Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca

A week ago we saw Ricardo Lemvo and his band Makina Loca at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival in SF.  I had a great time and danced for most of the concert!  The whole thing was really together, the band was tight.  They played mostly dance songs with a wide variety of rhythms. Ricardo Lemvo plays  congolese rumba, son montuno, soukous, mutuashi, cumbia, and more.  For the encore a band member from Montana played a cowboy song.  Ricardo Lemvo writes his songs. The band is extremely talented. I appreciate that that there is a strong horn section as well as a soukous guitar player. The band acted as a group with no individual showboating, yet all of them sounded great.

We first saw Ricardo Lemvo roughly 10 years ago when he played with Sam Mangwana. At that time, I was there to see Sam Mangwana and hadn’t heard of Ricardo Lemvo.  Both musicians have a lot in common including being two of my favorite musicians.

Featured image photo by Brittany Kelly