sidetracks & detours, Sunday 15th November 2026; Olga Cerpa & Mistesey In Concert +++ + + Karla Harris Jazz Christmas PRESENTS + Cinema For Sale + Reggea Finds a Home in Lanzarote

Third Time Is A Charm for OLGA CIRPA & MISTESEY

Sounds and songs from The Canary Islands, territory or the Atlantic Macaronesia, can be heard in the extraordinary voice of Olga Cerpa and on the instruments of a historical band of popular music of those islands.

Our Canary Islands form an archipelago of seven islands off the Atlantic Sahara coast, only one hundred miles away from the African continent. However its people and culture has been greatly influenced by its strategic geographical position, halfway among three continents. Its importance as a shipping route between Europe and America has a very long history: Christopher Columbus provisioned water and food in the Canary Islands on his voyage of discovery of the New World.

In 1492 some of the islands had already been brought under the Crown of Castile. Its aboriginal population, of the north african neolithic age, was decimated by the Spanish, although some of their customs were preserved (names, eating habits, clay pottery and ceramics, etc.). Later on, besides mixing between Natives and Spaniards, Canary Islands began a mixing cultural and population process that have marked its history. Portuguese colonizers, African slaves, Jews, Maltese, Genoese, etc., arrived on their shores too.

The relationships of the Canary Islands with America, especially Cuba, Uruguay, Puerto Rico and Venezuela have been very fruitful over the last three centuries, as a result of the emigration of canaries to those countries, where they founded cities and towns and become part of emerging Creole societies. But curiously canaries, excellent farmers and colonizers, reach the southern U.S. territories; as well as San Antonio Texas, is founded by Canarian settlers.

Mestisay is one of the most popular bands of the Canary Islands, where folk music lives in all its forms, from the most traditional, particularly linked to festivals and country fairs and family tradition, to the most advanced and modern music.

Mestisay hoard multiple influences, coming from Canarian musical roots, although their sound also incorporates influences from countries and communities with extensive relationships with the Canary Islands: Portuguese Music, for instance, in a common Atlantic way, Bolero, through the Mexicans and Cuban films from the forties, African music sounds and rhythms are easily identifiable geographically with the country so close to the Canarian archipelago.

All this work forms a musical synthesis that insists in the perviousness and mixing of the Canarian culture. It is a kind of music which could be considered as “Atlantic”. The group has recorded more than twenty albums throughout its history and has developed several projects including highly successful theatrical productions.

The band has toured more than 20 countries across three continents. Most of its discography is played by OLGA CERPA (left), the female voice of the group. With two nominations of Latin Grammys, she is very popular in the Canary Islands;  is considered as the most important female voice of the Canarian popular music over the last two decades, which is a reflection on her remarkable vocal power, artistic personality and extraordinary scenic imprint.

Of the albums the various ensembles by Olga and Mestisay, several are particularly highlighted on the musicians´ web site. These include Tropical Path, a multinational production, captured in a book-disc with an extraordinary design, recorded by three symphonic bands from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Mexico City and Havana, covering historical repertoires of Latin American popular music from the 40s and 50s of the last century.

Other albums listed are A Night Of Boleros and Canciones Del Sur, as well as the 25^th Anniversay album, The Whole Life.

Also in the list of nine selected albums is Jallos. Songs Found On The Shore.  A great American writer, Butch Hancock, said to me in an interview that ´I always intend what I write for light years of travel´.

In a similar vein another Americana artist, John Stewart, writer of Daydream Believer, that ´when I die, I hope maybe some lonesome picker will find some healing in my songs´.

So, beachcombing for melodies, lyrics, rhythms and songs might be a rewarding way to work with music.

You can look out, too, for Little Fado and other love songs.

Some of the highlights of Latin American popular songs from the last century are “dressed” and musically embellished with sounds and instruments from fado, within the flamenco genre.

For my wife Dee and I tonight was to the second concert we have seen by Olga (left, signing cds) & Mistisay since we stepped off on Lanzarote to retireand it would turn out to be as captivating as its forerunners.

