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SANDINO'S CAFÉ-BAR |
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Send us your review:
Describe the atmosphere and live music at a local pub, restaurant, festival, church or temple, club night.... inspire other people to check it out!
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Venue: Sandino's Café-Bar
Music: World fusion
Location: Water Street, Derry
Tel: (028) 71 309297
Reviewer: Hugh Harley
Dedicated to a trio of cigar-toting revolutionaries, Che, Fidel, and the eponymous Cesar Augusto, the cantina-style Sandino's in Derry's Water Street is an unashamedly left-wing café-bar.
This is where you'll drink your post-demo pints ("Last one up has to fold the banner"), or where you can hear guest speakers give first-hand accounts of conflict situations around the world. As its name might imply, Sandino's has forged particularly strong cultural and political links with the countries of Central and South America.
Worthy politics certainly, but where Sandino's excels is as a venue for live performance, punching way above its weight for a bar its size by regularly booking acts of an international calibre such as jazz luminary Louis Stewart, poet Louis de Paor and legendary Irish fiddler Tommy Peoples. There are also regular theme nights introducing the locals to the culinary and musical flavours of the world.
Tonight's gig for example, 'Es Muy Latina', salsa, hi-life, batucada, funk and jazz, mixed by regular Saturday night DJ Kwa whose family hails from Ghana. Live percussion comes courtesy of local conga players Phillip Wallace ("Wally") and Barry Carlin.
The place is packed by midnight giving everyone a good hour and a half to immerse themselves in pure Terpsi-chorean pleasure from the finger and toe tappers at the end of the bar to the more surreal arm and leg tumblers over by the door. The main action, as always, is taking place right in front of the conga players; tonight's Spanish contingent showing the locals exactly how it's done. Wally seems to be particularly pleased.
This is what Sandino's is all about. It may be literally a stone's throw away from what were once the most riot-torn streets in the British Isles, but here multiculturalism reigns supreme. Black, white, gay, straight, Basque, Catalan, Catholic, Protestant they all come here to join in the global dance. Viva Sandino's!
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Your reviews:
 'Jummy plays like a Lagos joint...'
  'not even the organiser, knows what's on the programme'
 'This is where you'll drink your post-demo pints...'
 '...break dancing, body popping, karate chopping...'
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