Asere is a 7-piece Cuban Son band, and they played live at The Ironworks in Oswestry, on the 12th July.
This was a one-off salsa gig at this venue, and was the last date of their UK Tour before returning home to Cuba that weekend.
The venue itself is a trendy, town centre bar in the renovated old ironworks, and there is live music of all types there every week. This particular night it was the turn of a Latin band, and was the first night of this kind at the venue. Tickets pretty much sold out so there was a great turnout, which unfortunately had a downside too, as it was packed on the dancefloor, with barely any room to move elsewhere either. But it was a great send-off for the Asere boys.
The room was also very hot with no air-con, and as none of the windows open properly, there wasn’t much in the way of ventilation. We did have the fire escape door open, but it didn’t really do much towards cooling the room down.
As Asere are a Cuban Son band, they aren’t strictly what you’d call a straight-up salsa band. Nonetheless, they are a great band, and are great to see live, as the lead singer has a fantastic voice, that lends itself especially well to the slower Son tracks. They played a mix of styles which included Son, Salsa and Cha Cha Cha.
A couple of the songs were very slow and laid back, and weren’t really for dancing to, but beautiful to listen to all the same. As a complete contrast, the rest of their material was fast and upbeat, and on these tracks the dancefloor was heaving to its capacity.
Asere have toured the UK for the past couple of years, so many of us had seen them before, and many of us also already have their CDs, which makes seeing them live all the more enjoyable. They played two sets, each as good as the other. In between sets the band sold CDs and DVDs, signed any that people bought, and chatted and had their photo taken with the crowd.
A great night was had by all, especially those that were new to live Latin music – they all left with huge smiles on their faces, as did the rest of us.
It’s not often that we get live Latin bands in Oswestry, in fact I think the last time was probably about six years ago!!! We Oswestrians really love to party to live music, so we all made the very most of this rare opportunity – we even managed to tempt lots of salseros from further afield to come and join us, which was great.
I for one will be sure to catch them again somewhere when they come back next year. If you missed them this time around, don’t miss out next year.
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