We wandered across the courtyard and as we approached the arena in front of the stage we saw that 798 seats were already occupied of the original 800 that had been laid out in anticipation of a good-sized audience for the free-till-full concert. We jumped on those last two seats in a rush, as if we were playing a very competitive game of musical chairs. Within a minute or so we were sitting comfortably and with no sense of shame or guilt, as several seats were immediately being laid out by stewards behind us.

The soft lighting and natural acoustics of this huge Convento de Santo Domingo was a perfect stage for this music. Olga´s band, the seven piece Mestisay took to their floor spots, picked up their instruments and played her on to the floor to stand centre stage, and the audience erupted.

We had seen Olga and this line up perform in 2019 (five years ago!) at the Cesar Manrique Festival in Arrecife and had been incredibly impressed.

In those few minutes the audience seemed to have increased exponentially to a total of over a 1,000 people and many had congregated in front of the stage as Olga commenced her first song, an obvious fans-favourite that immediately had loyal friends and front row dancers singing and clapping along.

Her voice can be soft and girlish as well as lived-in and mature. She is an energetic stage performer, and an empathetic communicator with her audience, and she stepped down off the stage to sing among her fans.

She sings romantic songs with a passion, and sings popular songs with obvious pleasure.

She is also funny and generous in praise to her musicians.

The seven piece band consisted of three stringed instruments, percussion, brass and wind instruments, as well as the ´trumpeto´ played by the gentleman who seemed to be unobtrusively directing this mini orchestra. In fact, so full was the sound, it could have been a full symphony orchestra. It was, of course fusion music of the very best kind, a wonderful non-hierarchical merging of sounds picked up by travelling musicians with an ear for what works well together

It was neither rock nor folk-lore but was simply well-arranged music brilliantly delivered. Instruments came between vocal verses playing together blending Canarian music with influences from Africa and Europe, sometimes even carrying echoes of songs like Dancing On The Ceiling by Lionel Richie.

Olga and the band crammed over twenty songs into this show that also boasted a superb filmic backdrop with photographs old and new of important people and places throughout The Canary Islands. Most of the women in the audience danced and shimmied but that was great because as the song says, You´ve Got To Dance Like Nobody´s Watching.

Olga Cerpa and Mestisay were brought back for a number of encores, after which we set off home (30 miles south to Playa Blanca) and then realised that, of course, all the roads through town were still closed. We had to drive at slightly slower than walking pace along unlit sidetracks and detours searching for diversion signs that would enable us to wind our  way, snake-like, to join the LZ 2, at a point about 12 miles north ! Still, we then made swift progress back home on the motorway, and our five cats were waiting for us on the patio when we arrived home, asking ´what time do you call this?´

As we sat with Clinger, Little Black Cat, Rollover, Stray, Casper and Pretty But Thick on our knees or on our garden furniture, we spoke to them of poetry and music and arts, and religion and families and politics and why life here on Lanzarote so much appeals. But sometimes when our Spanish cats want us to be quiet they just pretend they can´t speak English.

So Dee and I chatted between ourselves of the twenty or so  songs we had heard, and how vocals, strings, wind instruments, leather and harpsichord had harmonized in a spectacular concert.

Since seeing them play on that previous occasion we mentioned earlier, at the Cesar Manrique Festival in 2019, these musicians have grown in confidence and stepped up several rungs of the ladder and we hope we won´t have to wait as long to see them again.

As I sat down to write this review the following morning an e mail pinged in from our friends at Lancelot Digital, a major news stream on the island. I was delighted to read that they, too, were full of praise for the concert (and, indeed, the festival as a whole).

The artists are by now packing their bags to travel on. The audience here had stood up and said goodbye to the group. It was applause of gratitude not only for the band who had played so brilliantly and that lifted the singer up where she belongs, but was surely also a nod of thanks to those who had made such a concert, such a night, and such a performance possible.

THIRD TIME A CHARM FOR OLGA

We came to live here on Lanzarote in 2015 and this was our third visit to an Olga Cerpa and Mistesey concert and we were delighted to receive theses tickets, priced only 10€  through the excellent line service of Ecoentradas that has become a very professional vendor in the eleven years we have been here.

