Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse presents Omar Sosa's Transparent Water Trio, featuring Seckou Keita and Gustavo Ovalles
2020 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704-1104 USA
8:00 PM, Wednesday, March 20, 2019

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[8:08 PM lights down, welcome and announcements from Leah Wollenberg]
[8:11 PM additional words from John Santos, silence in memory of Victor McElheny, band out]

1. [8:20 PM] (unidentified tune #1, possibly Dary; vox: OG)
2. [8:32 PM] (unidentified tune #2)
3. [8:43 PM] Fatiliku (SK)
4. [8:58 PM] Tama-Tama (SK)
5. [9:13 PM] Mining-Nah (SK)
   [9:25 PM; add John Santos: shekere]
6. [9:25 PM] (unidentified tune #3; vox: JS, then JS+OG, then SK)
   [9:35 PM; drop John Santos]
7. [9:36 PM] (unidentified tune #4; vox: SK, then OG)
   [9:48 PM; set ends, bows, then all off]
   
   Encore
8. [9:50 PM] (unidentified tune #5; vox: SK)
   [10:03 PM; show ends: the guys dance offstage as the audience claps and sings]

• Seckou Keita: kora, percussion, vox;
• Gustavo Ovalles: percussion, vox;
• Omar Sosa: piano, keyboards, percussion, vox;
  - with special guest -
• John Santos: shekere, vox.

None of the tunes were back-announced tonight, so it was particularly hard fitting titles today. Unless someone can confirm things with a setlist, I'd say to take my labels above as “best guesses” more than anything, and it's entirely possible that one or more of the entries above were actually sequences of multiple tunes, given that all of the album tracks come in at three to five minutes long.

The shekere that John Santos played seemed very large … big enough that two-handed technique was mandatory! At first, John was the only singer, but Gustavo soon joined him, and about seven minutes in, Seckou took over, perhaps signalling the transition to another song. Soon after Seckou began singing, he stood up from his seat at the kora and switched to playing a small talking drum. Right after that, Omar stood up from the piano, and began playing the empty music stand to his right with a pair of nylon brushes. Crazy! The tune then wound up with a big all-percussion flourish, after which John departed.

At the conclusion of the set-closer, Omar came out front and performed an enthusiastic dance, much to the delight of the audience. Since it was kind of late, I expected that would be the end of the show, but happily, the house lights remained low, and after a minute or two of hollering and stamping, the crowd response pulled the trio back onstage for one more tune.

For this one, Seckou engaged us with a bit of call-and-response, getting the audience to clap and sing. Once we had our part down, the performers then used that as a basis for various solo embellishments. Everyone took a turn or two, then the three came back out front, bowed, and danced/marched slowly offstage, just after 10 PM. Hoy! Hoy! What a great night!

Big thanks to Ting for the photo gallery!

Whoa! This section is incomplete for now, sorry!

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2019 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2019 event list! ☸ On to the next event!