- Tom Faber visits one of London's most sonically adventurous parties.
- Manana Cuba is all about the alchemy of collaboration. The London promoter and label started out as an ambitious festival that brought electronic artists to Cuba to collaborate with local musicians. More recently, they've been throwing together artists from diverse backgrounds for improvised jams at their weekly Parasang parties. Like all experiments, not every attempt is successful, but at their best, Manana events twist diverse genres and cultures into vital new forms.
The crew's biggest success to date is Ariwo, an Iranian-Cuban trio that synthesises Afro-Cuban instrumentation with moody electronica. To celebrate the launch of the band's second album, Manana booked out Oval Space in London. This was a bold plan, since few names on the lineup were likely to draw the kind of crowd needed to fill a 1000-capacity space. In the end, this came at a cost to the opening acts.
Burnt Friedman and the Iranian drummer Mohammad Reza Mortazavi released a superbly subtle collaborative record in 2017, but the hypnotic intricacy of their live performance got lost under the club's high ceilings. They cut austere figures onstage, appearing almost academic. When I could wholly focus on Mortazavi's dexterous rhythms, which pattered like raindrops atop Friedman's delicate synths, I was transported, and wished for a more intimate setting. The Manchester DJ duo Space Afrika fared better, playing an intriguing blend of dubby techno and splintered UK rhythms, mixed patiently with frequent lapses into gloomy ambience.
It took a live band to coax the party to life, though I doubt the venue was ever more than half full. Ariwo brought enormous warmth and energy to the stage, with the electronic composer Pouya Ehsaei laying down swampy downtempo beats while his dark cloud of hair swung over his kit. The Cuban drummers Hammadi Valdes and Oreste Noda played complex rhythms over the top, achieving an accomplished marriage of electronic and live instruments, with neither overwhelming the other. The trumpeter Jay Phelps loosed peals of haunting melody that soared over the cheering crowd, though neither he nor the guest saxophonist, Camilla George, could equal the enormous charisma of the trumpeter Yelfris Valdés, who left the band last year to go solo.
As Ariwo's performance stretched into a grand, psychedelic crescendo, the conga player Noda threw back his head, eyes closed, and grinned broadly, as if he was in an ecstatic trance. This only made the crowd dance harder, and for the first time the room felt full. It's transcendental moments like these that make all Manana's experimenting worth it.