickly strummed koras on Sies, Ocho, Nueve shimmer like Celtic harps, while losing none of their equatorial sparkle. El Vivo El En Norte.... a romance that will last rather a sweaty summer fling'
Full review here - BBC reviews - May 2010
The giant mutating creature that is Salsa Celtica has evolved, via the village halls of Skye and the nightclubs of Havana, into a mighty beast indeed, on the evidence of this dazzling farewell to the 2009 All Starts tour. No sooner have the fiddles and pipes lured us into the Celtic parlour than the horns come barging in to kick the chairs over and drag us onto the dance floor.
Anyone not previously taken with the Latin/Gaelic 'thing' should investigate the rousing 'Cuando Me Vaya' to find the marriage of the two traditions perfectly realised.
It's nigh on impossible to remain unconverted by the infectious rhythms and sheer joie do vivre of this heady blend of Cuban rum and finest Scotch whisky
Steve Bennet
The world is waking up to the full potential of salsa - thanks to a bunch of Scots
Out on Blackfriars Street, in Edinburgh's Old Town, there's a little bar called Black Bow's that for years has been one of the meeting points in the city's eclectic music scene. It was here, nearly 12 years ago, that Edinburgh-born trumpeter Toby Shippey got together with a percussionist, a Chilean guitarist and the traditional fiddler and experimental pioneer of Scottish turbo-folk, the late Martyn Bennett, and started mixing Latin and Celtic themes.
"I didn't know much about salsa," Shippey remembers, "but I loved the sound of it. I'd been playing jazz and folk music, but then I got to hear Puerto Rican musician Tito Puente. We did a session in the bar here, and later other fiddlers would join in, partly for the free booze. There was no grand plan. We didn't know what would happen."
What did happen was the emergence of surely the only band in the world to successfully fuse Latin and Celtic themes and instruments. Salsa Celtica still, even today, sound like no other salsa band on the planet, but they have impressed hardcore Latin fans in New York, while their current 25-date British tour includes a stop at London's La Linea Latin festival.
Their new album El Camino (The Road) involves the 11 core band members along with 11 other musicians, playing anything from brass and congas to harp and pipes. Among those providing the vocals are the Scottish-based Venezuelan Lino Rocha, and the folk star Eliza Carthy, a big fan of Latin music who now lives in the Scottish borders.
El Camino is a rousing, wildly varied set, ranging from all-out salsa dance songs that are suddenly transformed into Celtic jigs and reels, through to slower, more reflective songs that again explore the links between Scotland and Latin America. The songs, written by different band members, make use of Scottish and Irish traditional themes, but are mostly in Spanish - "which we learned to speak by travelling, and by singing the songs themselves", says Shippey, adding, "and Lino is there to help correct us".
The only notable exception to this is Carthy's traditional love ballad The Grey Cockerell (now transformed into Grey Gallito), a traditional folk song that she sings in English against a gently sturdy Latin guajira backing and coro, or chorus, so that the eerie, tragic story sounds more striking than ever. The aim, said Shippey, is not to force two styles together but "produce something that stands up in its own right".
And it works, even for Latin audiences. Rocha, the one genuinely Latin band member who had come along to Black Bow's that night 12 years ago, argues that what the different styles have in common are "the energies and passion of the music. We get a lot of emails from people in Colombia and Venezuela, and they really love the Celtic side".
Indeed, but it's hard to think of that link being developed so effectively outside the Edinburgh music scene. Musicians come here, says Shippey, "because there's a great folk scene and jazz scene, and it's easy to pick up gigs seven nights a week. The bars are open until three in the morning and many of them have live music to attract people in to drink". "Which is why I came here," adds Rocha.
"Folk music is in the air here. If you were to do this in London or Manchester it would seem more contrived," says pianist Phil Alexander, who argues that Edinburgh's musical eclecticism is because there are fewer musicians to go round, so they have to play different styles.
That's certainly true of Salsa Celtica. When they are not working together, almost everyone in the band is off playing with someone else. The day we meet, Shippey is due to play with an AfroBeat band later that night, but he also has a "straight salsa" project with Rocha.
Conga player David Robertson is in the highly successful Scottish folk-rock band Capercaillie, and Alexander has his own tango and jazz band, Tangalgo. "Folk musicians in the south just play folk music," he says. "When I'm up here, I can play salsa, tango, funk, ska and folk gigs in the space of four nights, and that's great."
The non-Latin members have put in time learning their Latin licks. Back in the mid-1990s, a year after the band first started, Shippey and others travelled to Cuba for the first time, funding the trip through pub gig money. Hanging out in Havana, they immersed themselves in Cuban music.
Back in Scotland, they took their new rhythms to the Edinburgh bar circuit and as far afield as the Highlands, Orkney and Shetland. "When we first went there," said Shippey, "we met people who had never seen a trumpet before. And they didn't know what salsa was. We'd play in village halls and they'd say, 'What's this? It's quite good!' Then we'd be invited back every year!"
Next Thursday when they make their second appearance at La Linea, they will join a lineup that includes Spain's Amparanoia and Mexico's Lila Downs.
Salsa Celtica now find themselves with a following as mixed as their music. Conga player Dougie Henderson describes it as "everything from the young bar crowd to water-drinking Latin fans. Some are intellectual about the idea of fusion, and others just want to dance".
The release of the forthcoming Julie Walters film Driving Lessons should increase their audience further. Writer/director Jeremy Brock wrote them into the film after watching them on TV, and they can be seen playing in an Edinburgh club and busking outside Hampstead tube station, performing a typically unlikely Latin version of Auld Lang Syne. "Julie Walters told us we were great," says Shippey. "I replied that we've been working hard on the part for quite some time."
