The music of Las Cafeteras is the best kind of alive. The East Los Angeles-based seven-piece, which most recently passed through town last October for the Santa Barbara Bowl’s Día de los Muertos show, brings a socially conscious blend of butt-shaking, soul-stirring, Afro-Mexican folk-rock that lifts you up while making sure you are getting down. Even better, from Guadalupe to Carpinteria, the youth of Santa Barbara County are about to have an incredible opportunity to soak in the Las Cafeteras experience free of charge as the band is relocating to the 805 this week for a unique five-day residency. “Four letters, man. E-P-I-C,” said Las Cafeteras singer and zapateado player Hector Flores when asked about his band’s upcoming S.B. engagements. “An epic week of music and storytelling and community building is about to happen.”
The residency is just the latest from the folks behind ¡Viva el Arte de Santa Bárbara!, a community-minded collaborative effort from UCSB’s Arts & Lectures, the Marjorie Luke Theatre, Isla Vista Youth Projects, County Education’s Children’s Creative Project, and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts and Education Center, among others. Serving some 15,000 people throughout the county each year since it began a decade ago, Viva el Arte works to provide a wide range of music and dance programming free of charge for school children and their families. “Each year, we make a real effort to bring living traditions to town — most of them Latin American in origin — and maybe introduce the kids and their parents to something they have never seen before,” said Cathy Oliverson, director for educational outreach and manager for performing arts at Arts & Lectures.
The 2014-15 edition of Viva el Arte, which concludes with the upcoming Las Cafeteras visit, has already featured Mariachi Garibaldi de Jaime Cuéllar, the Contra-Tiempo Urban Latin Dance Theater (whose residence included a flash mob dance at the Santa Maria Town Center Mall), Mariachi Flor de Toloache, and M.A.K.U. Soundsystem. “It’s been a great year, but we are definitely going to end it on a high note with Las Cafeteras,” said Oliverson excitedly.
