Papa Mambo back with WECC gig

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/11/2001 (8953 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EIGHT years ago this month, percussionists Rodrigo Munoz and Carol Hutchinson left Winnipeg for Chile, effectively killing off Papa Mambo, the most ambitious salsa band this city has ever seen.

Now the duo is back — and so is the 11-piece salsa group, which plays its first Winnipeg gig since 1993 tonight at the West End Cultural Centre.

“When I left Winnipeg eight years ago, I was half-Canadian and half-Chilean. Now I like to say I’m 100 per cent both,” says Munoz, Papa Mambo’s bandleader and chief percussionist. “I wanted to reconnect with my roots.”

Born in the capital Santiago, Munoz fled his homeland in 1973, at the age of 12. Like many Chileans, his parents supported populist president Salvador Allende, who was ousted by right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet in a bloody, U.S.-sponsored coup.

After a year in Argentina, the Munoz family moved to Winnipeg. Rodrigo went to high school here and eventually became a musician, forming Papa Mambo in the 1980s. The group became a popular local showband before Munoz decided to continue his music career in a much more peaceful Chile during the 1990s.

Down in South America, he performed and studied Latin music along with his Winnipeg-born wife Hutchinson, who also taught English as a second language. Thanks to advances in communications technology, it became possible for the duo to move back to Winnipeg in May.

“With the Internet, it doesn’t matter where you live any more. But Winnipeg is our home,” he says. “This is where I went to school and where my family lives. We wouldn’t have gone anywhere else.”

The reformed Papa Mambo will play two sets tonight: A series of Latin jazz numbers, followed by a set of straight-up salsa. Tickets for the 8 p.m. show are $15.

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The following night at the same venue, another jazz-oriented Winnipeg band marks a milestone of its own: The Knappen Street Allstars, the on-again, off-again bluegrass-oriented project led by Winnipeg banjo player Danny Koulack, holds a 10-year anniversary.

The Allstars played their first show on Dec. 1, 1990, (note that I said “anniversary,” not “birthday,” so please don’t bother with the nitpicky e-mail). The lineup features Koulack, drummer Daniel Roy, saxophone player Bill Spornitz and bassist Don Benedictson, who also teamed up with Koulack to co-produce a forthcoming new album by Winnipeg storyteller and folk-singer Ted Longbottom.

Tickets for Saturday’s show are $12 in advance at the WECC or $15 at the door. Koulack also appears next week at the U of W’s Eckhardt-Gramatt Hall as a member of klezmer band Finjan (Dec. 8 and 9) and on Klezmer Suite, a new CD by Winnipeg composer Sid Robinovitch. His Camptown: Concerto For Banjo And Orchestra was written with Koulack in mind.

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More changes in the New Meanies’ camp: Longtime guitarist Jeff Hondubura has left the Winnipeg guitar-rock band, which plays a pair of Christmas-themed gigs with Winnipeg’s Demigod and Vancouver’s Retrograde on Dec. 7 and 8 at The Zoo.

Hondubura’s replacement is Charleswood newcomer Frank Tront. Advance tickets for the Christmas shows are $5 at The Zoo.

In other Meanies news, drummer Jason Kane has a side project going called Midnite Moving Company, which features his bassist brother Todd. The band plays The Zoo on Dec. 6, also with Retrograde.