La Santa Cecilia, the Grammy award-winning band for best Latin Rock, Urban or Alternative Album, gave the audience a vigorous performance on March 2 at the Haugh Performing Arts Center.
The Mexican American band performed their heart out in the stage, and the crowd engaged with the band as well. The concert had everything, with singing, dancing, culture and romanticism filling the venue.
The Haugh was a packed house. The band performed a variety of songs of different genres in English and Spanish and even performed new songs for the first time ever. La Santa Cecilia stay true to their roots; they play traditional Mexican music, but don’t remain remain to one specific genre or style of music. They are creative with their work and that’s what’s makes their performance so diverse and unique.
La Santa Cecilia will go from playing cumbia to other genres like rock and they use a variety of rhythms jazz, soul R & B, bossa nova, bolero, tango and even mariachi.
“Sometimes we don’t know what rhythm of a song is going to feel best in or what lyric sound better with if they are going to be a bossa nova or rock song, for us is just fun to be able to play all kind of different music,” band member Miguel Ramirez, also known as “Oso,” said.
The crowd was extremely energetic, and for many songs stood up and started to dance to the rhythm of the music. “Vamonos,” “La Negra,” “Ingrata,” “Como Dios Manda,” “La Morena,” “Nunca Mas” and “Mexico Americano” are a few songs the band performed.
Ramirez shared a speech about love and how important it is and why people shouldn’t take it for granted. He mentioned that around that time in the show he would usually get political, but he wanted to do something different for this concert.
Toward the end of the show, Marisol Hernandez, also known as “La Marisoul,” talked about love and how people just want to express it and just show it to the world and even in front of God. Hernandez invited a man named Jesus to the stage, where the entire house was shouting his name out too; when Jesus made it to the stage he proposed to his girlfriend and danced on the stage while La Santa Cecilia played for them, “Como Dios Manda,” a song about love.
La Santa Cecilia is more than a band, they are a family. The unity is visible on stage, their performance is enthusiastic, the time and effort is shown off and more importantly, they seem excited to be where they are.
The band’s interaction with the audience is powerful when they mention several times throughout the show how important the crowd is for them.
“We hope people connect with the songs and if they feel inspired to invite a friend on a trip, with a song like ‘Vamonos’ we are just expressing what we are experiencing in our life,” Hernandez said.
The concert ended, and like most shows, the crowd asked for an encore, and La Santa Cecilia came out to the stage for the last time and performed one last song. The band joked saying they forgot to play one more song.
The night concluded with Hernandez singing and sharing the stage with her daughter.
“We are inspired by life all aspects of life, love, a broken heart, thinking about our community, celebrating our traditions and our heritage,” Hernandez said.
