“The Annex Sessions” Wednesday, June 5, 2024, 6-8:30pm will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex)

Kayombe y sus Yumberos

Kai Lyons

Ernesto Mazar

Javier Navarrette

Christelle Durandy

Einar Leliebre Nunez

Tobias G

Dear Friends,

We’re thrilled to share that the group Kayombe y sus Yumberos led by the talented Bay Area musician, Kai Lyons, has been invited to perform at the 2024 National Changui Festival in Guantanamo, Cuba, from June 23rd to 30th.

Kai Lyons formed the changui project in the San Francisco Bay Area after winning first prize at the 2022 National Changui Festival. His team has been praised by John Santos as “the best changui group in the Bay Area” and has received positive reviews and patronage from percussionist Michael Spiro. Kayombe y sus Yumberos began through a monthly residency at many local venues in the Bay Area. The group eventually found itself playing intimate concerts at SF Mellow Sessions and the Verdi Club and giving performance-workshops at the California Jazz Conservatory and Stanford University. The band features: Ernesto Mazar of the world-famous timba band Charanga Habanera; Javier Navarrette, highly-regarded for his percussion work with legendary singers Bobi Cespedes and Linda Tillery; and Einar Leliebre Nunez, internationally touring percussionist, vocalist and musical director of Danza Caribe and Folkorico Oriente of Santiago, Cuba. They will be joined by special guest Tobias G, one of Sandy Perez’s most advanced bata students.

Changui is a music that developed in Eastern Cuba, in the province of Guantanamo (about 80 km north of Cuba’s former capital, Santiago) around the 1890’s as a recreational acoustic percussion-based music of Congo (West-African) origin. It is more syncopated than the Cuban son style (i.e. Buena Vista Social Club) and is considered “the father of Cuban music”. It utilizes a scraper (guayo), shaker (maraca), marimbula (bass kalimba), bongo de monte (a special kind of drum that is tuned with fire and water), and a Cuban-style guitar called a tres, to create social gatherings that lasted for several days at a time.

To make this experience even more memorable, we’ve invited filmmaker, visual artist, and local musician Fabio Reis to document the trip and interview extraordinary changui musicians.

After completing the trip, we will edit the film and produce a special event with live changui and a screening of the documentary.

To help make this project a reality, we’re reaching out to our community for support. Your donations will help cover travel expenses, equipment rental, and pre and post-production costs, ensuring we can capture the magic of this incredible music journey.

Please consider attending our fundraiser and sharing our project with your friends and family who appreciate the beauty of music and culture. Due to relations between Cuba and The United States, and economic hardship within Cuba, we are turning to our Bay Area community for financial assistance. With your help, we can bring this unique experience to life and share the music of Guantanamo with the world.

Thank you for your support and generosity. We look forward to sharing this unforgettable journey with you!

Javier Navarrette

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The Natural Grocery Company is proud to present this series in partnership with SunJams and Javier Navarrette Music.

SunJams is committed to funding children’s music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program.

All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 – any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to SunJams 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt.

Javier Navarrette Music continues to bring live music to several venues around the Bay Area. Javier has been a professional musician and music educator in the Oakland Unified School District for the past 20 years. Over the past few years Navarrette has produced outdoors events that have proven instrumental in enabling musicians to deal with some of the fallout of the pandemic and shutdown that followed.

COVID RELATED SAFETY MEASURES

Please be safe. Feel free to wear a mask if you prefer.

TICKETS

Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex counter and pay at the registers.

“The Annex Sessions” Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 6-8:30pm will continue our music series held at El Cerrito Natural Grocery Company Prepared Food Annex (The Annex)

The Dans of Steel

Waddell Bell – bass, vocals

Ronnie Smith – drums, vocals

Raliegh Neal – keyboards, vocals

Bill Hampton – Guitar

Make tonight a wonderful thing with The Dans of Steel…

Bay Area based band The Dans of Steel celebrates the music of Steely Dan, the prolific American rock band founded in 1972 by masterminds Donald Fagen and Walter Becker.

Started in 2017, it’s a deserving tribute from five deeply soulful musicians who came together in admiration of the detailed craftings and artistic splendor of Steely Dan.

The Dans of Steel — Waddell Bell, Ronnie Smith, Bill Hampton and Raliegh Neal — explore, “funkafy” and lovingly recreate songs from throughout the Steely Dan canon that brings together jazz, rock, and r&b sensibilities.

As seasoned musicians, they look to the actual session players that enrich each album Steely Dan has produced.

The Dans, all of them fathers (and at times Men of Steel in their everyday lives), enjoy heated conversations and long listening sessions together. Having a reverence for Steely Dan’s body of work, they often go deep into the large list of supporting musicians who lend their talents to creating the music’s aesthetic, including the individual guitarists, bassist, drummers, pianists and vocalists.

The band aims to go beyond just Donald Fagen and Walter Becker by reaching in the bag of the often-unsung session musicians, whose skills created the groves, riffs, vibes and arrangements that still thrill us today.  Members of bands like The Crusaders, The Doobie Brothers, Toto, Weather Report and so many others.

The music and compositions of the support musicians can be related back to the Steely Dan discography and in turn we begin to see how truly prolific this music was and still is.

~

The Natural Grocery Company is proud to present this series in partnership with SunJams and Javier Navarrette Music.

SunJams is committed to funding children’s music education in underserved public elementary schools. Your donation will help support this ongoing program.

All of the proceeds will go directly to our network of local musicians, each of whom have been severely impacted by the lack of events during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whether you donate $10, $100, or $1000 – any amount helps and will allow us to keep bringing music to our community! As always, your donation to SunJams 501(c)3 may qualify as tax exempt.

Javier Navarrette Music continues to bring live music to several venues around the Bay Area. Javier has been a professional musician and music educator in the Oakland Unified School District for the past 20 years. Over the past few years Navarrette has produced outdoors events that have proven instrumental in enabling musicians to deal with some of the fallout of the pandemic and shutdown that followed.

COVID RELATED SAFETY MEASURES

Please be safe. Feel free to wear a mask if you prefer.

TICKETS

Tickets are NOT required for this venue, you can simply come in, order food and beverages at the Annex counter and pay at the registers.