Soul Motivators, Soukustek, Mistysa- Live at Lula Lounge, Thursday June 6, 2019

2019.6.6

Soul Motivators, Soukustek, Mistysa- Thursday, June 6, 2019, Lulaworld Festival, Lula Lounge, Toronto.

Lulaworld celebrates music styles associated with Lula Lounge year round. The opening night featured three acts from near and far.

The first band was led by Ernesto Espinoza. His family fled Pinochet’s Chile when he was young, settling in Vancouver. He found his way to Toronto by 1990, before moving on to Spain and others locales before returning in 2013. Their songs are sung in Fernch, Spanish, Portuguese and English. They introduced themselves with a drum solo before launching into their set.

Violinist Espinoza’s band was spare; Jeronimo Acuna played guitar, Peruvian-Canadian, and band leader in his own right, and Luis Orbegaso handled the drums. Oriana Barbato’s bass playing yielded some deep grooves for the band to build on.

Tonight’s guest singer, Chilean-based Mistya joined the band after their opening number, and sang over Barbato’s reggae bass line, bumping it way to a slow, violin infused rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff.” Mistya addressed the crowd while some band members changed instruments and proceeded with an early ballad of hers. Mistya sang a few duets with Espinoza, but their subdued singing let Acuna’s guitar come up a bit in the mix. After a few “thank you’s” and “muchos gracias” Mistya encouraged the audience to get up and dance for their last song, which upped the funk ante. As it was still daylight outside, it was perhaps a bit early for people to get down en masse.  

Soukustek were next, and they played a high energy, dance-ready hybrid of African and Colombian sounds. Champeta guitarist and founding member Tury Morey grew up in Colombia, immersed in Afro-Caribbean culture. His guitar style has an definite African influence, and their music would fit right in at Afrofest.

The champeta style developed from a 1970’s dance style named for a curved knife. The term came from a pejorative word describing the  rural and poor descendants of African slaves living in remote areas along Colombia’s coast. The dance developed its own accompanying music style in the 1980’s, its popularity spurred by the arrival of African music recordings to Colombian shores.

Fellow Colombian Maestro Claro was supposed to sing with Soukustek tonight, but couldn’t make it. Band members traded vocals with Morey, and the drummer even shouts a brief Jamaican dancehall style rap. Tonight, Sweet Marie was a guest singer. The band rotates lead vocal duties. Their set was about an hour of pure driving funk.  

The final act of the evening was local funk band The Soul Motivators. They’ve had about a year with their new singer Sahi Teruko who handles the job naturally.

Soul Motivators

Like many funk bands, Soul Motivators start with an extended instrumental to set the tone. Tonight’s veered into a jam led by keyboardist James Robinson. Teruko then took the stage to sing “When the Sun Goes Down” from the band’s 2015 c.d. e.p. They continued with “All the way to the bank” after which Teruko stated the band’s “one goal- to motivate every soul in this building.” Mission well underway. They had people dancing and grooving to “Love Thing,” and “Black Rhino” with its dramatic introduction. They pepper their set with instrumentals including a vamp of the Last Poet Lightnin’ Rod’s gangsta-classic “Sport.” 

The slow burner “Tell Me” is a slow burner propelled by Marc Shapiro’s bass punctuated by those Kool and the Gang (who play on the afore mentioned “Sport) inspired horn licks.

Some J.B’s style jamming, more aggressive and with louder percussion with Doug Melville and Derek Thorne leading the charge was injected into the last stretch, which concluded with “Hang On In There.”

It doesn’t exactly rain funk bands in Toronto, but the Soul Motivators are the real deal if you need a blast of funk from some heavy hitters.