ANDREW GILBERT: JAZZ TALK

Zemog gets hot at Yoshi's

By Andrew Gilbert

TIMES CORRESPONDENT

It's not often that a relatively unknown band makes its West Coast debut at Yoshi's, but there's nothing typical about Zemog, El Gallo Bueno, which translates into Zemog, the Good Rooster.

Founded in Boston about a decade ago and now based in New York City, Zemog is the creation of Abraham Gomez-Delgado, a Puerto Rican-born guitarist, percussionist, vocalist and composer who's created a singular sound by promiscuously blending salsa, rock, electronica and avant-garde jazz. The resulting music, beautiful and raucous, kinetic and hilarious, is so arresting that it took only one spin of the band's new CD "Cama De la Conga" (Aagoo Records) to land the Yoshi's gig, a two-night run opening on Tuesday.

"I get a lot of CDs from people looking for gigs," said Yoshi's artistic director Peter Williams, practicing the art of understatement. "I picked this one off the pile and on the first song I was just laughing, I liked the music so much. There's a passion and fire to the music that isn't in everything I get in. It's a real hybrid, not your basic Latin jazz record or salsa record."

In explaining the hybrid nature of his music, Gomez-Delgado describes the dislocation he felt after his family's 1979 move from Puerto Rico to Massachusetts. He was 7, and his limited English and ethnicity led to years of taunting by his schoolmates, until music offered a refuge.

As a kid he listened to heavy metal, while his siblings exposed him to salsa, Kraftwork and disco. His Peruvian-born father, a classically trained violinist, also played traditional Peruvian music.

When Gomez-Delgado started an "avant-salsa-rock quintet" (his description) called Jayuya in his late teens, it was an effort to make sense of all the different sounds.

"I needed to figure out how to put these things together," said Gomez-Delgado, 34, in a recent phone interview from New York City. "I was always interested in not only making them sound cohesive, but also in having them battle onstage. After Jayuya ended, I wanted to do the opposite. Instead of a rock band format playing salsa, I wanted a salsa band with rock and jazz influences, and all these other styles."

Zemog, which is Gomez spelled backward, got its start in Boston and released a thrilling self-named debut CD in 2002. But since most of the band's gigs were in New York City, Gomez-Delgado decided to relocate two years ago and started recruiting new players into the mix. The band he brings to Oakland next week is a septet that includes guitarist Ted Northlander; conguero Roberto Rosario; baritone saxophonist Colin Stetson; and drummer Emilio Valdes, who's the son of legendary Cuban pianist Chucho Valdes and grandson of revered pianist Bebo Valdes.

While the band is just starting to make an impact on the West Coast, its reputation as a creative force in Latin music is also starting to spread. This summer, Zemog has high-profile concerts at Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center, though it still plays dances whenever possible.

"We're doing a wedding tomorrow and it'll be a dance thing," Gomez-Delgado said. "Everybody in the band plays salsa, but sometimes our gigs are more a listening situation. Most of the time it's both. Almost every show we play, people sit and stare for the first half of it, trying to figure out what's going on, and then towards the end everybody starts to dance."