MADJUANA BIO:
Led by ex-Hanoi Rocks/current New York Dolls bassist Sami Yaffa,
plus sultry chanteuse Karmen Guy, Mad Juana oozes an unclassifiable
concoction of Balkan beats, New Orleans jazz, Flamenco, Swamp blues and Punk attitude. Imagine Django Reinhardt and Patti Smith fronting the Velvet Underground in a Bourbon Street dive and the exotic soulfulness and inflamed passion rises like a possessed voodoo spirit.
Their sound is spicy jambalaya of gypsy-bohemian rock, mixing
striking horns , psychedelic accordion, violin and captivating
percussion into the savory gumbo. With exotic instrumentation
and maddening skills, the players are outstanding. Each musician seems
to have a unique approach that gives the music a deep, dark patina, while
Ms. Guy's seductive voice exudes enigmatic bayou-priestess wile.
Mad Juana displays nuanced complexity, down-home authenticity and hot blooded gusto. They have created a uniquely fascinating and celebratory global beat that needs to be heard!…Wicked stuff.
Musicians:
Sami Yaffa, guitar
Karmen Guy, vox & melodica
Danny Ray, saxophone
Nico Camargo, trumpet
Marni Rice, accordion
Fernando Apodaca, violin
Steven Rodriguez, bass
Paul Garisto/Dustin Luna, drums & percussion
For booking and publicity, contact:
[email protected]
Mad Juana's new "Accoustic Voodoo" CD will be available in April from Azra Records , online at many music distribution sites and CD retail stores. If you want to pick up a CD at your local music store and you don't see it, ask them to contact Azra Records and order it for you.
MUSIC CONNECTION REVIEW
Sept. 20, 2005 - Issue ..20
Mad Juana
Viper Room
West Hollywood, CA
(Contact: [email protected])
Material: There is nothing normal about Mad Juana and their spicy jambalaya of gypsy-bohemian rock. Their material is a bizarre wonderland inhabited by groups such as Gogol Bordello. MJ kick it up a notch by combining European sensibilities with classic American rock. The result is a style of music they call acoustic voodoo. It's a strangely liberating and totally compelling concoction that takes the listener on a wild ride, as it annihilates convention and alters everyone's consciousness.
Musicianship: With exotic instrumentation and maddening skills, these players are outstanding. Each musician seems to have a unique approach that gives the music a deep, dark patina. Karmen Guy's vocals blend Cajun inflections with a bluesy bayou sound that makes her voice come across like a humid summer - swampy, sweaty and devastatingly sexy. For a couple of tunes, she even stretched her range into Edith Piaf territory and nailed that French songbird quality.
Performance: Normally, with musicality so high any action onstage is like icing on a cake. But Mad Juana obviously refused to settle for anything as simple as that. Instead, their show was a cabaret of warped dimensions and hypnotic visions. Indeed, magical hardly begins to describe it. Intense and spellbinding, their performance was more than memorable.
Summary: Hailing from New York's East Village, Mad Juana are like a band of gypsies intent on entertaining the villagers. Breathtaking in execution, their music stirs the soul and inflames passion. And, though some may see them as quirky and strange, this act has created their own genre, and could easily become a niche-market phenomenon.
-Bernard Baur
MAD JUANA "Acoustic Voodoo" Gaz-Eta Review
[Azra, www.azrarecords.com],Gaz-Eta, Polish online magazine
If Concrete Blonde were more blues oriented or did mariachi music and had a sex goddess as their lead vocalist, they may sound something like Mad Juana. Former glam rock [Hanoi Rocks] bassist Sami Yaffa [he actually plays acoustic guitar in this formation] joins powers with accordion player Marni Rice, tenor saxophonist Danny Ray, trumpeter Jimmy Vespa and percussionist Paul Garisto. Let's not forget the star at the centre of attention, vocalist Karmen Guy, who also takes turns playing melodica and percussion. First off, the sound the sextet makes is spectacular. Without a doubt, their low-key acoustic approach is both raunchy as well as quite risqu__. Provocative phrasings and sultry lyrics escape from Guy's mouth. More often than not, her phrases are stretched out in that sex-me-over devilish sort of manner. Save for a few pieces where he wails, saxophonist Danny Ray is underused and when he's used, his work tends to get rather conformist. Yaffa's guitar work is all over the place. This is blues stuff, mean and rotten to the core. The trumpet and accordion add for some nice colouring, but it's the percussion that is absolutely thrilling. The congas played by Paul Garisto are multi-layered as is the percussive shtick. The band's version of "Venus in Furs" is unlike anything you may remember from Velvet Underground. Its acoustic bareness and wailing tenor sax just scream with intensity. Guy being the centre of attention gets star billing. Those stretched-out phrases are intoned just right. Emotion is inserted in all the right places. The place just rocks solid. "Acoustic Voodoo" is one of the more pleasant surprises so far this year.- Tom Sekowski
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