ON the Beat | Savory Sounds from Colombia, Gonzo Pop Dude

Last Week’s Musical Highlights Included Colombian Woman-Powered Band Las Guaracheras and the Madcap Pop Gem-polisher Benji Hughes

Las Guacheras performs as part of ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara! | Photo: Isaac Hernandez

Viva, Again

Something good is always cooking in the kitchen run by the unique and community treasure known as “¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!” On several weekends each season, the UCSB Arts & Lectures–hosted (with others) tradition brings musical and dance groups of Mexican and Latin American focus to the county for a residency, with school workshops and three free concerts in Isla Vista, Guadalupe, and a grand finale in the Luke Theatre on Sunday evening. The series celebrates its 20th anniversary next year.

We got a solid, robustly rhythmic dose of salsa and Latin-jazz — a rarity among genres in the series so far — at the Marjorie Luke Theatre on Sunday night, courtesy of Las Guaracheras, the 2017-launched, women-powered band from Cali, Colombia. The clave-driven, interlocking and gear-shifting rhythm forces of the sextet’s taut sound also features strong group vocals around the soulful voice of lead vocalist Diana Sánchez. A unique part of the sound is the presence, and key soloing voice, of vibraphonist Kate Ortega, an element reminiscent of the late Latin-jazz pioneer vibist Cal Tjader.

By show’s end on Sunday, the dance factor had crowded the open area by the stage, and the set closed with the Tjader classic “Soul Sauce,” a reworking of the Dizzy Gillespie/Chano Pozo tune “Guachi Guaro.” It was another triumphant finale in the “¡Viva” kitchen. The current season closes with Ballet Nepantla, May 16-18.

The Hughes Abides Up Solvang Way

Benji Hughes with fan Jackson Browne at Lost Chord | Photo: Josef Woodard

Benji Hughes, the North Carolinan artist whose music juggles quirky and ever-catchy qualities, has two major fans/friends in the 805. Both go by the initials JB — as in Jeff Bridges and Jackson Browne — and both were in the house and occasionally on stage at Lost Chord in Solvang last week, where Hughes made a rare local visit.

For those of us late-to-the party-types who are only now discovering the weird brilliance of this larger- and stranger-than-life musician, we got a valuable primer before the music commenced. Bridges gamely served as a semi-straight man interviewer of Hughes and his nimble keyboardist support man, and show-opener, Jon Lindsay. We quickly learned that the mega-bearded and gleefully off-topic and free-associating Hughes could be a ripe character in the Coen Brothers’ classic The Big Lebowski (featuring Bridges as the stoner/leisure fashioned character known as The Dude.)

Kitschy tropical adornments were part of Hughes’s act, including inflatable pool rings and beach balls occasionally kicked around stage and Hughes in his three (count ‘em) Hawaiian shirts. Each moment of peeling off a shirt layer became a comic and quasi-sexy act for the performer, whose stage presence involved performance art–like twists on showbiz stage banter and tropes. At one point, someone in the sold-out house belted out the affirmative “Bring it, Benji!” Benji, in turn, suddenly copped a sober face and responded “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Gonzo comic elements aside, when Hughes did plunge into his rich songbook, including songs from his critically acclaimed 2008 album A Love Extreme and such goofy charmers as “I Went with Some Friends to See the Flaming Lips,” we felt the magic of his surreal yet sweetly sentimental songcraft, confirming what Browne told Bridges when turning “The Dude” onto Hughes: Echoes of the Beatles and the Beach Boys are part of the Hughes package.

Late in the evening, Hughes’s freewheeling spirit seemed to dip into a bit of humility when Browne came on stage for a cameo on guitar, on the theme of Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.” The starstruck Hughes goaded Browne into some medley-fying behavior, with some other Zevon tunes and finally a request for Browne’s hit “Somebody’s Baby.” Browne quickly became frustrated at the keyboard, as he’s accustomed to his own retuned keyboard, allowing him to alter the range to his lower key these days. He bravely soldiered on as Hughes plopped down in the front row, next to Bridges. But Browne suddenly angrily snapped at someone for phone-filming and insisted that it not go on the socials.

Despite the tense moment in the room, Hughes saved the day with another of his offbeat song treats to close. At Lost Chord on this special night, the Hughes abided. He now has a lot more friends in the 805.

Tending the Contemporary Music Flame

For more than three decades, the UCSB group known as ECM (a k a Ensemble for Contemporary Music, not to be confused with the famous German record label) has been consistently one of the only games in town for contemporary and new music. Launched by famed composer/percussionist and Corwin chair William Kraft, the group was long bravely helmed by Jeremy Haladyna, who passed the torch to Sarah Gibson a few years back. Her sadly early passing in July of 2024, at age 38, segued into current director Jonathan Moerschel’s era, which continued its still fledgling run recently at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. The results were juicy, gently provocative, and often Minimalism-coated.

Each director has put their own stamp of taste and proclivities on the programming, and one feature of Moerschel’s period has been a fascination with the late guerilla minimalist Julius Eastman, here represented by the ululant chordal swarming effects of “Joy Boy” and “Buddha.” More standard brand, and dull, minimalism snuck into the building with a pair of Philip Glass’s glassy-glossy “Etudes for Piano” (nicely played by Terry Wong). A certain proto-minimalist creed could also be ascribed to Frederic Rzewski’s hypnotic, protracted, Indonesian-flavored “La Moutons de Panurge,” a long, warm and bubbly bath of a piece.

Also on the menu were student composer Leah Graalfs’ bittersweet and Barber-esque “Ready, No Longer Strangely,” and the gamely conceptual “American Ledger No.1” by Raven Chacon, featuring a graphic score visible to the audience and indeterminacy à la mode for the players. My favorite of the night: Missy Mazzoli’s “Beyond the Order of Things,” a rugged deconstruction of a Renaissance score, boldly performed by cellist Blythe Davis. Beyond matters of personal stylistic persuasions and biases, the new/modern music muse is alive and well out by the lagoon.

Head’s up: The next ECM concert at Lotte Lehmann is on Wednesday, May 28.

To-Doings:

On Saturday, March 22, at the Lobero Theatre, Michael Feinstein, star of Broadway stage and other stages and studios, brings his signature vocal sound in the service of another vocal sound in the show Because of You: My Tribute to Tony Bennett. Although Sinatra tributes have become a cottage industry for many a singer, Bennett has yet to receive his tributes due. Chalk one up for Feinstein.Speaking of singers worth seeking out this weekend, the powerful-lunged and smart-headed Storm Large makes her way to The Granada Theatre on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, in the role of Anna in Kurt Weill’s classic The Seven Deadly Sins. Large has made a specialty of the piece, around the country and world, and has been praised for her wiles and chops in the role. The 1933 Brecht/Weill work is centerpiece of a daring Santa Barbara Symphony program, which also includes music of Black American composers of note, the late William Grant Still and the very much alive and rising young composer Jesse Montgomery (See story here).

SOhO sports some musically rich goods by artists passing through town this week, including the gifted acoustic guitarist Kyran Daniel on Sunday evening (presented by Santa Barbara Acoustic) and easy-on-the-ears jazz, Brooklyn-based pianist Daniel Meron and his trio on Wednesday (listen up here).