We decided to take the long way round, from Playa Blanca through Uga and over La Geria to the Campesino monument, straight on at the roundabout and another five miles or so to Teguise. We like to eat at the laid back (at five o clock in the evening) street-corner village pub that is La Cantosa. They offer a small menu and a long list of specials that don´t sound that special until you taste them. Knowing that meatballs sounded pretty low key, we both nevertheless ordered them The young, smiley lad that was our waiter brought out two massive platefuls of perfectly boiled meatballs, spoonfuls of crispy chips all swimming in a tomato based sauce and few drops of Tabasco. We both accompanied this with a well chilled Agua Con Gas, and Dee also had a white wine whilst I had a bottle of Mahou´s, one of my favourite cervaza sin alcohol. I ordered a lemon flavoured moose, which the young waiter promised would be very light and refreshing. He was absolutely right about that but he was absolutely wrong to have brought it to the table with two spoons. My wife has become very clever at reducing my pudding in-take over the years here !

There was only one other dining table taken at this time of the evening, a family of grandparents, parents and eight or nine year old girl and a younger brother of five or six.  Whilst the adults dined  the really well-behaved children had a great time in the huge play area just 20 yards outside the restaurant.

This 2026 concert was held in an absolutely packed out Convento de Santo in Teguise and all of the 520 seats were taken.

Olga Cirpa is, deservedly, a very popular and much loved artist and the Mistesey band line up is sensational, as it needs to be, to match her energy levels and her great rapport with her audiences.

Throughout this performance the two characters on stringed instruments sparked off some wonderful sounds and rhythms. One was playing what definitely sounded  like a timple but looked like its close cousin, the ukelele. He also played acoustic guitar on other tracks. He and a guy in a pork pie hat who was also playing guitar very powerfully in a laid back way. And there was one more guitarist lending rhythm. There were three more musicians at the back of the stage keeping the beat and adding great presence and depth to the songs.

More versatility was evidenced by the guy who was playing keyboards and also a wind instrument that Dee thought was a trumpet but that I reckoned sounded like an oboe. He frequently interchanged between those two instruments in the same song.

The mood of the concert was set by a beautifully played instrumental from Mestisay as the opener of the evening. Strangely, it could have been Dire Straits playing something like Walking Through The Wild West End or was at least in the same mood. Or maybe I had thought that because I had just seen an excellent tribute band playing Mark Knopfler a few nights earlier.

Olga Cerpa & Mestisey´s current album is La Costa de los cantares, and most of this evening´s songs were drawn from that album, many of which were written by Olga or some of her band mates either individually or collaboratively.

The title song of the album was given a lovely performance and other selections were brilliant enough to create huge crowd at the merchandise at the end of the show.

Olga strutted and swayed around the stage in a pair of distressed at knee jeans,……… that´s certainly one fashion that seems here to say. She was wearing a classy but casual blue jacket over a white t-shirt, and she moulded her singing to the songs. She can be loud, (but tuneful) and she can be as soft as sea rippling along the shore. She can be both happy clappy and soulful, she can be rueful or rocky and she can be up-beat or blue, although that blue never becomes too dark, and is usually the blue of  a  Lanzarote sky.

CINEMA FOR SALE: for new purpose ?

The old Cine de Teguise – one of the most eye-catching buildings in a town full of beautiful places – is up for sale. Current owner Indigo Bucher recently recently told Gazette Life magazine the story of a Lanzarote love affair.

Indigo bought the cinema in 1997, inspired by the classic film Cinema Paradiso, which is set in a similar small-town cinema in rural Italy. Initially, he had plans to re-open it as a cinema space, and even had talks with the directors of film festivals. But finally he opened his Emporium shop in the building, selling beautiful and eclectic furniture and decorations from China, Africa and other sources.

The cinema and the beautifully presented shop, have become fixtures on the Teguise tourist trail, and Indigo says that some tourists even come to the town specifically to visit the shop after seeing it on social media.

