LOS SUPER SEVEN
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THE Latin music collective Los Super Seven should be a little more accurate with its name. First: By the end of Tuesday’s Bowery Ballroom concert, the band had swelled to a dozen. Second: This pan-American ensemble isn’t super – it’s magnificent.
This is a no-fooling, no-stops, all-star lineup.
Among the greats, count Raul (roll the “R”) Malo of the Mavericks, country tenor Rick Trevino and Los Lobos principals Cesar Rosas and David Hidalgo.
There’s hardly a pretty face in the band, but these artists are doing what Jennifer, Ricky and Shakera have been unable to accomplish with basically standard pop – make Latin music cross into the mainstream.
The show, like the band’s just released album, “Canto,” opened with Malo working his best Elvis inflections on the tango “Siboney.” The slow meter and syncopated rhythm of the percussion and voice composition folded into Malo’s booming baritone, giving the piece a sultry, seductive quality that you didn’t have to be Argentinean to appreciate.
Hidalgo and Rosas certainly are the best-known of the Seven, and their fans were there in mass, but if cheers and whistles were the barometer, it was the nimble-voiced Rick Trevino who cranked up the crowd the most.
Trevino’s two-step “El Que Siempre Su Maiz,” played early in the evening, was smooth and allowed the packed house to get up and dance.
When Ruben Ramos, the dapper silver fox of Tejano music, wasn’t flirting with ladies on and off stage, he sang excellent backup and was terrific during his vocal lead on “Company Gato.”
Under these vocal highlights, the guitars, percussions, piano, bass and flute – the canvas on which the singers painted – often bloomed into full jams that allowed both instrumental and vocal soloists to shine.
The percussions were contributed by everyone in the band at one time or another, and provided the foundation to the evening. Alberto Salas instinctively played the piano like the percussion instrument it is.
Was the evening too ethnic? No.
The players needed no translation. They spoke in a voice any man, woman or child could understand. It was a near-perfect evening of music, and one hopes the band will play New York one more time before the players of this collective break up and head back to their home bands.
