YeraSon Orquesta Charanga at the Loisaida Festival

YeraSon Orquesta Charanga is a New York-based charanga orchestra that was founded in 2002 by vocalist/violinist/composer/arranger Yrving Yeras. YeraSon reinterprets old-school Cuban music, including son, mambo, cha cha cha, boleros and guajiras, with a distinctly modern New York twist. YeraSon’s music was included in the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack for Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. YeraSon performs at Havana Central Times Square on Sunday evenings.

YearSon performed today on Avenue C at the open-air Loisaida Festival, an annual street fair which in part celebrates the Hispanic culture of the Alphabet City section of the Lower East Side. YeraSon showed that it is the new breed of charanga music. Firstly, the band had no horn section, a staple of all traditional Latino dance music. Secondly, the group played non-Cuban dance music as well, from Puerto Rican salsa to Dominican merengue. The performance was a lively, modern take on traditional music, and had the audience dancing in the street. It brought to the surface the Cuban in me.