“Business is good” he confirmed

The cinema was built in 1961 – the original blueprint from 1958 is framed in the entrance – and operated from 1969-70 until the mid-1980s, when videos became widely popular. One of the original projectors also stands by the door, beneath some vintage film posters, and up above the entrance arches, Indigo has converted the projection booth to his own personal living space.Although closed for over 40 years now, the cinema still exists in the memories of many locals. Indigo smiles as he describes the “beautiful stories” of how locals have entered his shop just to revisit the place where they shared their first kiss or fumble in the back rows of the darkened theatre.

Modifications have been made to the building – the shop includes the premises of an adjacent home that was knocked through – but the 600 square-metre main room is still recognisably a theatre, with a small stage area and large screening wall. The exterior has been maintained splendidly, with large archways guarded by replicas of Teguise’s famous lions, wooden balcony fences and a smart red and white paint scheme.

Indigo admits that he’s selling the cinema – and possibly the business – with a heavy heart. His children don’t wish to take over the business, and he himself has plenty of other plans for the future, including managing his parents’ estate. His mother, Heidi Bucher, was an internationally-famous sculptor whose centenary is this year and retrospective exhibitions are planned in Athens and New York.

Indigo would love to see the space used for cultural purposes. Teguise is, after all, the artistic heart of Lanzarote, and he has been an important part of that. But, as the building is too young to be listed as a heritage site, he admits that a new owner can do what they like with it.

“It’s hard to let go,” he says sadly, “But it’s been a beautiful experience.

BRINGING REGGAE TO LANZAROTE

The Humble Hi-Fi Sound Systemis, is the first reggae sound system to be built on Lanzarote. It was built in a spare room in Costa Teguise by a local teacher. has built

Eduardo Oliva grew up in Zaragoza in northern Spain, where there was a local ska and punk scene. But it was when he travelled to work in a sandwich factory in Leicester in the Uk that he first experienced sound system culture, attending blues parties, the Mount Zion Inn and events by legendary system operators such as Aba Shanti-I.

In 2007 he decided to create his own system.

 “I had the time to do it, and had  a teaching job which permitted me to afford it.” he recently told Lanzarote Gazette Life magazine.

Eduardo built his system entirely on his own, although with plenty of help from online sources, and advice from Jah Ras, who set up the first such sound system on the Canaries, in Tenerife.

Using wood sourced locally, components ordered over the internet and even second-hand equipment found on the Canaries, Eduardo slowly built the system. But in 2018 he was diverted when he moved to London for a while There he set up a record label, Humble Sounds, issuing 7” singles and dub plates in limited quantities.

The result currently sits proudly in his spare room, still smelling of the freshly-sawn wood he used to construct the cabinets. As he switches on the pre-amp, a warm hum fills the air, then a thump as the needle lands in the groove. Suddenly an incredibly rich sound fills the room.

“You feel it in your body as much as you hear it,” he says, as he cranks the volume up until the air in the room is vibrating. It’s an impressive sound, but only a fraction of the 5,000 Watts the system is capable of. My neighbours are understanding, but I don’t like to push it,” he smiles.

Eduardo’s passion is the roots reggae that Jamaica pioneered in the 1970s, and the earlier, sweeter rocksteady sound. He likes to play in the original sound system style, with just one turntable, using sound effects while he changes records.

Now, Eduardo is looking for opportunities to take the system around Lanzarote. He’s already played at it at the Lajarana festival at the local golf club, at Lanzarote’s rugby club and at a session at Villa Toledo on Playa Bastián.

He told Gazette Life “It’s difficult to find places to play on the island.”

“I always like to dance to the music, but I also prefer music with a message,” says Eduardo. “Roots reggae carries an emotional charge that results from the years of suffering of so many people.”

The Humble Hi-Fi Sound System is ready and waiting, prepared to shudder the floorboards and rock the dance-floor. You can find out more at the Humble Hi Fi Facebook or Instagram pages.

I was pleased to learn that Gazette Life invited  Eduardo to list the five reggae singles he likes to play on his system, which he promptly wrote down as

Burning Spear – Call On You

Pablo Moses – Give I Fe Name

Alton Ellis – True Born African

Reggae George – Drifter

Terence Gad – Ethiopia