Novalima’s Peruvian fusion lights up Proctors GE

PHOTOGRAPHER: Marc Schultz

Members of the Peruvian dance band Novalima perform ancient South American contemporary music at the G.E. Theater at Proctors, during the first performance of the Music Haven Concert Series on Sunday evening June 28, 2015.

Share on Facebook

Save

Novalima singer Milagros Guerrero saw a fan stand to dance, high up in the seats at Proctors GE Theater on Sunday as the band slammed a groove deep as the Grand Canyon in “Mi Canto” behind her.

“C’mon, Baby!” Guerrero called up to her, and the fan soon danced beside her in a seething mass of sweaty fun.

Making the very best of a rain-site move from Central Park, Music Haven impresario Mona Golub dubbed the venue Club Music Haven. Right on: It was thrilling, throbbing, irresistible. Novalima’s hybrid Afro-Peruvian-electronica totally filled the space, surpassing sensory overload to achieve the unanimous release Third World sounds seem best able to inspire.

The show built in layers from samples that Grimaldo del Solar retrieved from a Mac as at-first disjointed shards of percussion (Juan Medrano Cotito and Constantio Alvarez), synthesizer (Ramon Perez-Preito), guitar (Rafael Morales) and bass (Alfonso Montesinos) coalesced into a beat that seemed to come from everywhere. Lyrics may have mattered most to the many Latinas and Latinos in the throng that surrounded Novalima, and Morales carefully explained in English the mission statement behind “Como Yo” — a tribute to the late band member Manque Vasquez, urging “Enjoy life, like me!” But the beat got to everybody.

A burly, bearded longhair in an “Old Guys Rule MC” shirt made the same moves in the mob to the right of the stage as pre-teen Latina girls on the left. In the centrifugal “Santero,” teenagers dancing beside the stage laughed to spot their mom dancing in the seats they’d just gleefully left. Across that booming space, they danced together.

When Montesinos — whose bass was the loudest thing onstage — leaped from his stage right position into the middle of the band, it was like plunging a spoon into a boiling soup-pot and stirring hard: Everything spun faster.

After they played what they said would be their last song, Guerrero — by then up in the crowd and, like most everybody there, wearing strangers’ sweat and her own — asked about an encore. “Yes? No?” she inquired. Hell, yes! And the beat went on.

Flamenco guitarist Maria Zemantauski opened with her GX3+, a folkloric quartet as politely acoustic as Novalima was electronically loud. For a group comprising notable soloists — master-of-all-strings Sten Isachsen, charango fret-ster Ray Andrews, percussion elf Brian Melick and the percussive guitarist Zemantauski herself — this new band has welded a remarkable balanced unity.

When they closed their precise, driving set with an Andean folksong that Melick, Isachsen and Zemantauski all but set on fire, the crowd jumped up as one, good practice for the exertions Novalima would soon ignite.

Check out Marc Schutz’s photo gallery. I’m in the pink cowboy-print shirt and the Albuquerque Isotopes baseball cap.

The Music Haven series continues: July 12: Red Baraat, and the Hot Tamale Brass Band; July 19: Steeleye Span, and Ulster Landing; July 26: Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, and Baye Kouyate & les Tougarakes; Aug. 2: the Joey Alexander Trio, and the SCCC Jazz Combo; and Aug. 9: Felicia Collins & the Life, and Bobbie Van Detta & the Split.

Reach Michael Hochanadel at [email protected]