LATIN MUSIC

911 Mambo Orchestra heats up and carries on

By Howard Reich
Tribune arts critic
Published January 29, 2005

Ten years ago, a somewhat rough but ebullient big band roared onto the stage of a North Side club and startled audiences with its energy and fire.

After a performance that incendiary, one hardly could imagine where Chicago bandleader Angel Melendez might take his 911 Mambo Orchestra.

The answer emerged on Thursday night at the VooDoo Nightclub in Schaumburg, where  Melendez's organization not only sounded more sumptuous than ever but also basked in the glow of a Grammy nomination for its self-titled debut recording.

	"Vocalist Linda Marie Perez and bandleader-trombonist Angel Melendez of the 911 Mambo Orchestra. (Photo for the Tribune by Margo Cohen)"

"It's our first CD -- and we hit a home run," Melendez shouted to the overflow crowd, which returned his enthusiasm, and then some.

Whether or not the 911 Mambo Orchestra takes the prize for best traditional tropical Latin album at the Grammys on Feb. 13, the ensemble clearly ranks among the country's most persuasive performers of bolero, rumba, merengue and other Afro-Caribbean musical forms.

And though the band inarguably has polished the rough edges of the early days, the rhythmic verve and expressive ferocity of old remain intact. Indeed, judging by Thursday night's show, the 911 band has achieved an elusive balance between a robust performance style and a high degree of ensemble precision.

Whenever a big band can produce great blasts of sound without sacrificing technical detail, audiences are in for a thrilling ride, which is precisely what unfolded late on Thursday night.

With nearly two-dozen musicians crowding the stage, the 911 Mambo Orchestra unleashed more sound and fury than one set of ears possibly could absorb. Screaming horns, rumbling reeds, soaring voices, pulsing rhythms -- the sheer avalanche of pitch and rhythm must have rung out halfway across northwest suburbia.

But there was much more than just volume at play here (though the sound technicians might have done everyone a favor by cranking down the amplification a bit). With trumpets riffing against trombones, saxophones answering vocalists and layers of percussion telegraphing multiple meters, listeners heard Latin jazz and Cuban song and Puerto Rican dance dispatched in nearly ideal form.

Here was a bandleader who respected tradition but didn't succumb to it, applying contemporary high spirits to age-old musical genres.

Consider the outrageously fast tempo and the profusion of rhythmic ideas that Melendez's band offered in "El Cumbanchero," a rumba that evoked the spontaneous improvisations that often erupt on the streets of Havana. With congas, bongos, maracas, timbales and what-not offering varying interpretations of the beat, listeners heard a music that pressed inexorably forward from one syncopation to the next. All the while, the trumpets offered brilliant "wha-wha" riffs in sleek synchronicity, the trombones snarled piercing counterthemes, and the vocalists articulated lyrics more quickly than one previously believed possible.

On a more muted note, Melendez and friends offered the classic "Besame Mucho," delivered this time in homage to the composer Consuelo Velazquez, who died earlier this month at age 88.

Though every Latin band in the world plays this tune, the 911 ensemble dispatched it at a gloriously slow tempo -- rendering it as the Mexican bolero that Velazquez intended.

Beyond Dave Wolpe's luxuriant arrangement, the primary joy here was in hearing the vocals of the great Mike Maldonado, who brought a palpable sense of longing to its lyric phrases. Elsewhere in the evening, Maldonado shared vocal duties with Linda Marie Perez and bandleader-trombonist Melendez, their three-part harmony worth savoring.

And then there was the band's merengue version of "Hava Nagila," a Jewish folk song that does not typically appear on the same bill as "Besame Mucho." "Hava Nagila" never sounded so hip.