A fusion of Spanish canción and guitar and Afro-Cuban percussion with a bit of North American music jazzi-ness, yes that makes Cuban son, the salsa. Combining all these non-Cuban elements grafted onto the basic Cuban ‘son montuno’ template, the true colours of salsa music came straight from Cuba to town last night. 
Salsa y Punto, a musical band comprising Cuban and Balkan musicians and dancers, pulled the audience into the groove at Katara Drama Theatre during the latest episode of on-going Cultural Diversity Festival organised by Unesco and Katara Cultural Foundation. 
Presenting some of the most popular salsa songs with dancers from Serbia matching the notes with their electrifying salsa moves, the Cuban band enthralled the local salsa fans, who turned up in great numbers. “I thank the Unesco office here in Qatar for the excellent work they are doing with this cultural diversity event. It is a collage of so many cultures,” Ernesto D Plasencia, the ambassador of Cuba to Qatar, tells Community in a chat after the concert.
“I personally felt very happy and honoured to see the Republic of Cuba and this excellent performance by a band which is a mixed group having musicians and performances from Macedonia, Serbia and Cuba. I am very pleased to have listened to Cuban music here in Qatar,” adds the ambassador.
During the performance that lasted just over an hour, Salsa y Punto brought the typical salsa instruments to fore. The claves and bongos (drums) made people dance to their tunes.  
“We presented traditional music and dances. It was a kind of folk music and dance that has been there in Cuba for centuries. Cuba is a very old nation and they have some great traditional music and dance. These dances represent many parts of Cuba, even from outside Havana as well,” says Marko Kovacevic, one of the two lead dancers along with Milica Dokic. They are the Serbian duo from Salsa Familia Music and Dance School from Serbia, who are collaborating with the Cuban musicians led by Raul Pulido Sandoval, playing the traditional bongos. 
“Salsa originally means sauce or mixture. It is a mix of everything. You have many instruments from other continents but the main musical instruments and compositions come from Cuba. The main instruments were claves, maracas, bongos and they have been part of Cuban traditional music for many generations,” says Kovacevic. 
They combined piano, bass, trumpet, brass and dance together. Trumpet has to be there because it is Spanish music and it is mixed with conga (drums) from Africa, and a little bit of jazz from America. It is a mix of musical instruments from different continents like Europe, Africa, Asia and America. 
“Salsa connects people and it is played everywhere in the world. The rhythm is so powerful that even the people who do not understand the language or composition are drawn into swing with the music. It pulls people into dance,” says Sandoval. 
About their collaboration with the Serbian performers, he says ‘It is not normal; it is something very crazy, a very different idea.” 
“We are a band of half-Cuban and half-Serbian or Balkan people. It was the first time that we have done so. And this connection is something insanely amazing. We are from different cultures and we come from different parts of the world but we have many things in common,” says Sandoval. 
On trumpet, they had one musician from Serbia and one from Macedonia. All other musicians were from Cuba and the dancers group was from Serbia. 
“We used to dance Salsa in Serbia but our style is very similar to the one that they have in Cuba. It is the first time that we have come together with musicians from Cuba and doing an international tour with them. In our representative countries, we do a lot of things together,” says Kovacevic. 
“Our Salsa school and this band from Cuba have done many projects together and regularly collaborate. Individually, we have performed in different countries all over the world but this was something like a very big international premiere for us,” he adds. 
The audience, he says, was amazing. They participated in the performance. “I want to say that we are having some really nice time here in Doha together with our Cuban brothers. We have seen the country. I like the town because the architecture of the buildings here is both traditional and contemporary, and I like the way they have been done here,” says Kovacevic. 
For him, it is perfect, just like the Cuban music which is a mixture of traditional and modern. The other members of the band included Vladimir Jovanovic, Roberto Justiz Vinales, Jorge Enrique Rivera and Draganco Ristevski.