At the very beginning of the evening on the New Haven Green on Friday night, percussionist Nino Ciampa asked a fundamental question: what is salsa?“Salsa is flavor and spice,” he said.“Salsa is Latin soul. The essence of salsa is ritmo — rhythm — and it started in Africa and the Caribbean with the conga, skin on wood.”
The conga in the Hartt Salsa All-Stars began, laying down a steady percolating groove that, it turned out, did not let up for nearly three hours. For one of the final nights of this year’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas, the All-Stars and Grammy-winning artist Dobet Gnahoré, from Côte d’Ivoire, luxuriated in the power of African and Afro-Caribbean rhythms to create joy and connection.
