!Bailamos! That’s Spanish for “let’s dance” and the Laguna Dance Festival’s upcoming gala to celebrate its 11th anniversary invites participants to do just that.
Since the gala’s headliner, singer Candi Sosa, is one of Cuba’s most celebrated singers, attendees are encouraged to wear Cuban dress and show off their sense of rhythm on Thursday, May 28, at the Seven-Degrees event venue.
“The idea is to get people to move their butts; we want people to get up and dance. If everyone moves their hips, we have done our job,” said Candi Sosa Quintet drummer Aaron Serfaty, who has previously performed in Laguna Beach with Bossa ZuZu.
The five person band known as Candi et Sus Estrellas also features Victor Cegarra on piano and vocals, Rigoberto Opez on bass, Anderson Quintero playing percussion and Serfaty.
Sosa’s backstory reads like a movie script. Born in central Cuba, she grew up surrounded by music, with her mother playing records and father hitting conga drums. Dulce Maria, as she was christened, imitated songs she heard on the radio, building a repertoire of Cuban folk songs at age 6. After her family moved to Havana, she was introduced to classical singing by listening to others.
Scrolling ahead, Sosa’s talent caught the ear of Fidel Castro, who had come into her neighborhood to buy cigars. Encouraged by neighbors, Sosa sang “Suenios de Un Guajiro,” (“Dreams of a Country Boy.”) Impressed, he offered to send the girl to study opera singing in Russia.
Instead, her parents sent their three children unaccompanied to the United States via “Operation Pedro Pan,” run by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. More than 14,000 children escaped. Sosa, her brother Pastor and sister Maria lived briefly in a Miami refugee camp and a foster home in Long Beach before being re-united with their parents after three years.
After appearing in a documentary film about the so-called “Pedro Pans,” Dulce Maria morphed into the professional singer Candi Sosa.
Throughout her life, images from ‘60s Havana have remained with her, said Sosa. “We were sent to Havana after the Bay of Pigs from the countryside with its sugar plantations to a city teeming with milicianos, Castro’s militia. People were shot in the streets,” she recalled. “I have great empathy with the children of war all over the world. They really don’t have the tools to defend themselves, children don’t expect to be treated with unkindness.”
Sosa has not previously performed in Laguna Beach, but is bringing the band at the behest of Serfaty, a USC music professor, and USC dance professor Jodie Gates, who founded the Laguna Dance Festival.
Not only will the gala pump with Cuban rhythm, but the Dance Festival’s September performances will feature the Cuban dance troupe Malpaso, said Joy Dittberner, the festival’s executive director. “The re-establishment of diplomatic ties with Cuba enriches the arts everywhere,” she said, referring to last December’s decision by the Obama administration to lift the 54-year-old embargo.
Sosa lives in Manhattan Beach but declines to give her age. “I feel like I have lived several lifetimes,” she said.
She also declines to speculate on the outcome of normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba. “The subject is too complex to reveal my feelings. What happened in the past has not worked for anyone; I feel for the Cuban people who have endured so much hardship,” said Sosa, who returned to her homeland for the 2012 Havana Film Festival where the film “Peter Pan Flying Back” premiered.
Venezuela-born Serfaty was less circumspect. “The only good thing about socialism still is government support for the arts, but there is too much censorship,” he said. “I’ve never been to Cuba and I’m staying away until Castro is gone.”
About working with Sosa he said: “It’s a match made in heaven. Candi has that voice, and the energy and soul she brings to the stage is off the charts.”
Sosa infuses the same energy into talking about music. “My music, my singing is now something I can express from a real place, from being who I am,” she said. “It’s a healing, it’s my therapy, my ministry and spirit, my communication system.”
Besides her Afro-Cuban music and dance heritage, she cites jazz singers like Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald among her inspirations. “I am a huge jazz fan, and singing allows me to delve into a deep place and also share it,” said Sosa, she said.
She.
As for dance? She admitted, “I do not dance professionally, but wherever I go, I can’t help but dance.”
!Bailamos! 11th Anniversary Celebration Fundraiser, May 28, 6:30-10:00 p.m.
Seven-Degrees , 891 Laguna Canyon Rd. Tickets: $200. 949-715-5578 www.lagunadancefestival.org
