Çasonando will participate in Vaire-sur-Marne’s concert series “On Stage: Current Music by Local Artists.”

As always, Çasonando promises a swinging blend of Caribbean and African spices, from salsa to cumbia, rumba and changüí. Bring all your friends to dance the night away, or just kick back and listen, ¡pa’ gozarlo bien!

• Where: Centre des Arts et Loisirs, Vaires-sur-Marne (a suburb of Paris, France)
• Cover: 5 €, 3€ with Passport Jeunes Vairois or the “Culture Pass.”
• Doors open at 8pm.
• For more info, contact the Centre des Arts et Loisirs at 01.64.26.10.96

Cécile will be 27 on the 27th of March this year, so we’re throwing her an birthday bash in the style of her birth year: 1981. Oh, the nostalgia. This theme of course is also in honor of the fact that 80s music has now been officially relegated to the realm of oldies, or “Classic Hits,” as the youngsters are calling it these days.

I whipped up a swell invite in photoshop, which you can see by clicking on the image here. Lots of fun 80s icons. As they say in show business: Good times, great oldies.

A la Mairie

29 Photos

Au Château

51 Photos

Thanks to everyone who came and made this a wonderful day!

Yes, I’ll be back in action with the original members of Conjunto 23 this summer, the weekend of June 27th. We’ll be in Brooklyn for the Zolov-Gordon wedding on Sunday, June 29th, and that same weekend there will be a pachanga in Philly at one of our old haunts, most probably the RUBA Club.

To keep up to date about these gigs, you can subscribe to the Gigs RSS feed, or visit the contact page and get on the mailing list there.

I’m teaming up with the old pals from Barrio del Este for a quick gig at the Créteil Marché de Noel on Friday, December 21st. We’ll play an hour-long set starting at 7pm. The event is open to the public and free of charge!

Ask me for more info…

In Bonifacio, on the southern tip of the island, we took a trip on a boat to see the cliffs and some small islands only accessible by sea. On the way back, we had a great time perched on the very front of the boat (the prow, I think?), as the increasingly big waves got us wet and bounced us around. We gasped together as a particularly huge wave, The Big Kahuna, approached the boat. As we hit the wave, we were thrown from our seats and promptly crashed back down onto the deck. When I heard the way that Cécile was screaming her head off, I knew she must be feeling the same excruciating pain that I was, starting at the base of the spine and spreading basically everywhere.

We crawled and slid back onto the main deck (back injury or no, we couldn’t stay out on the prow the way waves were bouncing people around up there), gritted our teeth for the remaining minutes of our sea excursion, and were rushed to the hospital, where we found out that we had matching fractured vertebrae. Nothing serious, as far as back injuries go. Just a week in the hospital, and six weeks wearing a plastic corset to hold the bones in place. Oh yeah, and no “strenuous activity” for 3 months.

So we were airlifted back to Paris (sounds fancy, but actually they just strap you into a stretcher and slide you in between the backs of the seats and the overhead compartments of a regular commercial airplane), where we’ve been convalescing under the watchful eye of Cécile’s parents. Nothing like fine french food and wine to mend broken bones, eh? Still, our internet access has been limited, and they things that we can actually do on our own are still pretty limited too, so things have been feeling very slow lately. Can’t wait to get “back” into the swing of things…

The thing that tipped the scales in favor of inviting absolutely everyone was the extremely generous offer by Cécile’s parents to pay for our reception at Chateau du Bois La Croix, out in Pontault-Combault. Since we got married on a Friday (thank you, City Hall), the place was still available at the last minute, and we got a good deal. So I rounded up all my musician friends to keep the dancefloor hot - thanks to Eddy, Nils, Maklouf, Leon, and François for making it a happening scene.

Friends from the states: don’t despair! We’re in the planning stages now for La Version Americaine, to take place in my home state of New Hampshire, sometime in the summer of 2009. Plenty of time for everyone to reserve plane tickets and hotel rooms well in advance! We’ll keep you posted on what’s happening!

For more information, contact the group directly on their official website: www.casonando.com