Usually you have to close your eyes and put your imagination into hyperdrive to kid yourself you're in a Havana nightclub when really you're in the sober Royal Festival Hall. But this show, part of the La Linea Latin music festival, went as close as it gets without hallucinating.
Since the rhythm section for bassist Orlando "Cachaito" Lopez's band is the same exhilarating outfit that powers the Buena Vista Social Club, perhaps that isn't surprising. Audiences for these musicians turn up dressed for action, feet itching to pile down to the front as soon as the ushers look the other way. That was the finale for this spectacular concert - about half the packed house clamouring to get close to one of the unexpected musical success stories of the past decade, while the dapper, gleaming Ibrahim Ferrer danced back and forth at the stage edge, grasping outstretched hands.
But this long, varied show wasn't a Buena Vista evening: it was bassist Cachaito's night. Many pieces kicked in with his distinctively un-basslike sound - raised in a percussion culture, Cachaito beats the soundbox as much as he plucks the strings, and phrases in short, unsustained sounds, like a conga player. The programme merged the usual Cuban-dance shuffles with a scratchy DJ, flat-out jazz-sax blasts, dub reggae, and a visit from Rokia Traore's exuberant flautist Magic Malik.
Pee Wee Ellis was scheduled to take care of the tenor-sax sermons, but the second saxophonist, Jimmy Jenks, took his place with a series of free-rolling postbop variations that helped replace the relaxed urbanity of the Buena Vistas with a more rugged directness.
Traditional, loping Cuban pieces shifted into Charles Mingus themes (Cachaito is a Mingus admirer of old), allowing Jenks to hurtle into straight-ahead jazz orbit. The rhythm section of Miguel "Anga" Diaz on congas, Carlos Gonzalez on bongos and the delightfully indolent-looking Amadito Valdes on timbales confirmed that this was a project that started with a rhythm section and worked outwards. Diaz was on devastating form, both solo and in eloquent conversation with everyone who crossed his path, including the choppy Hammond organ sounds of Jamaican Bigga Morrison.
Manuel Galban's strange, skewed 1950s guitar sounds mingled with gracefully intricate, gliding violin arrangements from a string section in evening dress. Trombones curled luxurious lines around each other and, in a sublime moment, combined on a high sustained sound through which the glowing voice of a then-unseen Ibrahim Ferrer suddenly shone, a spectacularly stage-crafted entrance.
The closing episodes involving the turntable soloist DJ Nasty added a streetlife clamour that jacked up the percussion fervour still more, and brought the crowd to its feet. The willowy Magic Malik, delivering an extraordinary flute solo of delicate flutterings, fierce yelping sounds, stuttery speech and runs of sustained grace, could have been the unintended star of the show in other circumstances. But the show itself was the star.
