Watch this video before anything else. If a picture can paint a thousand words, a video can paint a million. For this reason, I present to you a video footage of the recent concert of the Salsa Cubana band Picason in my town. Excuse the poor quality of the video; I simply used my digital camera to document the event.
Picason dished out a superb performance during the Biel Braderie (summer festival) in Biel-Bienne. Too bad we missed the first 30 minutes of their concert which started at 8:30 p.m. But the moment we heard their upbeat Latino music and saw the engaging dance number of the vocalists on stage, we were hooked till 10 p.m.
Never mind the fact that I’m not really the type who goes to concerts. But between the Picason concert and the yodeling fest held also in our town two weeks before that, I’d choose the former anytime for obvious reasons. Swiss folk music is not for me — not in the long-term, at least. It’s a bit, um, geriatric for my taste.
Going back to the Picason concert, some of the spectators, Swiss and Latinos alike, let their hair down and swayed to the rhythm of the music. I would have loved to dance the cha cha, but didn’t for two reasons: 1) my husband has two left feet; 2) I don’t normally dance in public (not that I dance a lot in private).
The great thing about this concert was, it was free. We thought we had to buy the Braderie pin to be able to watch the concerts lined up for the three-day summer fest. But that was not the case. We saw lots of visitors, who were not wearing official pins, watching Picason perform live in concert. So we enjoyed it as well, without a pin and without any guilt feelings.
Picason has a number of Swiss musicians on board, most of them instrumentalists. The band really makes good music, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their CDs are almost sold out. Most of the lyrics are in Spanish, if not all.
This group has really piqued my musical interest. I’ll be surfing the Net in the coming days to know more about their brand of music. (Note: You will find another YouTube video on the Picason concert in Biel-Bienne here.)