Mayito and Timbalive with Yussef Breffe at the 2014 SF Salsa Rueda Festival • photo by Tom Ehrlich

Look - nobody loves Los Van Van more than I do, and like most, I was both sad to hear that Mayito had left the group and uncertain that Mayito Rivera would be able to sustain the iconic gravitas of Mayito Van Van. The solo careers of Lele el padre, Israel Sardiñas, Mayito el Flaco, Ángel Bonne and even Pedrito Calvo will always be overshadowed by their work with Formell, but on the strength of this one performance, Mayito has emphatically cast that monkey off his back. It's now clear that Mayito simply had to leave - he's just too much singer to be relegated to two or three songs a night. 

Mayito captured and hypnotized a huge crowd of dancers and connoisseurs from the first note and relentlessly pushed them higher and higher for an hour and a half of non-stop tour de force inspiration. He was clearly excited and emotional but he maintained complete control, hitting perfectly intoned, full voice high As and above on every song without faltering.

By the second song, the night's opening coro, Llegó Mayito Rivera had taken on a much deeper meaning. This was not going to be merely a nostalgic look back at Mayito Van Van. It was Mayito Rivera, el Poeta de la Rumba, who had arrived - a new artist - now with the space and freedom to fully express himself with cadenzas, rubato intros, rumba and inspiraciones and to aspire on equal turf to the greatness of his idol Beny Moré.

I had seen flashes of Mayito's improvising in Havana, sitting in with Issac and Bamboleo, but this was 90 minutes of sustained in-the-moment brilliance. When he called for a rumba dancer, SF's own Yussef Breffe was busily taking photos with a large unwieldy camera and before he could put it down, Mayito had invented a coro about the non-sequitur of a rumbero con cámara? As soon as Yussef started to break out his prodigious moves, Mayito changed the coro to suelta la cámara! and the coristas, highlighted by the amazing Yezi González, instantly harmonized it while Mayito tossed off one incredible pregón after then next. The whole night was like this, and the euphoria on Yezi's face was telling. She kept looking over at the trombonistas as if to say "can you freaking believe this?" The whole Timbalive band was grinning from ear to ear and responding spontaneously to each unexpected bit of brilliance from Mayito.

Timbalive plays their own set tonight, Sunday, with more dance performances.

Nick Van Eyck and Serena Wong's Salsa Vale Todo with Yenek and Karelia • photo by Tom Ehrlich

Mayito greeted a crowd that was already high as a kite on the strength of a really tremendous series of dance performances. Festival organizers Nick Van Eyck and Serena Wong got a chance to perform with their famous teachers on an amazingly spliced audio segment that went in and out of Charanga Habanera's epic Tema introducción twice. The choreography of its mind-boggling polyrhythmic bloque was stunning.

Meanwhile, over at the Timbaversity, Roberto Borrell gave a brilliant preview of his upcoming Finding the Clave course and Umi Vaughan was inspiring and thought-provoking as usual as he elaborated on his first two books on batá and timba, and threw out a few teasers about his third - a history of his mother's famous Oakland dance studio. [Kevin Moore]

Click Continue Reading for more great photos. Full galleries coming soon.

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Masterminds Nick Van Eyck and Serena Wong of Salsa Vale Todo (video below) at the 2012 festival.

Here's this year's full schedule. Thursday night is a welcoming party featuring Bay Area timberos Team Bahía, followed by three fully packed days of workshops and performances. Among the highlights are Mayito Rivera's first California show since leaving Los Van Van on Saturday night, backed by Timbalive, who play their own show Sunday night, Roberto Borrell's Finding the Clave course on Saturday, The Bay Area Timba Salsa All Stars on Friday night, and dance performances by troupes from around the world each night in the main ballroom. For tickets and reservations.

Mayito Rivera

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Issac is back in Cuba and has an exciting new band with three members of the original NG La Banda: pianist Rodolfo "Peruchín" Argudín, trumpeter Elpidio Chappottín and saxophonist/arranger Germán Velazco. On synthesizer is Yusef Díaz of Klímax fame. Click continue reading for a larger version of the poster.

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from afrocubaweb.com

It's been a long wait, but Feliciano Arango and Los Hermanos Arango have finally returned after their one-stop tour to Berklee several years ago. Arango is well-known to timberos as the founding bassist of NG La Banda and co-author of two books on bass-playing. But Los Hermanos Arango is an amazing project in its own right, combining Latin jazz with folkloric vocals, percussion and dancing. They'll be performing and doing master classes all week in Southern California. This is the real deal - don't miss it. The opening act for some of the shows is the changüí group of timba.com friend and contributor Gabriel García.

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