The Guardian. By Robin Denselow
Reviews for El Camino released 6th March 2006
'Salsa Celtica have real emotional range… El Camino's passion, energy and virtuosity suggest that Salsa Celtica's form of fusion has far to go. A road well worth following.'
* * * * * Songlines - March/April 2006
'An album that fizzes with energy and vitality and does honour to music styles that are often hermetic to change.'
Mondomix - Feb 2006
'What gives Salsa Celtica an edge over the home-grown competition is the. collision of South American exuberance and British folk roots .All in all, a clever way of freshening up a genre'
* * * Sunday Times - March 2006
'The tight Cuban piano and percussion kick off an exuberantly good-time salsa track that seamlessly weaves in a Scottish reel on fiddle and pipes.their fourth album and they're swinging.'
* * * * Evening Standard - 3rd Mar 2006
'Each strand within the mix retains its own vivid character, enhancing the elegance of their alignment with the frisson of contrast.'
* * * * * The Sunday Herald - 12th Mar 2006
'Calum Malcolm brings out an effortlessness in the big band's energy and an ease to their subtle musical blend'
* * * * The List - 16th Feb 2006
REVIEWS - El Agua De La Vida
Salsa Celtica - El Agua De La Vida (Greentrax Recordings) ****
Salsa Celtica need little introduction these days - they have long left behind any perceived novelty dimension to their signature blend of big-band Latin dance music with Scottish accents. They have earned admiration among the cognoscenti for their balance between authenticity and originality. And they're recognised by audiences of folk, jazz and world music alike as one of Scotland's top party bands.
The title of their third album is El Agua De La Vida - 'the water of life' - a sly Hispanic nod to the Gaelic root of 'whisky'. Its Celtic elements are more artfully pronounced than ever, right from the cheeky opening number Cumbia Celtica - featuring guest Eamonn Coyne on tenor banjo - to the equally impish closer, a salsa-style revamp of Auld Lang Syne. The band now features two fiddlers - Chris Stout and Kenny Fraser - with long-time member Fraser Fifield on bagpipes, whistles and soprano sax.
Their integration of idioms boasts a new sophistication - as in the plaintive slow pipe tune that leads into Guajira Sin Sol, or the ebullient pipes and fiddle reel that kicks off the high-spirited title track. The alternating moods of yearning and celebration, after all, are fundamental to the music of both cultures; and it's by expanding on this emotional commonality that Salsa Celtica combine them so effectively.
Sue Wilson
"From the opening blast of banjo'n'brass on Cumbia Celtica to the closer, the grooviest version of Auld Lang Syne ever, this really is the water of life... this fusion of Latin rhythms and Scottish folk music is completely infectious."
Penguin Eggs (Summer 2003)"Well, yes, it does sound like it could be a condiment served at a Mexican restaurant in Dublin or Edinburgh. However Salsa Celtica is actually a group of adventurous Scots whose discovery of Afro-Cuban dance music and related sounds has led to an ingenious blend of the styles of the Buena Vista Social Club and traditional Scottish dance halls... it's like a potent cocktail of Scottish whisky and Cuban rum, a steamy Havana ceilidh driven by an irresistible beat."
Dirty Linen (Aug/Sept 2003)
"Unlike Japan's Orquestra de la Luz, which replicated the sound of a salsa band, Salsa Celtica boldly meshes two musical styles with exuberant results... oh-so-irresistable."
Billboard (July 2003) - the Billboard reviewer of Latin albums in 2003 included El Agua at no 8.
"What in the world have we here? Cuban jazz with a Celtic accent. The guys in this band hail from all over the world, and they fuse Afro-Latin rhythms and melodies with traditional Celtic and Scottish music. It may sound outlandish, but it works incredibly well. Music doesn't get more exciting than this."
The Boston Globe (July 2003)
Salsa Celtica performed at The Barrowlands in Glasgow on January 25th as part of Celtic Connections 2003 - read a review from The Scotsman and an El Agua De La Vida album review (both by Sue Wilson).
The album reached Number 5 in the World Music Charts Europe. In the top 150 of 1,040 nominated records for 2003, Salsa Celtica's El Agua De La Vida came in at number 24.
Irish Music Magazine - Dublin Top Ten - No 8
Songlines World Music magazine - Top of the World - Top Ten
"An album of gems from the Scottish Latino outfit."
Rootitooti
"A band that's not only tight but that are firing on all cylinders with a big sound and joyous danceability."
Mundial Music Pool - Top 40 World - in at No 34
Salsanoticias magazine - Salsalista for April - No 17
Salsa Celtica general quotes
"What their compatriots from Average White Band were for funk in the seventies, Salsa Celtica are for Latin-American music - a fresh, new and original sound..."
De Morgen, Belgium
"A stunning marriage of musical styles... Virtuosos to a man..."
The Scotsman
"Salsa Celtica have now proven there are Celts among us whose blood runs pure chilli..."
Cork Examiner, Ireland
"Scene stealers..."
The Observer, UK
"In the Latin scene along with Manu Chau, Salsa Celtica were without doubt the most exciting and freshest thing to hit New York this summer..."
Listin Diario, USA / Dominican Republic
"Rhythms bordering on a religious frenzy..."
The List, Scotland
"Unique..."
Rhythm Magazine, USA
"Salsa Celtica gerade deshalb so exzellent..."
Tontrager, Sweden
"Le melange rhythmique est magique..."
Musique Traditionale, France