Europe Salsa Bands: The La 33

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La-33, a band full of Urban flavor!!! Its name comes out from the name of the street where the house they use as a meeting place is located. Many musicians go there to rehears, experiment or just hung out. You can feel that urban flavor in their conversations, improvisations and compositions. Different ways of thinking, dressing up, and making music bring out a whole new movement where we can find compositions, musical and even graphical and audiovisual productions with a mayor impact in the Colombian capital city culture.Since the beginning of the new millennium the brothers Sergio and Santiago Mejía along with a group of their friends, most of them with previous experience in Jazz, Rock, Reggae and Ska, began to study the hot rhythms that come out of the Caribbean many of them used in what we enjoy and know as Salsa. After mixing all this elements during a three years period they recorded their first album titled “La-33”, with nine compositions of their own authority and a clever arrangement of the well known piece by Henry Mancini, “The Pink Panther”.The CD put out on the market under an independent label economically supported by the band members has sold almost twenty thousand copies and has traveled the whole world. During the year 2005 it was elected as the “CD of the year” by many Europeans cyber-distributors and it was played in almost every salsa Dj show all around the globe. “La Pantera Mambo” was number one in many popularity lists followed by “La-33”, “Que rico Boogaloo”, “Soledad” and “Suelta el Bongo” which also reached top-ten places ranking higher than artists like Marc Anthony, Los Van Van, etc.

As a result of this boom many of their compositions were included in several European compilations such a Tropicana, Spanish Garden, Baila from Putumayo Rec., etc.During the past three years “La-33” has filled more than five hundred stages all around Latin America, Europe and off course Colombia with their unique and charming live show. They’ve taken their live act to clubs and festivals in Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Holland, England, and Spain. People has enjoyed their music on international known festivals such us Polé-Polé, Antillianse Festen, Afrika Oyé, Latinoamericando, Estival Jazz, Festival Mundial Tilburg, Latin Vilage Festival, etc. La-33 itself has occupied stages heated up by artists such us Chucho Valdes, Los Van Van, Isaac Delgado, Willie Colon, NG la Banda, Kinky, Eddie Palmieri, Chick Korea, Miles Davis, The Wailers, Cheo Feliciano, Herbie Hanckock among others.

Recently La-33 put out their new Album titled “Gozalo” it has been recognized by the public and the critics as a worthy follow up to their first album. For all this and a lot more, “there is fire in La-33!!!”La 33 is a collective where visual and graphic elements are integrated in order to show to the public a clear idea of what the group and its musicians are as well as their backgrounds to get a final effect: There’s fire in La 33.La 33: Sergio Mejía (Bass – Direction), Santiago Mejía (Piano), Guillermo Celiz (Lyrics), David Cantillo (Lyrics), Pablo Martinez (Lyrics). Cipriano Rojas (Congas), Juan David Fernandez (Timbal), Diego Sanchez (Bongoes), Vladimir Romero (Trombon), Jose Miguel Vega (Trombon), Felipe Cardenas (Saxo), Roland Nieto (Trumpeth), Javier Galavis (Sound Engenier), Ray Fuken (Stage Manager), Gaspar Guerra and Leonardo Diaz (Graphic Designers), Ciudad Mestiza Films (Video Maker) and Sebastián Bravo (Web Design).

La 33: A Capital Discharge. The Bogotá’s legendary neighbourhood built in an English style is no more as peaceful as it used to be. By the nostalgic tiled roofs (that still keep the few standing houses kept away from the new architectural lines of business and universities) the Pink Tomato rocker and drunken cat, the one famous novel’s character written at the middle of the 90’s, doesn’t walk anymore reserved and musical, as the literary cat, one feline of party blood dances on the roofs improvising life in a licentiousness rhythm. The singular cat that isn’t even one, doesn’t still make memories of rock. Is the salsa, is a homeless panther that surprises night walkers with the contagious proclaims of its nice mambo.Trained to dance by Sergio and Santiago Mejia, this panther has been immortalized by been recorded for the benefit of many of the initiated, “music lovers” and “salseros” of the old wave. She shows an untamed and street walker spirit. Far from the comfortable pink eroticism of the contemporary salsa stimulated by the noble and unselfish purpose of good music creation, the young integrants of “La 33” entered to the studios of Audiovisión in September 2004 and in record time produced a sound register that a year later has sold more than 4 thousand copies thanks to the explosive sound that simmers in the inside. Although their integrants can’t be labelled as proposing nothing new in a gender cooked many years ago in the New York streets. The proposal of “La 33” updates the salsa tradition in a way that returns it to the deeper roots of “malevaje”, street, social disappointment and the spontaneity of a lovely roguish. Added to this lyric ingredients, they took again a musical style far from the symphonic deformations and the spoiled atmosphere of synthesizers, that made that La 33 discharge should be hear as fresh and without pretensions, that to communicate the multiples textures, tastes and colours of a city that as Bogotá is shown in the record from its agile and quick cover’s design done by Gaspar Guerra. Farther of the rhythms that frame this recording (montunos´ rate, boogaloo, guajira and Latin jazz) the sound of La 33 is sincere because it invites us to the…in the dancing, there are lines that remember us that music creation is more than a single celebration of the simple fact of being alive and sightseeing the world with naked and happy eyes. The good will of “La 33” is based on the newness awaked by the fact that its tropical explosion broke up from the Bogotá’s cold streets in a neat equilibrium between the song and the music where we can find a true capital discharge that lets us hear, thru ten vigorous themes without fillings. In other words, nothing much, nothing less … If you are smart enough and have an ear tired of moaned it is possible that your body would be bewitched by a superb salsa orchestra that from Colombia, from its capital has arrived to put you on the mood.

Luis Daniel Vega

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