Juan Luis Guerra

It was a trip down to London Town today to see the first ever gig in England by Juan Luis Guerra. He is, I am assured, pretty big stuff in Latin America. The show was great. What made it magic was the crowd. Latinos don't have any trouble expressing themselves. No English reserve there. They went doolaly tap!

They were the loudest audience I have ever heard. There were massive cheers when he asked of there were any Ecuadorians in the house. Whoops of delight when he asked if there were any Argentinians. Screams of excitement when asked if there were any Chilenos present. When asked if there were any Colombians the roof was blown off!! Ha, ha, ha, I reckon there was half of Bogota in the Hammersmith Odeon! Wonderful.

And to top it all off I witnessed my first ever bonafide, unplanned encore. When JLG went off for the second time it was obvious that was that. But no one left. They screamed, shouted, clapped, stamped, shouted "Otra! Otra!" for pushing 10 minutes. The roadies were packing up when eventually JLG came back in his tracksuit. The musicians had to unpack their instruments to do another two songs. Suffice to say my ears were struggling to cope with the noise.

Magic stuff :-D