Ten years is a long time to leave a dancefloor waiting. Buraka Som Sistema have spent most of that decade apart, and on Friday 7 August they walk back onto a UK stage at South London Miniteca: a free, all-day celebration of the Latin American and Afro-Luso communities of South London, out in the open in Burgess Park. Pulling the Main Stage together from midday are ¡Como No!, the capital’s leading Latin promoter since the 1980s and the outfit behind La Linea.
Where Buraka bent kuduro, Son Rompe Pera bend cumbia, running their marimbas through punk. The second headliners of the festival, the Gama brothers grew up playing the wooden keys at weddings and quinceañeras in Naucalpan, on the edge of Mexico City, alongside their father Batuco; as teenagers they swapped it for punk, then dragged the marimba back with all that noise attached. After Batuco’s death, an invitation from Chilean cumbia veterans Chico Trujillo in 2017 pulled them back to music, and the cumbia punk they play now tips traditional Mexican and pan-Latin songs into garage, ska and surf. A new album, Marimbazos de Oro, follows in September on Mixto Records, produced by the Black Pumas’ Adrian Quesada, with lead single “Nada Que Hacer”. Live, they pull cumbia dancers and moshers to the same marimba.
If Lisbon and Mexico City set the day’s coordinates, the rest of the Main Stage answers from London itself. Pianist Eliane Correa built Las Salseras here as the UK’s first all-female salsa orchestra, ten players drawn from across Latin America and the UK. Cuban percussionists Madelin Espinosa and Lidia María Madruga anchor the rhythm section with Argentine multi-percussionist Gala Celia, and Afro-Latin singer Juanita Euka takes the front, a voice that has carried this music at the Barbican and Glastonbury. Between them they have backed Los Van Van’s Mayito Rivera and Jimmy Bosch and tour with Hans Zimmer and Jessie Ware. Correa, who counts herself as much Argentinian and European as Cuban, is blunt about the all-women line-up, “We are not tokens”, a counterweight to the male bands salsa has run on for most of its life. They mark Celia Cruz’s centenary with “La Vida es un Carnaval” and “Quimbara”, alongside Tito Puente’s “Oye Cómo Va” and deeper cuts from the Queen of Salsa’s catalogue.
Latinas of London brings a second all-women line-up to the stage, with Allexa Nava crossing over from the salsa orchestra. Desta French runs it on one rule, Latinas backing Latinas, no one above anyone else. A Camden singer of Colombian and Italian parentage, she was the first UK Latin artist played on BBC Radio with an all-Spanish-language song, back in 2020; she writes across jazz, hip-hop and cumbia, and her nights at the Jazz Café have turned into full-room Selena singalongs. Alongside Nava she brings Xativa, whose folk-leaning songs draw on Spanish and Ecuadorian roots.
A second stage, Bailoteo, is given over to Latin American sound system culture, run by Bushbby, who started the Candelita night with Desta French. London-born with Colombian roots, she plays cumbia, champeta, reggaetón and dembow off the systems she grew up around. DJ Sueño joins her with the cumbiatón he sharpened in Rosa Pistola’s Mexico City circle, Sabor a Mi runs from guaguancó through cumbia to afro-house on vinyl, and Movimientos resident Amancai, who grew up in Cartagena, threads Colombian Caribbean sounds through afrobeats.
South London Miniteca runs from 12pm at Burgess Park on 07/08 Entry is free, though tickets should be booked ahead. Full details and booking are on Dice