Cafe Blanco Debuts Danceable Music

WAITSBURG -- Long before the popularity of the Buena Vista Social Club, Eddie Manzanares was in Cuba soaking up its music.

Born in 1963 in Vera Cruz on the Mexican Gulf Coast, Manzanares would join other youths from his community on cultural exchanges to the Caribbean Islands. His group would show off Mexican dances and songs, while bringing home the Son Montuno, a uniquely Cuban musical genre that blends the Spanish guitar and lyrical traditions with the spice of Afro-Cuban percussion and rhythms.

"That's in my roots," the guitarist said about the contagiously danceable songs he will bring to Coppei Cafe this Saturday, starting at 7 p.m. "That's in my blood."

Accompanying Manzanares on violin is Jerry Yokel, a recent addition to Manzanares' band Cafe Blanco and perhaps better known as the soloist for Frog Hollow Band or for the Celtic-style Rogues and bluegrass band Ryegrass. The duo may invite a percussionist to join them.

Manzanares and Yokel have deep but very different roots in music.

Born in 1952, Yokel, an environmental chemist at Hanford who lives in Walla Walla and is married to Waitsburg's former Junior Miss Julie Yokel (Stonecipher), hails from Indiana.

While in fourth grade in Evansville, his parents encouraged him to pick up the trombone, which they loved for its then-popular big band sound. But in college at Indiana University, he abandoned his brass for the bass and joined several rock and folk bands, a pursuit that helped pay his way through college.

Later, in another musical twist, he discovered Bluegrass while at a Bluegrass Festival in Southern Indiana. Soon, he added mandolin and harmonica to his musical arsenal and, let's not forget his voice, which he used successfully until he contracted a virus on the scubadiving trip in Florida and developed spasmodic dysphonia, a voice disorder characterized by involuntary spasms of one or more muscles controlling the voice box.

His career as a wastewater treatment specialist finally brought him to Pullman and then to Walla Walla in the mid 1980s and Yokel joined Ryegrass. He started with the Rogues in 2000. And, as if that weren't enough, he joined the popular country rock band Frog Hollow shortly after that.

Manzanares joined a musical production company at age 13 after picking up the guitar in a town (Vera Cruz) "where 90 percent of the people know how to play an instrument," he said.

A professional musician who has mastered everything from jazz to flamenco, Manzanares traveled to many parts of the world as a guitarist -- from Spain and Switzerland to Japan and South Korea -- only to eventually return to his Son Cubano and Son Montuna roots. Still, his original compositions and covers have picked up many flavors along the way.

"My style is very international," he said. "It's cosmopolitan. It has a bit of everything."

His website describes his style as a combination of Latin-Jazz, Bossanova and Rumba Flemenca. He loves to throw in cha cha and salsa for good measure. The more eclectic blend is the reason why he's more popular with Caucasian Americans than Hispanic Americans, many of whom here seem to prefer straight Mexican folk, he said.

Yokel first saw Manzanares perform about a year ago at Walla Faces. He had always liked the energy of Buena Vista Social Club musicians such as Ibrahim Ferrer and Eliades Ochoa.

But hearing the genre live triggered a new passion in the versatile musician, so he offered to sit in with Manzanares and Cafe Blanco's other musicians who play bass, percussion, saxophone and piano.

Manzanares was immediately taken with his abilities.

"Jerry has an amazing ear," said Manzanares, who himself plays and composes songs without knowing how to read or write music. "Give him one note and he will do something cool with it. He was a great addition to the band."

Yokel loved the more complicated rhythms of Manzanares' music and, ever the scientist who never tires of exploration and new research, he believed he could grow once again as a musician expanding his boundaries.

"Eddie gives me the freedom to improvise," he said.

For more details, visit www.eddiemanzanares.com