This version of ON the Beat was initially emailed to subscribers on September 7, 2023. To obtain Josef Woodard’s music publication in your inbox every Thursday, join at unbiased.com/newsletters.
Particularly within the lengthy shadow of COVID’s riot on the cultural calendar only a few live performance seasons again, there’s a reassuring back-to-business buzz on the town this time of 12 months. After Labor Day (generally known as Non-Labor Day), the yawning stretch of August yields to the promise of reside music motion price planning for. Gears begin meshing, seasonal cultural order returns, and calendars for music-lovers get inked in.
In Santa Barbara, the normal late-summer hiatus of classical music from public homes is a sleeper woke up. Subsequent week, veteran chamber music champion Camerata Pacifica’s 34thseason jumps the gun and/or beginning gun with its season-opening live performance at Hahn Corridor on Friday, September 15 (see season preview story right here). Opera is within the offing, because the intrepid Opera Santa Barbara prepares to launch its lean however powerhouse season with Carmen on the Granada, September 29 and October 1.
October brings it on in its personal dense, standard approach, with openings from CAMA, the Santa Barbara Symphony, UCSB Arts & Lectures (arts division), and extra to commit calendar ink to. Extra on that because the calendar turns.
Tiger Hoisted by Their Personal Story
The following week finds the folk-rock sensation The Lumineers hunkering down on the Santa Barbara Bowl, for not one however two exhibits, on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 12 and 13. The band shortly outlived and outgrew its humble “indie” standing, propelled by the ability of its signature hit “Ho Hey” and a pleasant, anthem-in-a-box sound akin to Mumford & Sons, Of Montreal, and that ilk.
However in a broader sense, the actual famous person act on the week’s Santa Barbara music calendar is Los Tigres del Norte, the band that has been dubbed “the Beatles of Norteño music.” Los Tigres has fortunately made Santa Barbara a reasonably common cease on its busy, bustling tour schedule, enjoying on the Chumash On line casino, Santa Barbara Bowl, and on the Arlington, the place the band lands on Sunday night time, September 10.
As a testomony to the band’s skill to be each embraced as superstars in Mexican music tradition however attain past normal demographic borders, The New Yorker devoted a prolonged characteristic on Los Tigres again in 2010, nonetheless related at the moment (hyperlink).
Although based in Rosamorada, Mocorito, Sinaloa, by chief, singer-accordionist Jorge Hernandez, in 1965, the band launched in earnest as soon as the household moved to San Jose. Cousins and brothers joined the fold, and the saga started, leading to numerous albums (the newest being 2021’s La Reunión) and a hefty Grammy assortment (seven Grammy Awards and 12 Latin Grammy trophies so far). An attention-grabbing factoid: Of the numerous artists in search of permission to observe Johnny Money’s lead and file an album in Folsom Jail, solely Los Tigres was granted entry to that legendary house, leading to 2019’s Los Tigres Dwell at Folsom Jail. The album is definitely the soundtrack to a documentary out there on Netflix.
Lyrically, the band has been identified for, and generally braved controversy, with their narcocorridos — chronicling exploits of outlaw narco-traffickers — however can also be identified for his or her songs steeped in political commentaries and leftist leanings.
However for these of us language-limited followers, with solely a passing understanding of Spanish, what jumps out is the melodic gleam and polka-phonic pumping of accordion, two-beat grooves and saxophonic power of their music, particularly reside. Their message, in purely musical phrases, transcends language and tradition.
To-Doings:
On the SOhO entrance, this week’s pickings vary from a three-act Banda and Norteño night time on Saturday (for these prepping for Los Tigres); the month-to-month assembly of the Santa Barbara Jazz Society on Sunday afternoon, that includes Kim Collins; and the premiere live-Lifeless tribute band Grateful Shred, hunkering down for a two-night stand on Thursday and Friday, September 14 and 15. Jam on, no matter your most popular style taste.
