BAND INFO > SALSA CELTICA (SCOTLAND)

Salsa Celtica (Scotland)
“Nominees in three categories of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2007 including the Best Live Band Award”

“Nominees in the Best Live Band category of the Scots Trad Music Awards 2006”

Salsa Celtica’s remarkable success story began in 1995 in the bars and clubs of Scotland’s Edinburgh and Glasgow. They were an immediate hit with the locals and the newly arrived Hispanic community. After recording their debut album 'Monstruos y Demonios' (Monsters and Demons), Salsa Celtica took their music around the village halls of Scotland, from Skye to Mull, Iona to Barra, Lewis to Orkney, and everywhere in between. After this they headed off to Cuba to hang out with salsa groups, including Son14 and Sonora La Calle, and to generally soak up Afro-Cuban sounds in Havana and Santiago de Cuba. Swapping whisky for rum they were asked to join in at musical / religious "bembe" gatherings and were invited to worship the Afro Cuban "orichas". “Nominees in the Best Live Band category of the Scots Trad Music Awards 2006”

After acquiring new tastes and skills they returned to Scotland to sign to Scottish label Greentrax and to release two albums ‘The Great Scottish Latin Adventure‘ and ‘El Agua De La Vida‘.

’El Agua De La Vida’ went on to reach number 5 on the World Music Chart of Europe, number 24 in the end of year round-up World Music Chart for Europe and was also their first album released in the US on Compass Records.

The intervening years have seen Salsa Celtica take their music to new audiences, win the hearts of the British media and finally claim their place as one of the UK’s foremost World Music bands. They have performed at the BBC Radio 3’s annual World Music Day in 2004 followed by a sold out show in the Strathclyde Suite of Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall as part of the Celtic Connections Festival which was later televised in the UK on BBC4. Sessions on BBC Radio 2’s flagship folk programme, The Mike Harding Show and The Andy Kershaw Show on BBC Radio 3 followed. Their first English tour in April 2004 included a sold out show at London South Bank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and in September they performed in front of their largest audience to date at the BBC’s Proms In The Park to an audience of 40,000 in London‘s Hyde Park. Between all of this they performed at festivals including Edinburgh Jazz Festival, Dublin’s Temple Bar Festival, Belgium’s Pole Pole Festival, Northern Ireland’s Celtic Fusion Festival and the England’s National Theatre Watch This Space Festival.