DP Update on Tonight's Plena Events

With a slight revision, ALL of Duke Performances events are ON for this evening, Thursday (2/11).

Miguel Zénon's Esta Plena Septet is driving down from NYC today via automobile, due to the heavy snow. While they will not arrive for the 6 pm talk, they WILL PERFORM as scheduled at 8 pm in Reynolds Auditorium, in Duke's Bryan Center.

The pre-concert talk WILL ALSO TAKE PLACE with Ned Sublette, as scheduled at 6 pm, in the Bryan Center Meeting Room A.

Full press release from Duke Performances Marketing Director Ken Rumble:

Wanted to let you know about a pre-performance talk that Duke Performances is hosting with author and ethno-musicologist Ned Sublette on the history of plena music in Puerto Rico tonight at 6 pm in Meeting Room A on the top level of the Bryan Center on Duke's West Campus.

Due to severe winter weather in New York City, Miguel Zenon and Hector "Tito" Matos will be unable to join Mr. Sublette for the conversation -- however, tonight's concert will proceed as scheduled.

Ned Sublette is a musician, writer, and producer. He is the author of Cuba and Its' Music and The World That Made New Orleans.

I had the pleasure of seeing Ned Sublette at the Regulator in Durham last night. He performed from his not-yet-recorded album and read from his newly published memoir about New Orleans.


Vaquero Rumbero: Ned Sublette

For a foretaste of what Ned might cover tonight, about the history of plena, see the 2/10 issue of The Independent on newstands. I quoted him in my lead culture feature:

"Street Spirit: Jazz finally taps plena, one of Puerto Rico's overlooked rhythms"

abre kuta güiri mambo...plena...jazz

Ned Sublette will make a stop on his multimedia publicity tour in Durham next week. Wednesday (2/10) at 7 pm at the Regulator, he will read from his new book, The Year Before the Flood: A New Orleans Story and perform songs from his new album, Kiss Me Down South. Ned is also the founder of the Institute for Postmambo Studies. (And yes, he will be selling T-shirts.)

Ned Sublette may be my favorite living author and public intellectual. His knowledge of Afro-Atlantic culture is so deep and so connected, and the way he expresses it so fluid and untroubled. Rare. His books on the musics of Cuba and New Orleans, and the historical contexts that shaped them, are both rich, great reads.


The confluence of his visit next week with Miguel Zenón's Esta Plena Septet will result in another meeting of the minds. Ned will give a FREE pre-concert talk, with Miguel and his collaborator Hector "Tito" Matos, on Thursday (2/11) at 6 pm.

It will be old home week for Ned, who produced Tito's 1998 album on Qbadisc with Viento De Agua. That band's latest, a fusion self-release called Fruta Madura, demonstrates how gloriously open and expansive the plena matrix can be.

Tito Matos is a leading practioner of plena, and MacArthur "genius" grant fellow Miguel Zenón built his latest album around him. The double Grammy-nominated Esta Plena is a milestone encounter between plena, a native rhythm of Puerto Rican folklore, and jazz. Zenón's saxophone drips lyricism, and he's joined by a well-attuned quartet that includes Venezuelan pianist Luis Perdomo, Austrian bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Henry Cole, who subtly matches the patterns of pandereta and güiro. Tito brings vocals and hand-drumming on board the septet, with the aid of Obanilú Allende and Los Pleneros de la 21 founder Juan Gutierrez.

Lucky us.


Read: Principles of Postmamboism
Book Review: The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans
Duke Performances: Miguel Zenón Concert Info