The leading group of the new Colombian scene, La Mambanegra (meaning Black Mamba, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world) is a powerful Latin music orchestra. Its venom: the New York salsa of the 70s, with its virtuoso polyrhythms, its haunting percussion and its sparkling horns.

Bursting out of Colombia’s salsa hotbed of Santiago de Cali, ten-piece firework factory, La Mambanegra call their sound ‘Colombian Break Salsa’, mixing furiously energetic salsa dance songs with funk and Caribbean influences, along with R&B and jazz-edged brass and keyboard lines. 

The band was founded in 2012 by the composer, producer, saxophonist and singer Jacobo ‘El Callegüeso’ Vélez, whose song narratives are inspired by a mysterious, mythical hero from Cali’s Barrio Obrero neighborhood and his Odyssean adventures in the underworlds of Havana and New York. 

A tight team of virtuoso musicians from a range of disciplines, La Mambanegra’s full-throttle live performances have been irresistibly igniting audiences across Europe, Oceania and Latin America, animated by the indefatigable Vélez, for whom Salsa is, “sweat, sex, liquour and Pielroja cigarettes, it’s the gasoline that turns my heart on.

They will present their latest album “Callegüeso – Los Últimos Buses de Colores” on the big outdoor stage of the Festival International  Nuits d’Afrique this summer.