I went to Tapas with a friend tonight. Tapas is a bar/lounge in downtown Rochester that features salsa music. Tonight, the band Tumbao was playing. Man, did that take me back.
If you’ve only known me since I moved to Rochester, you may find it hard to believe that I used to play salsa and latin jazz for a living. That’s right. The pasty, overweight, reasonably lame guy that y’all have come to know and/or love was, at one time, a pasty, much thinner, slightly hipper cat who played saxophone and percussion in the dance clubs of the Southwest. As a matter of fact, Jen and I met in a latin dance place. Wacky, huh?
Being down in the basement lounge at Tapas with the music blaring and the dance floor filled was like stepping into La Machine De Wayback. If you’ve never had a roomfull of people grooving to your music, you’ve really missed out. And there’s nothing like that moment when the band is completely locked in clave and the whole joint is heaving back and forth in one fluid motion.
I gave up playing when I moved here, and I thought I had come to terms with that. But tonight made me remember what I really loved about the music, and it made me miss it. Maybe I’ll give Tony Padilla a call and see if they can use a just-past-his-prime sax player.
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